WRT1900AC/ASUS RT-AC87U/R7000/R7500

[jpiszcz]

I've been spending a lot of time reviewing these models and other posts, I finally came to a conclusion and was going to go with the R7000 but I've seen the R7500 has just came out recently. Is a review of this unit planned soon?

Any reason to wait to go for the R7500 over the R7000? The R7500 has 2 x USB 3.0 I am probably not going to use them.. still it would be interesting to have a comparison with with the R7000 vs. R7500.

Probably will go with the R7000 unless something is compelling to go with the R7500? Currently using Linksys E4200s. Purpose of the upgrade would be to interoperate with 802.11ac devices (including triple-stream devices).

Curious if anyone had any thoughts/comments?

Thanks!

 

[Trip]

From the choices listed, I'd go with the most mature and stable firmware, and right now that would be the R7000 -- be it factory or open-source. The supposed advantages of the R7500 in my mind are trivial because if you're looking to eek out that much extra wifi or really do need that extra USB port so badly, then you should be looking more towards mature AC-class APs and/or NAS drives for proper solutions. Just my two cents.

 

[jpiszcz]

Bought the R7000 today, here are my benchmarks, testing WiFi speeds via FTP. R7000 vs. an E4200 Linksys wireless router, note I cannot say anything about stability yet as I just hooked it up and upgraded the router and reset everything to factory defaults.. I'm pretty happy with 55-60MiB/s. Note: I am using it as a WAP only, not as a router. The E4200 was removed and the R7000 was put in its place (same physical space). The laptop was left in the same spot.

Test file:

$ du -sh *iso
2.2G elive_2.3.5_beta_hybrid.iso

$ md5sum *iso
1bcb0d1c34ba29c8e489cba0ab7d0342 elive_2.3.5_beta_hybrid.iso

Speed tests via Macbook Pro 2013 (3x3) with FTP:

2.4GHZ Linksys (802.11n)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 196 seconds (11.31 MiB/s)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 191 seconds (11.58 MiB/s)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 217 seconds (10.23 MiB/s)

5GHZ Linksys (802.11n)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 74 seconds (29.91 MiB/s)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 75 seconds (29.54 MiB/s)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 74 seconds (29.80 MiB/s)

===

2.4GHZ R7000 (802.11n)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 154 seconds (14.42 MiB/s)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 125 seconds (17.79 MiB/s)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 143 seconds (15.54 MiB/s)

5GHZ R7000 (802.11ac)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 40 seconds (55.46 MiB/s)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 37 seconds (60.62 MiB/s)
2324135936 bytes transferred in 37 seconds (59.74 MiB/s)

 

[Trip]

Not bad. Not bad at all. I'm assuming that's on Netgear stock firmware, latest version?

 

[jpiszcz]

Hi, that is correct, as of right now that is: R7000-V1.0.3.68_1.1.31.chk.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
For the time being only difference between 7000 and 7500 is in the easy to use QOS in 7500. Been happy with 7000 and now dd-wrt supports IPV6 on the router as well. Only reason I have 7500 is because I was given one, LOL! Always nice to play with new toy... It took almost 3 days' tweaking QOS with R7000, on 7500 just turn on dynamic QOS when all the attached devices are active.

 

[bobsilver]

I've been spending a lot of time reviewing these models and other posts, I finally came to a conclusion and was going to go with the R7000 but I've seen the R7500 has just came out recently. Is a review of this unit planned soon?

Any reason to wait to go for the R7500 over the R7000? The R7500 has 2 x USB 3.0 I am probably not going to use them.. still it would be interesting to have a comparison with with the R7000 vs. R7500.

Probably will go with the R7000 unless something is compelling to go with the R7500? Currently using Linksys E4200s. Purpose of the upgrade would be to interoperate with 802.11ac devices (including triple-stream devices).

Curious if anyone had any thoughts/comments?

Thanks!

Here is a review I wrote on the R7500 as an intro piece. But I discuss differences between it and the R7000 and R8000.
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/39-ne...wk-x4-r7500-ac2350-extreme-router-thread.html

The primary differences aside from a 4x4 AC configuration (R7000 is 3x3) is the Dynamic QOS which works quite well, improved main CPU, Offload wifi processors and the addition of esata and 1 more USB 3.0 port.

Having the R7000, R7500 and the R8000 I would say this. If you have a small pipe to your home the Dynamic QOS is great. If you want to use it as a NAS both the esata port and the improved cpu is also good.

The R7500 is less mature then the R7000 and I know Netgear is still tuning firmware. It is stable (been running as my router for about a month now no reboots or glitches) but I am aware of some performance issues Netgear is working on.

That all said unless you need the features mentioned go (in your case stay) with the R7000.

Bob Silver
NETGEAR Networking Assistant