I've had netgear nighthawk etc devices and never found the range any better than a bog standard Homehub.

If you want better range just an extra AP and link it via Ethernet. This is where a lot of disappointment lies as users expect double the range or something crazy.

The functionality of these expensive devices is certainly better though.

In reply to a post by jaydub:

Interesting how even decent routers seem to get similarly poor reviews on Amazon.

I think even the best routers will get poor reviews if the user has no idea on how to set them up correctly e.g. Placing them next to a microwave, not using the latest fw, not selecting wifi channels manually especially in a congested environment, etc. Nevertheless there are some absolutely rubbish routers out there (eg the notorious Asus DSL-68U) but as long as the router has mature fw, uses new-ish Broadcom/Lantiq/Qualcomm chipsets then you won't have many issues. Stay away from routers which use Quantenna or Mediatek chipsets!

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

In reply to a post by jaydub:

Interesting how even decent routers seem to get similarly poor reviews on Amazon.

Nevertheless there are some absolutely rubbish routers out there (eg the notorious Asus DSL-68U)

Which is very annoying since the RT-AC68U is actually a rather good router (when asus got around to patching the wide open security vulnerabilities

In reply to a post by NBK:

Which is very annoying since the RT-AC68U is actually a rather good router (when asus got around to patching the wide open security vulnerabilities

Indeed, the RT-AC68U is an excellent standalone router and is probably Asus' best selling model in recent times. You may want to go for a 2 box solution (I prefer this) by getting a RT-AC68U and hooking this up to an Openreach HG612 vdsl2 modem (buy an unlocked 3B version on ebay) and you'll have a rock solid setup.

Right an update on this...finally...
I got a 3B HG612 pretty cheap (brand new) and hooked it up to my old Billion 7800N as a test, no stability issues at all with the line with that. That was after my father FINALLY getting annoyed enough with the BT Smart Hub to want to do something about it. Which was rebooting daily and sometimes when it rebooted itself it rebooted itself a couple more times before it decided it was stable, truly awful.

So I've picked up a TP-Link VR900 v1 - Why not get the better RT-AC68U? Because I wanted something with a DSL modem in as a backup in case the Huawei and this was the only affordable and viable solution.

Why do I say the AC68U is better?
Well for starters the VR900 runs rather warm.
It's got 1 less ethernet port when using it in WIreless Router mode due to the need for port 4 for the connection to the modem (although I suppose the DSL-AC68U has that issue, too).
The setup had me scratching my head as to why it wasnt connection, then i realised the initial setup is strictly Modem Router mode and you need to change the operating mode AFTER setup to get it working with ethernet 4 as WAN.
The firmware is just lacking compared to Asus. You can't change the names of connected devices (when you have 8 android devices connecting things can get confusing), there's no firewall log, the system log is poor at best, it doesnt show system or connection uptime so you have to try and guess if it's dropped from the router log.
I think the wifi range is better on Asus models to be honest.

Considering it's £100-120 which can rival the asus devices depending on sales/current pricing you'd expect more but hey ho...hopefully it will last a long time and the heat won't be an issue.

(I chose the v1 over the v2 because i couldnt find any info at all on the v2, reviews etc, and a standing up router is actually preferred for where it is so...)

It's perfectly normal for a router to get warm, my Netgear R9000 gets quite warm and now and again its fans start spinning into action. Though I guess the R9000 having a 1.7ghz quad core Annapurna cpu doesn't help matters

Yeah the VR900 only has a 1ghz dual core broadcom CPU So it really does get quite hot for what it is.
I forgot to mention, I'm gonna run the VR900 in DSL modem mode for a week or two to make sure it's stable on the DSL (the modem leads they supply are really short though!)...telnet stats sort of tell you DSL uptime so i should be able to see if there's any drops in connection. Decided I better test this when checking amazon reviews and people having connection issues and drops etc, better to be safe than sorry.

How is the VR900 working out for you? I've picked up a Smart Hub and set it up last night to run for a week or so to see how it performs but will consider a TP_Link as a replacement.