Question Need a router recommendation

[Texas Kelly]

My current Netgear WNDR3700 router is a bit long in the tooth (purchased in January 2013) and is starting to act up in ways that indicate it should probably be replaced. I usually have to power-cycle it once a month or so after it loses connection to my modem, and today I had to power-cycle it because my wireless devices dropped connection despite Internet working fine on the wired devices, which is new behavior I haven't seen before. (The firmware is current, and because it's been end-of-service for quite a while, I haven't seen a new release in a long time.)

That said, I've tried to research new routers in the past, and I always throw my hands up because I can't find something to suit my needs. Because of how I have my modem, network cables, and other devices laid out, I need a router that stands in a vertical housing in order to minimize the amount of space it takes up on my desk - you can see how I have the current one positioned below:

https://imgur.com/a/9P659hC

The overwhelming majority of routers currently on the market have horizontal housing that will not fit in the space I have available. Of the few I'm able to find that do have vertical housing, they are either prohibitively expensive (the cheapest entry in TP-Link's Archer BE line looks to be $300) or they are raft with the same types of problems I'm dealing with now out of the box (the Amazon page for the Linksys E7350 notes that it is frequently returned because of wireless dropouts and overall signal strength issues). I'm not a big gamer, and my current Internet plan only tops out at about 400 Mbps, so I don't need a top-of-the-line feature-rich router; I just need something reliable that fits in the space my current router fits in. Any recommendations for devices that will fit my needs and cut through the noise would be super appreciated!

 

[bill001g]

LInksys sell almost identical model for $55.

There is no magic fix for wifi. None of the router makers actually make their own chips and ones with similar specs use the same chips in a lot of cases.
The software that runs in the wifi chips comes from the chipset vendor to avoid issues with the FCC license. Only the software that runs on the router cpu is unique and that is all the menus and other feature like parental control. All the wifi functionality is in the wifi chip so pretty much they all run the same.

You can't trust any reviews on amazon about performance. If they complain about it being dead out of the box or poor warantee support maybe. Any reviews of the wifi are not valid. They are in effect reviewing their house, all the neighbors wifi signals around them and the end devices they have.

Unfortnantly you have to pretty much buy blind since there is no way to predict how well the router will work with your unique set of devices and house. Very tiny difference in device placement and things like there antenna can make a massive difference.

I would in general avoid wifi6. It seems most people did not see much difference than wifi 5 (802.11ac). This is related to strange restriction on the 5ghz radio band and avoidance of things like weather radar. Many end devices did not support the ability to run at 160mhz which is the key thing that makes wifi6 faster.

I would look for wifi6e, the cost have been coming down, linksys has one for $100. wifi6e add the ability to run on the 6ghz radio band. If you do not have any wifi6e end devices then you might not see any benifit.