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.