Which hard wired router?

[Iroczinoz]

Hi all, I was set on buying the ubiquiti edge router 12 for my home until I read the review here. I am wanting a rock solid fast wired router. I will then use my r7000 with merlin firmware to support the wifi devices I have.

What is a better alternative to the edge router 12? While having a user interface that is easy to work with. I liked the idea of the 12 ports so I can directly plug in all my devices without the need for a switch. If I had to buy a router with less ports are most of the gigabit ethernet switches pretty much the same? My boys are complaining during gaming they will drop internet connection which I think my r7000 is the culprit as I also log into a vpn server. So the plan is to seperate the networks.

Or maybe I am over thinking this and the edge router will be fine? Just that I read firmware is not being updated?

What about a consumer router with wifi disabled will it beat the edge router in stability and speed? Something like the as rt-ax86?

 

[zer0sum]

They are solid little devices with easy gui based management, and hard to beat for value.
The ER4, ER6P, and ER12 all use the exact same SOC, at the same clocks, with the same amount of ram.
You just choose the one that meets your needs for ports and PoE

Personally I always use separate devices for routing, switching, and wifi.
Then if you ever need to you can upgrade any of them individually to something faster

 

[sko]

I'm running a ER4 with OpenBSD at home. It works, provides decent enough speeed and draws very little power. Never touched the UBNT-Software, so I have no idea how good/bad it is...
Beware that UBNT still does non-standard-PoE on a lot of devices - if you need PoE get a switch that provides standards-compliant PoE or you are forced to stay in the UBNT-ecosystem (and their cloudy ad-platform that has some management features...).

I fully support @zer0sum's statement about separating switching and routing. As for consumer hardware or that Netgear AP/router-thingy: yes, this stuff mostly works for the average home user, but in terms of performance and reliability they are still several magnitudes below any proper networking gear.
Enterprise 802.11ac "wave 1" hardware, which is more than sufficient for SOHO-use, is widely available now for very low prices; e.g. Cisco 2702i for ~50EUR and even 3500 and 3600 series often appear dirt-cheap at ebay.
I've recently got some Allied Telesis AT-TQ4600 APs for 50EUR each to replace some old b/g/n ciscos which were 'old' but would still beat the crap out of any plastic-wlan-router-thingy in terms of signal strenght and -stability.

 

[BoredSysadmin]

Another voice for separating router/switch/wifi. Getting all-in-one devices like ASUS rt-ax86 is only decent for smaller apartments. Otherwise, you pretty much must look into getting a separate wifi solution.
As for specific router recommendations, you at least should tell us what's your current internet provider plan (or if you plan in short term to upgrade it) and the second part - do you expect to use VPN functionality and do you have any speed expectations from it.