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Comment by specialist | Hacker News Reader

I switched to AirPorts because they're plug and forget. I just want something that works with my other Apple gear. Doubly so when I'm doing tech support for friends and family.

$200 is reasonable, compared to all the time I've spent farting with other brands of WiFi routers, including whatever piece of crap my ISP sent me. Now what's the no-brainer WiFi router choice? ASUS something, Ubiquity (sp?)? Read some reviews, order what seems the best, marvel at the weird new mutant feature set... Oops, that's another afternoon wasted.

Oh darn, my offbrand WiFi router had another security exploit, 6 months ago, and I just found out. And so forth.

Hopefully the silver lining is Apple is anticipating metro WiFi (WiMax?), though I wish they were helping drive that transition. Like I had hoped Google was... Oh well.

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Google OnHub, or the newer google wifi are basically plug and forget.

The speed and coverage is also fantastic from my experience.

Aren't they only configurable with a phone app? That's a deal breaker for me.

Ubiquiti is great. They also now have a consumer product, a mesh networking router/wireless AP that's plug-and-forget. https://www.amplifi.com

> Now what's the no-brainer WiFi router choice? ASUS something, Ubiquity (sp?)? Read some reviews, order what seems the best, marvel at the weird new mutant feature set... Oops, that's another afternoon wasted.

Ubiquity. Or in general: stay away from consumer-grade network equipment.

The irony is the Airport Extreme performs better than the equivalent Ubi AP.

Airport is amazing for consistent throughput and reliability.

It really is; I'm going to go buy one as a backup. I purchased the original first gen time capsule, and it ran for over two years straight without even rebooting the damn thing. Short of a hardware malfunction (which is exceedingly rare in my troubleshooting experience, but power surges happen..) they just work.

> The irony is the Airport Extreme performs better than the equivalent Ubi AP.

Consumer-grade routers usually are faster. What they are not is more reliable, or easy to use/manage.

My Airport Extreme goes YEARS without me touching it. It took me a couple minutes to set up. I very much doubt that Ubi's ease of management or use is superior. Equal? Maybe. Superior? Nah.

Have you ever set one up? They are insanely easy to manage and use. Superior? Likely. Ubiquity has amazing software. I set up 2 edge routers recently, they never need to be restarted. Also, the newer firmware has really good setup wizards for the basics. Almost impossible to screw up.

I've had significant issues with both Uniquity and Apple APs, so I wouldn't necessarily say that one is that much better than the other.

We switched from the wirecutter's recommended AC router back to an older AirPort Extreme and everything got better immediately. I won't miss Apple's monitors because they cost way too much for what they offered, but Apple has been doing wireless right since they brought out the first airport (a friend of mine worked at Lucent at the time and they were excited that someone had finally shipped a usable implementation of their technology)

Ars Technica's article basically says good riddance, but if you go back to their original review observed that the AirPort Extreme crushes all competing routers on both ease of use and performance.

How about Eero?

I agree! I have older airport express and airport basestations that have been running for years. I update the software every so often, but other than that never look at them. They truly just work.

I may look into the new google APs, so I can get the latest wireless speeds across the house.

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