R8000 vs RT-AC68U/R7000

[Arsenal]

So i've probably left this a bit late, but a store in Australia will shortly have the R8000 on sale for the equivalent of $170US for a brief period. Given this price and the fact that the best price for an R7000 here is the same $170US and the RT-68U actually runs a bit more at around $182US, would you buy the R8000 or go for one of the more mature routers?

 

[bobsilver]

So i've probably left this a bit late, but a store in Australia will shortly have the R8000 on sale for the equivalent of $170US for a brief period. Given this price and the fact that the best price for an R7000 here is the same $170US and the RT-68U actually runs a bit more at around $182US, would you buy the R8000 or go for one of the more mature routers?

The R8000 is a very stable router at this point. So the maturity thing I think is no longer an issue. Between the R7000 and the R8000 I would go for the R8000. It uses faster processors and also has processors dedicated to the RF radios. And if you have a number of regular 5ghz users having the dual 5ghz bands in the R8000 is a nice thing to have. It its just a few users then it doesn't buy you anything.

The R7000 is a hackers delight though. If you like to play with different firmwares the R7000 is best for that. We are starting to see some open source firmware for the R8000 but its early. New technology and chips will take a bit before the open source is ready like the R7000.

I have both of these routers range between them is comparable. In some cases the R7000 may be better but frankly I can't confirm that since there are many variables. that effect it. Suffice it to say they are very close.

Bottom line. If you can grab R8000 for $170 do it. But either of these routers will do very well for you.

Bob Silver
Netgear Networking Consultant

 

[RogerSC]

The R8000 is a very stable router at this point. So the maturity thing I think is no longer an issue. Between the R7000 and the R8000 I would go for the R8000. It uses faster processors and also has processors dedicated to the RF radios.

The R7000 and R8000 use the same Broadcom CPU, BCM4709A, so I'm not sure what faster processors that you're talking about? Could you please clarify this?

Thanks.

 

[bobsilver]

The R7000 and R8000 use the same Broadcom CPU, BCM4709A, so I'm not sure what faster processors that you're talking about? Could you please clarify this?

Thanks.

The 8000 has 3 individual offload processors for each of its RF radios taking the load off the main CPU. That allows the main cpu to function better for routing, file sharing etc.

Bob