Buying advice router: 170m2 house, budget 300€

[Floriskw]

What is my current router?
Currently I'm using a Asus rt-n66u running on the merlin firmware.

This one will probably move to the top floor and setup as a nap.

What is the situation?
I'm looking for a new router to get a better coverage in our new house. The house we've bought is a semidetached house and built in 1991 and is about 170m2 big and has 3 levels. Despite having a semidetached house, my phone finds 15 WiFi signals!

In our living room the WiFi of our neighbors across the street has a better signal strength. While our couch is only 4-5 meters away from the router, but with two walls in between.
In our bedroom on the first floor the 2,4ghz signal shows -75/80 dBm signal strength and is unstable. While the router again is only 4-5 meters away, but with a concrete ceiling between.

On the top floor the WiFi is as fast as a gprs connection.

The garden's depth is 18 meters and has a sort of lounge area in the back. During the summer we're sitting there a lot, listening to music(Spotify) and relaxing. Currently we have my Wi-Fi coverage there and Spotify is not so good for our 4g data bundle. It would be great to have some Wi-Fi coverage there as well.

What is my budget?
When I bought my current router it was top class and the most expensive one for 175 euro, but I wanted the best and bought it.

Now the top routers are close to 500 euro and that's a bit too much imho.

I'm looking for a router one class lower at about 300 euro




What have I looked for myself?
With that budget there is quite some choice.

2015 routers
D-link dir-890
Asus ac-rt3200
Netgear 48000
Linksys ea8500

2016
Asus rt-ac3100
Netgear r7800

Usually I'm always going for the latest models, but the netgear does not have any proper reviews. Just family and friends consumer's reviews telling it is awesome.

The Asus one seems to do ok, but is not available in the Netherlands yet.

I did find this review, which is stating the dir890 is still the best allround router. And the speeds of the 890 in their test are much better than their other router tests.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2499817,00.asp

However other reviews from 2015 on snb, tomshardware etc aren't showing these big differences between the 890 and other 2015 routers, so I doubt the review is very reliable.

So can someone please tell me more about the latest ones compared to the 2015 ones?

 

[L&LD]

It's great that you'll give your RT-N66U the top floor and let it nap, but with three floors to cover, you should use it as an AP instead.

The RT-AC68U or the RT-AC3100 (or above) is what I would recommend for you. Particularly if you get the 1GHz processor model of the RT-AC68U (the latest revisions from Asus).

With RMerlin firmware (or one of the forks) of course.

 

[joegreat]

Depending on the walls (in my case ferro armed concrete) you need more the one device to cover all your space: I need 2 devices to cover 95 m2 (plus 15 m2 balcony), you might need even more...

But a the suggested Asus AC68U as main router and a Asus N66U in access point (AP) mode would be a good start. Only drawback is that you need a wired LAN connection from the AP to your main router (or a power line adapter device) to bridge the gap, which might add ab bit more cost then your budget...

 

[Floriskw]

haha ofc I was going to set the RT-N66U as an AP and not let it NAP ;p
Thanks for the replies, guys !

As for the house:
Most of the walls and all floors/ceilings are armed concrete and really absorbing the wifi signal.

Another issue is bringing the cable to the top floor.
As each room on the middle floor has pvc pipes in the walls, but none of them to the top floor.
The misses does not want any visible cables going to the top floor and no holes in the ceilings.

So my guess it will be a powerline + ac68u and will go a little over 300 Euro then.

I am not very happy with the powerline, as they are not that stable imo.

 

[System Error Message]

i suggest not using d-link, the usual quality and security issues with them.

Some routers like the ac3200 have dual radios, good if you have many 5Ghz clients.
MU-MIMO is good if you have at least 2 MU-MIMO clients

Recent routers actually have better reception than older ones so you may not need to worry much about floors.

2.4Ghz has better range so placing one router in the middle for 2.4Ghz is fine and the rest can just use 5Ghz.