As others have said stay away from Asus modem routers, due to Asus using the notorious Mediatek modem chipset - they make very good standalone routers though.

The TP Link VR900 & Netgear D6400 are both very good options but if you want the very best wifi coverage then you should be using a 4 stream Mu-Mimo wifi router or access point. The Netgear D7800, Billion 8900AX & TP Link VR2600 are currently the best modem/routers around (all are 4 stream) but are out of your budget, they're > £200. However the Netgear R7800 (modem-less version of D7800) is a superb bit of kit at £169, it uses the latest QCA radios and you would need to put your existing TalkTalk router into bridge mode in order to use its modem connected to the R7800. Once you install DD-WRT firmware on your R7800 (an absolute doddle) then you can tweak your router's radios even more to give you the optimum range - obviously you should stick to the local wifi power regulations .

https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-R7800-100UKS-Nighth...

http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=289788

Edited by deleted (Sun 26-Feb-17 10:36:31)

Thanks for the suggestions!!

I have dug out an old but fairly good TP Link WDR3600 thats running DD-WRT Firmware I forgot I had. I was looking at some old routers I got laying about to test out and found this. It used to be a Sam Knows Monitoring thingy I got from them many years ago and after the 1 year it was mine to keep so I put on DD-WRT. Messed with it a bit but did not need it at the time.

With the HG533, in the same room I would get around 2-3MB download speed from it.

The TP Link is 8-9MB.. so max speed of my internet connection!

Up stairs its not so great but works better than the HG533 did. I have a WiFi extender to sort that out.

Hmm!! the plot thickens. The TP link is not AC WiFi mind but only a few devices in the house are and don't really need that kind of speed I guess

This was what I wanted to suggest while I was reading this topic but I see you figured it out yourself.
The good practice would be to use one Wi-Fi emitting box per floor, be it an extender, an AP or an old router. YouTube is full of clips on how to reuse your old router as a signal extender. I can't understand the people happy to spend £300 on a new box with super powerful Wi-Fi if you could use two boxes you already have, and spend nothing!
And it wouldn't really matter if your main router, in this case TP-Link, doesn't support Wi-Fi ac band, you could put an ac-capable box as a repeater for one floor only.
You mentioned having a BT Hub if I'm not mistaken - which generation is it? If it's 5 or above, it'll have ac Wi-Fi and they all have red WAN port so you could set it up as just a signal extender.

Edited by deleted (Sun 26-Feb-17 12:17:26)

In reply to a post by Mml:

And it wouldn't really matter if your main router, in this case TP-Link, doesn't support Wi-Fi ac band, you could put an ac-capable box as a repeater for one floor only.
You mentioned having a BT Hub if I'm not mistaken - which generation is it? If it's 5 or above, it'll have ac Wi-Fi and they all have red WAN port so you could set it up as just a signal extender.

My wifi extender is AC so that picks up the N from the TP link and "repeats" it but on AC.

I do not have a BT HH. Only a BT OR Modem. Witch, if the TP link router does well with wifi over the next few days, I will connect the OR Modem to its wan port and scrap the Talk Talk HG533.

I still have the newer super hub that does have AC Wifi and if needed I could set that up as an AP.

In reply to a post by jaydub:

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

Regarding 2.4ghz choose either channel 1 6 or 11. Never choose a channel such as channel 3. If you need info why I can provide links later. Also only use 20mhz on 2.4ghz

I've seen this posted before, but never really understood why, so would appreciate you posting the links.

You may find this useful regarding selecting channels and the reasons why

http://www.metageek.com/training/resources/design-du...

Here is the reality of an AP on channel 1, 6 and 11. See they use more than just 1 channel.
http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/0...

Good link also:
http://www.metageek.com/training/resources/why-chann...

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 26-Feb-17 16:25:00)

Presumably you are aware that your router will negotiate a speed (b,g,n) with each wireless device?
If you have a "b" (slowest) device connected, all the other wi-fi devices will be dragged down to that speed.

The trick is to have two APs. With different SSIDs. Keep one for "g" or "n", t'other for slow devices.

Also are not microwave ovens, Bluetooth, cordless phones and video repeaters on the same frequency?

Meanwhile wired connections are 100 Mb max.
HTH

Wired connections are most often limited to 1000 Mbps these days, i.e. Gigabit interfaces

Most APs can have a mix of B, N and AC clients connected with minimal slowdown now.

The only thing that drags everything's speeds down is typically b clients but not always.