While the above QFT there is a Different between it and reality.
From my extensive personal experience I always take with a Grain of Salt "Smallnetbuilders". I do not doubt their numbers but the Translation of their Benchmarks many time does no translate to Tangible Reality.
From my personal experience I can Not see on End Users Networks the advantages of AC Routers over the Dual Band Top Wireless Routers beyond some minor improvement in Wireless when a Good AC Wireless client is used. I am talking about real performance as oppose to measures that are Not real active measures but are generated by drivers tables)
I might also add that real Wireless performance is pending on SNR (Signal to Noise ratio) and not just Signal strength None Of the Wireless in our Entry Level system really measures the noise.
There is No question that a Ferrari can do in any respect better/more than Fiat 500, but if you live in Midtown Manhattan and you Drive to work to Brooklyn on Rush hour the functional difference between the cars amounts to close to nothing (beside the prestige that One is seen in a Ferrari).
In the last few years there is Many Posts here that Translate into I want a Ferrari but I can/want to pay for Fiat 500. The world does not work this way. I try to adpat to something functional in the Middle that night provide the desired functional solution.
My point though is, the N66u is a very nice 11n router, but in most testing I have seen and in real world use, it is NOT as fast with 11n clients as most 11ac routers are. Not simply a few benchmarks and an EMI chamber, but actual real use. I've compared a WDR3600 directly to an N66u, which is why I have WDR3600's (two, one for router and one for AP, though the router got retired when I got the Archer C8, it'll be repurposed for the garage/outdoor AP to replace an 841nd this coming spring). The performance difference with 2:2 clients was marginal between the two routers (I think the N66u averaged about 5% faster when I averaged my 6 test locations), the power consumption on the N66u was a lot higher and the handful of features it had that the WDR3600 didn't have, aren't something I care about in a router, it and cost roughly 3x the price at the time, so the N66u went back to the store. Now if I had 3 stream clients, the story would undoubtedly be different.
I've done massive testing with my Archer C8 (probably 50+ hrs of testing different channels, channel widths, locations, clients and configuration settings, plus antenna configurations and different antennas) to compare about my WDR3600 (and I have my numbers of the N66u also) and also with clients in 11n and 11ac mode and with pure native 11n clients. The performance differences are tangible, real and noticeable. Granted I don't have performance numbers on 11ac clients in 11n mode with the N66u as I didn't have any 11ac clients at the time, but I think my tests still stand.
11n clients, at least with an Archer C8, perform MUCH better than with even really, really good 11n routers/APs. It is not a placebo effect or something minor. Considering how many others have chimed in that they have experienced similar things, and "testing" by SNB has also backed up this vast treasure trove of "anecdotal" evidence, I think it is pretty safe to say.
Now, I'll grant you there are some real shite 11ac routers out there, but we (or at least I) am not discussing that. The Archer C7 is a cheap, but very good AC1750 router. The R7000 is a cheap, for AC1900, router that is extremely good.
Considering the relative prices, it doesn't make sense to get something (N66u) that will perform worse than either router and costs the same or more.
If it was CHEAPER, there would be a strong argument. Heck, unless you have 11ac clients or need to squeeze the last bit of performance out of your network, I'd suggest the WDR3600 over the Archer C7, N66u or R7000 or just about any other router. For $50, it is darned cheap, can be found open box/used for $30-35 and it performs GREAT for an 11n router. It can take OpenWRT if you ever have the itch.
That said, for $30 more, which is a pitance compared to what most have spent on their client devices, you can get a lot better performance and 11ac ability out of an Archer C7, or $30-80 more on something like a C8, or R7000 or AC66/68u.
That said, since most people are rocking an internet connect that is probably all of 50Mbps or less, and likely don't have much or any NAS that they need to worry about transfering files within their WLAN, or rarely do, $50 on a solid, long ranged and decently performing WDR3600 is probably the way to go (on the far side of my house, through 4 walls and 40ft I can get a solid connection and transfer files at >50Mbps on the WDR3600 and my laptop. >30Mbps on my tablet. Granted, if it were my Archer C8, that would be around >70Mbps on my laptop (in 11n mode) and >40Mbps on my tablet)
Again, we are talking roughly a 20-50% increase in performance with 11n ONLY clients, like my tablet which has a shite dual band 150Mbps adapter in it that caps at around 90Mbps max (SDIO, so 100Mbps limitation, plus I assume some overhead). At medium and longer ranges, the performace connected to my 11ac router is noticably better than with my very, very good 11n router (oh, if curious, I have tested BOTH WDR3600s, just to see if one happened to be a dud at longer range, they performed within 5% of each other in the half dozen locations and a couple of settings changes I tried before I called it a day and said they performed identical). Same goes with my iPhone 5, my wifes iPad 2, her old iPhone 4s, my kids Asus Memo Pad HD7s. Every single "legacy" 802.11n equipped client I have tested has, at least at medium to long range, shown a 20-50+% improvement in performance (some show no gain at short distance, but they were/are generally limited by other things, like internal bus speed to the wifi adapter, in those cases).
I can't really test in a very high interference situation, but artificially creating one by turning my microwave on shows a pretty similar 20% hit to 2.4GHz operation for both the C8 and the WDR3600 if clients are within 10ft of the microwave, which leaves the C8 still performing a lot better than the WDR3600 at the same locations. Testing with MULTIPLE clients simultaneously shows a BIGGER improvement. When streaming video to 2 wifi clients and then initiating two file transfers to two different 11n clients shows a 30-80% increase in multiple client performance instead of a 20-50% increase in performance at medium and long distances...
So I am failing to see how 11ac routers are not in every way superior. The only instance of "driving a ferrari in city traffic" I can see is if your only use case is to connect your wireless clients to the internet and you have a relatively limited WAN connection speed, which granted IS a lot of people (again, back to me recommending the WDR3600 in the case, because cheap, good and few people have 3:3 clients and if they did, their internet connection would again probably be a limitation).
A year ago when all AC1750 routers/APs were really expensive, it made sense to save $50-100 and go with something like the N66u instead, but now that there are a number of 11ac routers that are CHEAPER and they'll provide better 11n performance than the best 11n router, there isn't really a case where I could ever see recommending the N66u over a halfway decent AC1750/AC1900 router. Recommending a cheaper 11n router, sure, but not the N66u.
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