I have used about 4 different home routers in my time from various brands: D-Link, TP-link and Mikrotik.
So far the most cost effective for the feature set is the mikrotik hap ac2. Currently it is R600 on takealot. Although even at R1000 I think it kills the competition.
Note: This router is for fibre connections you cannot use it with a LTE sim card. If you have a telkom sim I would recommend the Wireless Dual band TP-Link AC750
Reasons
Why is it superior?
- Strong Wifi signal strength and Wifi coverage: a very important attribute these days. You don’t need to get wifi extenders. It uses a 20W power supply, many other routers are 10W.- I think this is the reason the wifi coverage and signal strength is stronger. Radius is about 20m with walls in between.
- Deals with congestion better – automatic priority seems to be given and some devices never dominate the network.
- You can install openwrt on it
- Detailed information is available for deep dives into how the router works
Negatives:
- RouterOS (mikrotik routerboard operating system): Interface is not as intuitive as others…a bit of network experience is required.