Hi,

Need a slightly better router than the AX10 for my house. My house is L shape (the L on the side-one section 2 floors, the other section is one floor. The wiring for unifi router is located below at the second floor). My room at the end of the L shape, gets 2.4 GHz, but spotty connection. Not responsive for me to Steamlink local steam games like Uncharted. In the same room, or one adjacent room, I can steam steamlink to my phone without any graphic artefacts. Currently my main gaming PC is next to the the TV (sometimes kids want to play lego games). When they want to watch youtube, I use steamlink to play nearby. Works well for me. I only use 100 MB unifi, and it works well for my 27 odd wifi connected devices (3 zoom users), youtube, steam, CCTV, smart switch etc as different users use the bandwidth at different times. I did try a less demanding game, like stumble guys on steam link, but the latency (even though 25ms ping), input lag is terrible. Better to play it on a mobile than steamlink stumble guys.

I did try to relocate the router slightly centre of the L shape, and I get no connection to the second floor. Currently, with this setup I get around 60% strength in the furthest room for 2.4 GHz. The router power is maximum. Placing all antennas vertically got me better reception, but not better speed. I guess from the beamforming. The router needs to penetrate 3 walls before reaching the furthest room.

The only thing for me left to do is to make a wired connection between the PC and the current router. As CCTV, NAS, Unifi wires are all at the same place in the house, moving the router slightly will involve more headache as I need to extend current wires of the NAS, unifi, and CCTV.

Previously, I was using TP Link Deco E4 + unifi Dlink router for the house. The Dlink unifi router is painfully slow to connect to, hence the 2 Deco's. While all other internet uses worked, steamlink (intranet) and NAS were disappointing. Due to the large amounts of data I transfer between PC-NAS locally, connection of other devices. Long periods of heavy file transfer can actually crash the Deco/Unifi router. The AX10 works as it replaced my Deco's and quick to connect to and just enough to cover the interior parts of the house. It does not cover exterior further away and sometimes connecting to smart switch is a problem.

So which router should I get to replace this?
TP Link AX95? ASUS RT-AX86U? I did read the blacktubi articles, but unsure which to get. The router will still be mounted on the wall near the ceiling, so any spider/square fix antennas are not useful as the signal travels omni direction.

or Wait for Wifi 7 router?

AX20 or AX50 or Deco M4.

I use the Asus ax82u can cover whole 2 story house with no blind spot.

This post has been edited by jetblast: Mar 19 2023, 07:30 PM

That's a long post

Anyways, if you want to use Steam Link, forget about 2.4GHz. It's just horrible these days.

And, if you are doing huge file transfer over Wi-Fi and use Steam Link at the same time, your latency will spike as well. It's wireless, airtime is limited, no amount of QoS can fix this.

As for product recommendation, it's really tricky.

I doubt a router can provide 5GHz coverage for your entire property.

Hence, I wanted to recommend a mesh Wi-Fi but their latency are normally quite bad on the mesh node especially when the connection is busy. Some high-end mesh Wi-Fi systems can manage this pretty well.

Choose from either one of them, they are not cheap but these model will be kinda peace-of-mind, problem-free.
- Deco XE75
- Deco X95
- ZenWiFi XT8
- ZenWiFi XT12

This post has been edited by blacktubi: Mar 19 2023, 09:26 PM

u can get a switch to plug in your wired devices, then 1 cable only from switch to connect to your router, so u can relocate your router to where u want.

I see. Back to meh WiFi. How far can 5ghz travel actually?

Never thought of that. Current setup has the whole house covered. Only strength of the connection is an issue

Landed brick wall - 3 walls

Condo metal reinforced concrete wall - Already struggling after 2 walls

High end router will make your life slightly better but not perfect either. Mesh is the way to go if you want good speed.

Wired AP is a solution but not feasible for everyone.

My house was build in 70s-early 80s. After 2 walls, no longer can get 5 ghz, relying on 2.4 GHz. I don't mind not so high distance....neighbours can't get my wifi connection. Wired AP is overkill for m case. For the mesh setup, is it on top of the router or can I replace the router with a router mesh system? My current setup allows wired mesh. I will just unhook the NAS and replace with the Mesh and hook the satellite mesh to the NAS. The only thing which I'm a bit reluctant with Mesh is when I think I damanged my Deco E4 after sustaining transfer between NAS to home PC (after system restore). Also, with the E4, after a lot of high traffic from one device, the device either gets disconnected from the mesh or other devices get disconnected. Even though Tp link website says that E4 can sustain up to 100 devices. My E4 failed at just 25 devices and when one device download/uploads large amount of files either online (say downloading steam games) or intranet (NAS-PC).

I noticed from this review:https://networkshardware.com/routers/reviews/asus-rt-ax86u/ (chart there)


How true is this? If this is useful, then I will just refer to the 25 foot graph then.

AX10 is quite low. From the same website,
AX10 range: 80-90ft
AX55 range: 90-100ft
AX73 range: 100-110ft

How true is this? I noticed on your website, there is the speed difference but the range is not mentioned. Only mentioned by their website, not mentioned on TP link's website.

I also noticed based on the graph and speed of router, there is a quite high difference in price. Asus AX5400 is like almost double the price of the TP link.

linksys one so bad?