Hacker News Reader

Comment by baerd44 | Hacker News Reader

What is the best casual router for Wifi?

The Wirecutter suggests the TP-Link Archer C7: http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-router/

There's an implication along with this that "best casual" also includes "affordable". If not, the best casual router is the same as the best non-casual router - I'm happy with my Google OnHub router but it's more expensive and depending on your use case (and mine, to be honest, but I've already bought the thing) it might not be worth the extra cost. Over the years I've become less enthusiastic to do things like flash DD-WRT to my router and to instead just pay money for something that I will never have to touch again.

I used to have C7 for a year, and it was fast when it worked correctly. Unfortunately, once every month or so the wifi would stop working and needed a restart. We also have a weirdly long apartment that didn't get reception at the far end. This was with 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz bands.

I've since switched to OnHub for 6 months and it's been great. I have yet to restart the router and get pretty decent coverage all around the apartment. Well worth the extra money for completely pain free wifi.

Side note: having gone through a bunch of dual band routers so far I've found most did not allow 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz bands to coexist as the same SSID reliably. If I did, my MacBook would constantly get 'locked' to 2.4Ghz with lower bandwidth, since it had better coverage. The OnHub seems to handle this really well and I have not had any issues at all.

My first requirement these days is fast, automatic security updates. I know the OnHub / Google WiFi devices use ChromeOS (https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f...) and get updates on that schedule. The last time I checked (about a year ago) that was a unique feature but I don't know whether anyone else has improved their support footing recently.

Try looking at these recent HN discussions:

Introducing a new kind of Wi-Fi system https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12637230

Ask HN: Best current model routers for OpenWRT, DD-WRT, Tomato, etc.? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113766

Reply on news.ycombinator.com