[SOLVED] Need help on choosing a reliable if not best ADSL modem wifi router

[Alexoferith]

Hi, I wonder if anyone can help me. I have spent the past few days reading and reading, trying to find a reliable if not the best ADSL modem wifi router on the market. I am from the UK. The reason is simple. I have just been made redundant. I have to watch my outgoing. To cut a long story short, I have changed my energy, phone and broadband supplier to one company, saving quite a large sum annually. The broadband part, this company is supplying three choices of Technicolour wifi modem routers depending on the size of the property. I used Amazon's customers' comment about these routers, none of them is good. I am currently with BT, using their Home Hub 4 or 5. I have no problem with them but BT is just too expensive compared to this new company. Also, using Which.co.uk, this company has very very good customers feedback hence the decision to change supplier to this company. Anyway, back to the problem of choosing a decent ADSL modem WiFi router.
There are so so many on the market now. And worst, different websites seem to suggest different products as the "best" one. Again, I use the customers' feedback/comment on Amazon as a reference. From my experience using Amazon, if the product has a high ratio between the best comment and the worst comment, around 10%, e.g. if 70% of the comments are 5 stars and the worst ones is around or less than 10%, then this product is good to buy. But of course, the number of customers has to be large. I tend to choose products with over 100 comments if it is something to do with electronics. Anyway, I digressed. I would be most grateful if someone has good experience with their choice of ADSL modem WiFi router, please let me know. I have no budget, well, around £200 max. I live in a one-bedroom flat so I don't need Mesh setup. There are roughly around 4 devices connected to the internet, more when my daughter is back from Uni. Oh, another thing, I don't have fibre optics. Due to where I live, BT deemed that it is not economical for them to install fibre optics even though there is fibre optic cable less than 100 metre out at the main road. I have been waiting for that for over 15 years. Sigh. One other question, can I use my existing BT home hub with the new company or is it hardware restricted? Many many thanks for your help in advance.

 

[Math Geek]

it's been a long time since i have had dsl. but when i did i simply bought my own router and connected it to the modem supplied by the isp. i doubt the speeds you are getting are fast enough to need a high end router so any decent consumer router should be good enough and easily below your budget.

sorry i don't have any specific experience with wifi dsl routers but it's been 15 years or more since i lived in an area that only had dsl offered.

the good old basic linksys routers are cheap and more than able to handle dsl service in a small apartment

Linksys AC1000 Dual-Band WiFi 5 router | Linksys: US

The AC1000 Dual-Band WiFi router (WiFi 5) delivers enhanced speed, range, and security for all your networking needs. With speeds up to 2.3x faster than N.

www.linksys.com

 

[bill001g]

If you own the device and it has a DSL modem in it they generally work on any system. The ones that get tricky are the VDSL ones since these tend to be more proprietary implementations.

The problem with reviews is most customers are extremely naive when it comes to understand how things really work. They fail to realize that the house the device is in make far more difference than difference in the routers. You also can not compare experience because someone may use it in the same room and someone else used it on a different floor in their house. And then the most common issue is that the end device is 1/2 the connection so many reviews are actually reviewing the performance of the end device and not the router.

So....
There is actually no way to predict which router is best for you. In general DSL is very slow so you do not need a fancy router with 4x4 mimo and QAM1024. When costs are a concern you want to look at your end devices and not buy faster than they can support. Most end devices only have 2 antenna and can only support 2x2 mimo. This means a router with a 1200 number on it will performance as well as the 3300 or whatever.

The only thing to watch for in the reviews is if you see a lot of people complaining about defective equipment and warranty support. Larger well known companies generally have better support.

When you dig around you will find that most routers with similar "speeds" use the same chipset internally. There are only 2 or 3 companies that make wifi chipset. What tends to be different are software features not so much the performance. Only you can put a value on software. Do you need parental controls, NAS support, vpn, firewall etc. Maybe you like one set of gui screens better than the other.

So if you can not use your current router I would buy a device one of the larger vendors that you like the best. Obviously those unknown brands that you get directly shipped from china you take a risk in exchange for a low price.

 

[Alexoferith]

Thank you both for your comments and advice. Thank you. Yes, don't you wonder UK is a "developed" country and yet we have one of the worst internet speed. Sigh.

 

[Alexoferith]

it's been a long time since i have had dsl. but when i did i simply bought my own router and connected it to the modem supplied by the isp. i doubt the speeds you are getting are fast enough to need a high end router so any decent consumer router should be good enough and easily below your budget.

sorry i don't have any specific experience with wifi dsl routers but it's been 15 years or more since i lived in an area that only had dsl offered.

the good old basic linksys routers are cheap and more than able to handle dsl service in a small apartment

Linksys AC1000 Dual-Band WiFi 5 router | Linksys: US

The AC1000 Dual-Band WiFi router (WiFi 5) delivers enhanced speed, range, and security for all your networking needs. With speeds up to 2.3x faster than N.

www.linksys.com

Thank you for your advice. ADSL modem is cheap but then I will have to get a WiFi router. May as well just get one that has all. I am looking at a DrayTek Vigor 2862n Wireless Router (802.11n).

 

[Math Geek]

sorry i assumed you got the modem itself from the isp already. that's why i suggested just a router.

but if you need both, then a combo unit of course makes the most sense for a one time purchase.

 

[Alexoferith]

sorry i assumed you got the modem itself from the isp already. that's why i suggested just a router.

but if you need both, then a combo unit of course makes the most sense for a one time purchase.

No worry. You did put some sense in my head. Thank you again. I didn't realize that ADSL is an out-dated technology and yet, BT is "forcing" me to "stick" to it even when I had money to spend on Infinity. But I just don't have to money to pay for the cable to be laid down to my address! I read that some months ago on the newspaper, that an entire village chipped in with a lady running the project. They dug up the road and bought all the equipments and laid the cable, connected them all up themselves. But it cost over 100 grands! Still top marks to them.