What benefit?

What's the benefit (if any) to AC over N routers if I am a single individual living in an apartment getting my internet fix through Time Warner Cable which even at its fastest gives only 50Mbps? I've never used a router before (!) (I'm almost 69) but I want to be able to have two or more devices connected wirelessly.

And if there are benefits, would you please explain them or point me to a URL that will for a "dummy" like me.

 

No benefit whatsoever unless you transfer you transfer a lot of files over LAN (like from a notebook connected via Wi-Fi to a NAS server or a desktop).
Other than that a dual stream Wi-Fi 802.11n card capable of connecting at a theoretical speed 300mbps will do as well as 802.11ac.

 

I've used some old version of InSSIDer (ver 2 something, before i got bloated) to see how much different networks are around.

This is by my own experience: because all the apartments in my building use modem provided by ISP that has 2.4GHz band only. That means 40 networks in this building and 80 more in the two next to us. Sometimes wireless network speeds were so bad I'd like to cry. Hoewer I upgraded to dualband 2.4/5GHz router and no-one else in my range has done so. 5GHz airwaves are mine, all mine

 

My question was about N vs AC not single band vs. dual band. I know I want dual band for the reason you mention, but unless someone persuades me differently I don't see any reason to have the "latest and greatest" (or *any*) AC router with my ISP download speeds setting the limit of 50 Mbps. I'm just checking to see if I'm missing some consideration.

 

Downloading will depend a lot on your Internet Service and the sights you're connecting to.Sometimes time of day affects quality.
Distance from the router,walls,floors,microwaves and large metal objects between the router and notebook can all affect signal quality.

Router and wireless card settings need to be adjusted
WPA2 AES only security is best for N and AC speeds
2.4 and 5ghz channel selection>try 7 for 2.4ghz and 153 for 5ghz as a starting point

Use the FREE inSSIDer program to find least used channels.
http://www.techspot.com/downloads/5936-inssider.html

 

Then it's all fine because you know what a dual band is Not all N devices are dual band, so randomly picking one with a cool name from a store might be just 2.4Ghz single band device.

I checked local stores listings, out of ~15 N routers only 4 were dual band.

I would not choose AC over N unless that particular router you have in mind has features you want. Not related to wireless speed that is.

 

ac lives on 5ghz. you will get less interference, and it will interfere less with other devices as the majority of things operate on 2.4ghz. you'd already know if you could benefit from this though.