Wireless router selection help

[Jynx]

I've been testing wireless routers the past few days and need some help selecting the best option not just for today but into the future as well.

 

Some info:

2 story home.

Multiple 5ghz cell phones.

Multiple game consoles.

Smart TV's.

 

The 3 I'm testing now are the Linksys EA9500, ASUS AC3100, ASUS AC3200

 

I absolutely love the Asus interface, compared to any of the other's I've tested its the best.  I honestly don't know a lot about wifi networking, just enough to be dangerous I suppose.  Should I keep the Linksys beast with tri band 4x4 (albeit with maybe 5 clickable options within the router ?)  The Asus 3200 with tri-band 3x3 (older hardware) or the Asus 3100 dual band 4x4?  How important is it that I hang on to tri band vs dual band?  And is 4x4 dual band a better option that 3x3 tri band?

[TSM_RX7]

Linksys AC1900 Dual Band Open Source WiFi Wireless Router (WRT1900ACS)

[Jynx]

I'd rather stay above AC1900.  Forgot to mention I also have Gigabit Fiber to the home.

[Jynx]

I think my bigger concern is Tri band vs Dual band and 3x3 vs 4x4 and which combination of the 2 is the better option for my setup.

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, Jynx said:

I think my bigger concern is Tri band vs Dual band and 3x3 vs 4x4 and which combination of the 2 is the better option for my setup.

I would say dual band with 4x4 is going to provide you better experiences overall compared to tri-band 3x3.

If I remember my wireless correctly then the dual band 4x4 will provide 4 devices with a single 1x1 band or 2 devices with dual-band 2x2 connectivity or even a single 3x1 device with a band and a 1x1 device without issue. In theory the 3x3 router could serve 3 1x1 clients as well but might provide less gain and throughput with multiple devices connecting at once compared to the 4x4 router.

[Jynx]

1 hour ago, Lurick said:

I would say dual band with 4x4 is going to provide you better experiences overall compared to tri-band 3x3.

If I remember my wireless correctly then the dual band 4x4 will provide 4 devices with a single 1x1 band or 2 devices with dual-band 2x2 connectivity or even a single 3x1 device with a band and a 1x1 device without issue. In theory the 3x3 router could serve 3 1x1 clients as well but might provide less gain and throughput with multiple devices connecting at once compared to the 4x4 router.

Do you think a Tri band 4x4 is going to be much more beneficial than a Dual band 4x4?

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, Jynx said:

Do you think a Tri band 4x4 is going to be much more beneficial than a Dual band 4x4?

I would say not really. Probably 95% of devices today aren't even dual band capable and of those that are probably 1% are tri-band capable.

[Jynx]

1 minute ago, Lurick said:

I would say not really. Probably 95% of devices today aren't even dual band capable and of those that are probably 1% are tri-band capable.

Well in this case the tri band would be for load balancing, have a few devices on one 5ghz band, a few more on the other 5ghz band and then the slower g/n devices on the 2.4ghz band.

[Lurick]

5 minutes ago, Jynx said:

Well in this case the tri band would be for load balancing, have a few devices on one 5ghz band, a few more on the other 5ghz band and then the slower g/n devices on the 2.4ghz band.

Tri-band is just for devices that can do 3x3 MIMO, the dual-band 4x4 band would provide better experience overall since you would have devices balanced across 4 bands and if there are some that can do 2x2 MIMO then they can use dual band.

 

See corrections below.

[Jynx]

No tri band gives you 3 SSID's.  2.4ghz 5ghz-1 5ghz-2.  regardless of MIMO.  I can put the kids cells on 5Ghz-1 and mine and my wifes on 5Ghz-2 rather than having them all on a single 5ghz.  Then the Xbox and ps4 on the 2.4ghz band.

[Lurick]

1 minute ago, Jynx said:

No tri band gives you 3 SSID's.  2.4ghz 5ghz-1 5ghz 2.  regardless of MIMO.  I can put the kids cells on 5Ghz-1 and mine and my wifes on 5Ghz-2 rather than having them all on a single 5ghz.  

Yah, I was getting terms confused and was about to correct my above post

If you can get a tri-band 4x4 over a dual-band 4x4 then go with that.

[Jynx]

No worries.  So I wonder if having the 2 5ghz vs the 1 5ghz is much more beneficial, how many devices is too many on 1 5ghz. 

[Lurick]

3 minutes ago, Jynx said:

No worries.  So I wonder if having the 2 5ghz vs the 1 5ghz is much more beneficial, how many devices is too many on 1 5ghz. 

Depends on how often they talk and the applications needs. If they are all talking roughly same amount of time and need a good amount of bandwidth then I would say probably about 10 devices is where you start getting noticeable slowdowns in performance but if there isn't much need for high performance (ie IOT devices) then you could probably do 20 to 30 before things might have issues. If you have a lot of devices that just need to be used in different intervals of time then you could probably go even higher such as you have the TV on streaming at night but the phones doing stuff during the day.