Airport Extreme & Airport Express

It is time to upgrade my old wifi network consisting of two original Airport Expresses . I understand for ease, convenience and simplicity using the Airport Extreme and Airport Express make sense in an all Apple household, phones and laptops. With an Education discount the costs seem more acceptable.

A couple of questions.
Is it worth considering dipping my tow into non-Apple products?
What other wireless routers should I consider?
Does the ease of setup, monitoring and problem solving an Airport Extreme override other considerations?
Any other considerations?

Thanks for any help.

This may have some bearing: Discontinued?

Thanks for the link. I have been aware of this for some time now, which is partially what prompted concerns about purchasing Apple's routers.

Any further thoughts would be appreciated.

I bought an Airport extreme 5 a few years back on eBay. The thing has been solid ever since. There may be up to 20 devices connected to it at once when we have visitors and it doesn't blip. I even considered buying another when the announcement came for when this one does eventually die.
Before that I had a bt home hub which had to be reset at least one a week and a few netgears which were not as bad as the home hub but still needed to be restarted occasionally. For once in my experience they do just work.