wireless ac

[SparkySamZa]

i was wonder in the Uk good priced AC router since Sky Broadband are hold back and not going 5Ghz and since my Note 3 , Iphone 5c , Ipad 2 , and my new laptop are all 5Ghz compatible what the price will generally be for an AC router? 

 

edit: also if someone would tell me or find a video on the differences that would be smashing!

[AMICLG]

The TP-Link Archer C7 is alright but I'd really go with the Asus RT-AC66U if you can or the Netgear R7000 if you have the money.

[Aniallation]

i was wonder in the Uk good priced AC router since Sky Broadband are hold back and not going 5Ghz and since my Note 3 , Iphone 5c , Ipad 2 , and my new laptop are all 5Ghz compatible what the price will generally be for an AC router? 

Just because a device is 5GHz compatible does not mean that they are AC compatible. 

 

The Note 3 is AC compatible, but the iPhone 5C and iPad 2 are only dual-band Wireless N. However unless you do heavy local file transfer between your Note 3/5C/iPad 2 or with other devices on the network, the extra bandwidth of wireless AC will not provide a speed benefit when using the devices for purely internet access. 

[Razor512]

For 802.11ac, 1 stream (AC433) does 220-240mbit/s under ideal conditions and distance. 2 stream AC (AC867) will do around 500mbit/s, and 3 stream (AC1300) will do around 700mbit/s

 

On smartphones and ARM based tablets, single stream tends to struggle to even get over 100mbit/s, and that is due to the lower end wifi chipsets (designed for low power), Due to the chipset and other bottlenecks, N150 will perform pretty closely to AC433 on a smartphone or tablet.

 

If you are using an x886 based tablet that is essentially an ultrabook without the keyboard, then you will get a much bigger benefit from 802.11ac.

 

The main benefit of 802.11ac over 802.11n, is that it adds 256QAM modulation, the issue is that 256QAM modulation requires you to be very close (pretty much the same room as the router), Once it drops from that, performance drops to more of what you would expect from 802.11n (though with some improvements to implicit and explicit beamforming, 802.11ac can often maintain more speed at distance than with older 802.11n chipsets.

 

One thing to consider, especially with devices like the netgear R7000, these routers use a higher transmit power in order to achieve higher download speeds at a distance, the tradeoff is that if you are very close, you will get receiver overload and lose performance (generally within around 4 feet (1.2 meters) of the router will cause a slowdown for most mobile devices.

 

A good link for more info on recommended routers is http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/rankers/router/view