asus rt-n66u or archer c7?

[66racer]

Hello,

Im not a network guru at all but after moving and using a cheap free lg router, I miss the netgear 3700 I had with my roomates and am now split on what to buy. I have a small 2 bedroom triplex unit (1075sqft), timewarner cable 50Mbps connection, motorola surfboard router (dont have the model number in front but its a good one) and usually have 3 android devices connected as well as my "gaming" pc. after purchasing a dlink cloud storage 2000 router and feeling it was a step back over the cheap lg unit, i decided to ask here.

My buget was originally $60 but decided $140 is stretching it but if needed i will. I was thinking even the rt-56u would be good enough since it seems to do great but decided the 66u since im not planning on going AC within 2yrs and the 66u seems top notch. Here comes in the archer c7, my local frys just listed it for $90 but the 2.4ghz performance in the review here has me worried. All my devices are N and only the pc has 5ghz through an asus usb n53 adapter.

Is the archer c7 a great router for $90 or spend $140 for the rt-n66u? Or am I just going overboard and get the rt-n56u ($90)...purchases are made at a local frys so I can return it if im not happy.

Thanks!

 

[RogerSC]

You could get the rt-n66w (white instead of black) for $110 at Amazon, and then if you get the rebate after that, total cost of about $100:

http://www.amazon.com/RT-N66W-Dual-Band-Wireless-N900-Gigabit-Version/dp/B00FK1E46U

My personal take on this is that even though you are paying a little more, I tend to trust a piece of networking hardware from Asus more than one from TP-Link for better longevity and reliability. But that is personal. And you said that you aren't looking for wireless-ac, anyways, so you might as well pay just a little more for a piece of hardware that will do what you want it to do, and most likely last longer. No accounting for individual failures, though *smile*.

Edit:
Oh yes, I forgot to ask, I'm wondering where you found the Archer C7 for $90? I see it for $120 on Newegg and Amazon, but haven't found it for less than the while RT-N66W mentioned above?

 

[66racer]

You could get the rt-n66w (white instead of black) for $110 at Amazon, and then if you get the rebate after that, total cost of about $100:

http://www.amazon.com/RT-N66W-Dual-Band-Wireless-N900-Gigabit-Version/dp/B00FK1E46U

My personal take on this is that even though you are paying a little more, I tend to trust a piece of networking hardware from Asus more than one from TP-Link for better longevity and reliability. But that is personal. And you said that you aren't looking for wireless-ac, anyways, so you might as well pay just a little more for a piece of hardware that will do what you want it to do, and most likely last longer. No accounting for individual failures, though *smile*.

Edit:
Oh yes, I forgot to ask, I'm wondering where you found the Archer C7 for $90? I see it for $120 on Newegg and Amazon, but haven't found it for less than the while RT-N66W mentioned above?

Thanks for the info. Yeah I picked up the asus rt-n66u black earlier at my local frys electronics. $139.99 + $15mir so not too bad but man after you mentioned the white version, I didnt think much about it till I saw a picture just now of one on amazon. Looks really nice actually. Was hoping my n66u had the dark knight text on it but guess the new ones dont, oh well lol

Here is the frys link for the C7 price
http://www.frys.com/product/7681617?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

 

[RogerSC]

That is a really decent rebate, though, on the C7...For me, I've learned to strongly dislike rebates due to all the exacting paper work and the long wait to find out if you've done it correctly or not. So I no longer buy things based on rebates, since I'm pretty sure I won't send the stuff in *smile*. If the pre-rebate price isn't suitable, or it isn't an "instant" rebate, then I'll just ignore it.

I think that you'll like your rt-n66u...RMerlin's SDK5 firmware for it is the best that I've found. Right now, my rt-n66u is a backup for the R7000 that I got about a month ago, but still working as well as when I got it over 1.5 years ago.