Is my purchase going to be outdated ?

voiha · June 4, 2020

Hey, I've been looking into buying a new router for my parents. As they are not power users and really don't need anything else a good stable Wi-Fi signal that can handle 3-5 devices at once I was looking into the Asus routers and land after some research onto the ASUS RT-AC1200GU. But my concern is if its already outdated or it doesn't really matter that much.
These are the routers that I am contemplating:
edit:
I've added as main this router to the mix: ASUS RT-AC1300G PLUS V2
ASUS RT-AC1200GU (As it has good additional features that the other ones don't have)
Asus RT-AC53 (I don't know if this one is newer than the AC1200GU it lacks some features that 1200 has but has Mimo technology which 1200 don't have)
TP-Link Archer C6

Any help would be appreciated!

Falcon1986 · June 4, 2020

@voiha

What is your budget?
Which wireless router are they using now?
What speeds are they paying for from their ISP?

Alex Atkin UK · June 4, 2020

As WiFi 6 is not finalised yet and WiFi 6e probably wont be for another 18 months, any router right now could "technically" be considered outdated. So if you need to get one, probably not worth worrying about that, its not going to magically stop working.

Donut417 · June 5, 2020

17 hours ago, voiha said:

my concern is if its already outdated or it doesn't really matter that much

In my opinion if the router still does what you need it to do, then its not out dated.

WiFi 5 or wireless AC as its known is a very mature standard. Its been out a while and should be rock solid. Hell Ive seen people post that they are still using Wireless N routers, which is pretty old at this point.

As @Alex Atkin UK posted, WiFi 6 is an emerging standard. Its not 100% finalized. Hell not sure what's happening in your corner of the world, but here in the US the FCC is looking to add 6GHZ to WiFi and WiFi 6 is probably going to have 6 Ghz added to the spec. My opinion is this, wait for the WIFi standard to mature before buying in to it. No reason to pay early adopter pricing for a product that isn't finished. Id say in a year maybe 2 WIFi 6 will be something id consider buying. As it stands I think Wireless AC was out for at least 2 or 3 years before I bought an AC router.