anybody have any of these routers?

i work at best buy part time and tomorrow is my last day, i.e. my last day to take advantage of the employee discount. i don't need to upgrade my router per se, but my sager has an intel 6300 so i probably should at least upgrade to dual band.

Spoiler

first choice: netgear n750 (WNDR4000) -- $76.91 + tax

second choice: netgear n900 (WNDR4500) -- $89.25 + tax

third choice: belkin 750 (F9K1103) -- $77.06 + tax

needless choice: belkin ac1200 (F9K1113) -- $100 + tax

i'm leaning toward the netgear n750, but for $25 more... thoughts? anybody have any of these or maybe recommend one i haven't considered?

EDIT: okay so with tax & shipping for the ac1200, the total comes to $121.50. that's pretty much a deal-breaker unless someone can convince me how much better off i'd be with it now. because in the long run, it'll just be cheaper and then i might actually be able to take advantage of what it has to offer rather than simply being the first kid on the block to have one.

 

If you can find a Linksys E4200v1 (the v2 has a different SoC altogether), an Asus RT-N66U or a WNDR3700v2 those would be excellent choices as well. In any case, avoid Belkin like the plague, any of those two netgears will be miles better. Seems like the N750 gives overall better performance for the price. If you want in depth analysis of each routers smallnetbuilder is the place to look.

 

nice, thanks! of course best buy only has the linksys v2 available--are you saying v1's chip is preferable? and, as i look them up in comparison, would you go with the WNDR3700v2 over netgear's n750 or n900? would the n900 be overkill? would there be a speed difference between any of these or, being the only one in my house who would ever be on the 5GHz band, would i be "bottlenecked" by my ISP?

 

Considering that on my E3000 and those routers are about as good or better, i was getting around 144Mbps of actual usable throughput, i doubt you will bottlenek your internet connection.

The E4200v1 uses a broadcom SoC and Cisco is rather good at writing firmware for those, the v2 has a Marvell NAS chip in it giving the router better performance with external drives, but worse routing performance.

The N900 is definitely overkill and 450Mbps on 2.4GHz is just plain impossible unless you live in the middle of nowhere (the band is too crowded) so it doesn't really do much to have 2.4GHz 450Mbps capabilities unless the router has other features you may want so the N900 is definitely overkill. The WNDR3700 (300Mbps on both bands) or the WNDR4000 (450 on 5GHz/300 on 2.4GHz) would be my first two choices.

The Asus RT-N56U and N66U can handle the most connections at once, also has killer throughput and the N66U has two USB ports if that matters to you (if you have access to Asus routers of course), but the firmware is a notch under that of Linksys and Netgear.

 

i failed to rtds till just now, but i read through some more of your (and downloads') very helpful insight. so between what you've said and this:

...i think i've decided on the netgear n750. i like the idea of having 450mbps on the 5ghz band all to myself. if i can confirm that the 3700 is v2 in store and it's $15-20 cheaper, i may go with that instead. but i've narrowed it down to those two with a stronger lean toward the 4000. thanks, tijo! rep'd.

 

From what i learnt .. the WNDR 3800 is almost the same as WNDR 3700v2 (hope someone can confirm that) ... with the cloud thing which may or maynot be useful.

 

I have the netgear 3700 v-1 very good , and the Assus rt n 66 even better , much better throughput and signal reaches places the 3700 does not . I like the Asus as it has any more features , stronger signal .

 

I have both wndr3700v1 and wndr3700v2, The v2 is more stable than the v1. Both routers are good for opensoruce firmware and easy to recover from bad flash with the recovery mode.