Reminder to take a step back and evaluate what you actually *need*. In my experience, software engineers tend to go overkill and buy the $300-400 prosumer route

Reminder to take a step back and evaluate what you actually *need*. In my experience, software engineers tend to go overkill and buy the $300-400 prosumer routers that doesn't actually give them any tangible benefits over a normal $50-100 router. I live in a shoebox NYC apartment so a potato can give me pretty good service. The potato I picked was the TP-Link Archer A7 for $52 (at the time). My internet speed is ~280/~280 Mbps and I have successfully attained ~440 Mbps transfers speeds between my local file server (hard-wired) and my Macbook (over wifi). So the router is not a bottleneck to the internet from a wifi device. At any given point in time, I have ~15 devices connected to my router and it handles it great. My router supports band steering (i.e. the router and wifi device somehow jointly decide whether the device should be on the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz band) so I get both great coverage and the best possible speeds at any given location in my apartment. I don't see the need (for myself, your needs will vary) to upgrade to a more expensive router.