Router advice needed

[Thnok]

Hello, I'm trying to find a budget router for $100 or less on Amazon.

 

After hours of research I narrowed down to,

• Nighthawk - R6700 Model (AC1700/AC2100)
• Asus - RT-ARCH17
• Asus - RT-AC66U B1
• TP-Link Archer C9
• TP-Link Archer A7

Which would you recommend? This is for a house of 900ft and VPN + USB Port is required as I intend to plugin an external drive. Also streaming is a requirement. But open to any other recommendations from Linksys or DLink.

 

Thank you 

[bitsandpieces]

The ASUS RT-AC66U_B1 (2 core Broadcom CPU) is a bit older than RT-ACRH17 (4 cores Qualcom CPU) but has support by Asuswrt-Merlin custom firmware project

[Thnok]

11 minutes ago, bitsandpieces said:

The ASUS RT-AC66U_B1 (2 core Broadcom CPU) is a bit older than RT-ACRH17 (4 cores Qualcom CPU) but has support by Asuswrt-Merlin custom firmware project

Are the TP-Link models that bad?

[bitsandpieces]

40 minutes ago, Thnok said:

Are the TP-Link models that bad?

I do not know

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, Thnok said:

Are the TP-Link models that bad?

Ive setup the Archer C7 from TPlink its firmware lacked some of the advanced features and polish. BUT the router itself was fairly fast and had decent range. 

[Onoria]

If you are looking at Netgear then I would say to go for a R7000 instead of the R6700. Its a small difference in price (<$20) but IMO its a much more solid router.

 

I have no experience with recent TP-Link or ASUS routers, but I've had bad experiences with older (circa 2010) TP-Link routers.