Inexpensive and reliable router

I'm looking to buy a new router for my apartment in college. Looking for a dual band Wireless-N that's reliable and stable with a price tag of around $50 or less.

There's two that I'm interested in so far but I'm open to suggestions:

Asus RT-N53
TP-LINK TL-WDR3500

Currently leaning towards the WDR3500 since the Asus one has a much larger ratio of 1 star reviews..
What do you guys think?

 

I wouldn't buy either of those since both use a 100mbps switch. While it may not seem like a limitation at first glance it's pretty poor.
That said- you won't be able to buy anything really good for $50 so you might as well go for one of those.

If I were you I'd up TP-Link and the budget slightly and buy TP-LINK's TL-WDR3600.

As for those two- TP-Link TL-WDR3500 uses much better hardware- faster SoC and more RAM so it's a better one.

 

Do you think a 1000 mbps router would offer me better performance? The internet connection I'm planning to get will have 10 mbps down/ 1.5 mbps up.

 

It wouldn't offer better performance in terms of Internet access but it would offer a hugely improved level of service inside the LAN.
While you may not be interested in it now you have to understand that if you want to use any device with an Ethernet port to share/stream videos, back-up your devices share files over LAN, use a NAS etc 100mbps Ethernet will severely limit those capabilities.

100mbps is roughly 12MB/s which is very slow- while it is enough to stream a movie even in HD it's not nearly enough for other uses.
You know better than I do what usage pattern fits you best but I'd spend another $10 or so for a 3600.

 

Thank you for the help. I'll definitely consider spending a little more for the 3600.