Most popular wireless router for $100 or less?

I wasn't sure where to post it, so I am doing so here. My question is the same as the thread title. What I am looking for is a stable, decently ranged wireless router. The most important aspect would be stability of the router, i.e. not dropping the signal often and minimal packet loss. Thanks in advance!

 

I'm looking for the same.

 

The TP-Link TL-WR1043ND is decent, the linksys E3000 is at a good price at newegg right now, decent range, not the best. It has among the best throughput though. The netgear WDNR3700 which is also a high end router is also at $100 on sites like newegg.

 

Right at the limit of the price-range for some $100 is Netgear WNDR3700 which is one of the best consumer routers on the market.

Hardware, wireless range and throughput, good stock firmware and availability of 3rd party firmware make it hard to rival for the price.

 

I found an E3000 for $45 shipped, I'll let you all know how it goes. I think it'll be an excellent replacement for my E2000.

 

We know how it goes E3000 is a very good router and for that price it's a bargain of the century- good choice.

 

I just bought a Netgear N750 for $62.

How much better is it vs. the E3000?

Thanks

 

It's actually slower in terms of wireless throughput on 2.4GHz under both good & bad signal conditions. Wireless range on 2.4GHz is also better on E3000.

When it comes to 5GHz range E3000 is limited to 300mbps (2 streams) while WNDR4000 is a 3 stream unit (450mbps) but the difference is no more than 15% in favor of WNDR4000.

 

I heard that the E3000 overheats? Is that something I should worry about?

 

It's not really that E3000 overheats- it's a router that lies flat so if wedged somewhere without consideration it's more likely to overheat than say a WNDR3700 that (usually) stands vertically making cooling from both sides easier.

 

I have an Asus RT-N16 (TomatoUSB) and it is pretty good too. But I hear a lot about the NetGear WNDR3700 or Linksys E3000 with custom firmwares too. These three are good!

 

Seriously, unless you go crazy and put under a pile of blankets it won't overheat. Mine survived the summer without overheating and it is lying flat on a wooden surface, not the best for heat transfer...

If it does get hot, replace the feet by higher ones and problem solved.

 

The E3000 gets warm sure, but I doubt its just going to blow up like your laptop CPU would if it had sudden cooling loss.

If you're that worried about it and want to add fans, get a USB fan and have the router sit on top of it (I only did it because I have a spare one from my old cooler).

You could do what one of my friends did for some reason and sit it outside in the cold weather... although I think that was because he wanted more range for his backyard

 

The e3000 is basically the 610Nv2 which I have.
I deal with lots of routers and this is one of the best I have ever dealt with.

The cooling on it is silly, they put the vents on the lower half, though heat rises (duh!). I did mount mine vertical which seemed to allow it to run cooler, and when I had it flat I propped up the front with a thumbtack, but it was only to let it run cooler, it never overheated. Mine has been running non stop for several years without any problems. I have never had to reset it except twice in one day when a bad wireless card caused problems with it. The card was the issue, not the router.

I streamed a wireless webcam 24/7 for months, ran a file server with a ton of videos, the family's computer arsenal, and lots of torrents, downloads and uploads. At one point I was transferring close to 450 gigs a month for a few months straight. That doesn't even take into account everything I moved internally, which would be measured in terrabytes, it never glitched. I have never seen a consumer router take that sort of punishment and just brush it off like it was nothing.

I almost picked up one of those cheap e3000 as a spare just because it's such an insane deal. It's a fantastic router.

 

For the price it's going at right now, it is an insane deal. The E3000 has three vents under the blue plastic piece. It has vents under it too which is why if it ever gets too hot propping it half an inch usually solves the problem.

As i said previously, mine has been rock solid so far. I never had to power cycle it, the only time it was off was because of power failures or me doing a 30/30/30 when changing the firmware.

 

Thanks guys for some great recommendations! Now the question is, e3000 or the netgear one? From the reviews on newegg, it appears that e3000 suffers from overheating and thus the router becoming dead while the netgear router has a short lifespan for some odd reason. What would you guys suggest?

I know e3000 has cooling vents, but since some people claimed that the replacement units also had the same problem of overheating, I got confused.

 

For equal price I would probably go 3700 simply to try it, since I have the 610n, but also because it's claimed to be better. Given a decent difference in price, I would take whichever I got cheaper because both are fantastic routers.

Mine has yet to overheat and I have absolutely punished mine. There is no way the average person will do half of what I have done to mine, so I can't see how others have so much trouble. The overheating is likely people putting in flat on carpet, or on top of warm pc cases (very common) and such. At worst you will have to prop up the front or rear or like I am doing, mount it vertical which works the best. Mine ran cooler propping up an edge, but ran much cooler once I mounted it vertically.

Netgear, like D-Link, has had trouble with underpowered (and just plain bad) power bricks, which is hard on the internal capacitors. This has been at times attributed to the Netgear failures.

Almost no router is perfect.

 

Netgear's short lifespan may be a result of a problem that some of WNDR3700s had that caused the radio to die.
It's been fixed since and no WNDR3700v2 suffers from it and only v2s are on sale now.

Anyway- both are great routers. Due to new (read cheaper) antennas WNDR3700v2 is not really better in terms of wireless throughput and range compared to E3000 but Netgear still sports a faster CPU which may be useful on some occasions (i.e. USB attached storage).