Ask HN: The Heartbreak of Commodity WAPs

I've largely avoided short-lived Wireless Access Points by spending enough money on hardware that had a good reputation (Apple Airport equipment for the better part of a decade, and now Netgear ORBI stuff).

I found a number of cheap Linksys, WiFi Pineapple, and now an AliExpress WAP of questionable origin to fail in ways that are _just_ goofy enough as to make me question my geek cred and troubleshooting skills. Like they work, but then fail slowly, or reboot and are quick and the GUI is snappy...then the next morning a device on the network can't talk to another device on the network.

So what do you use to conclusively say: This thing is broken, I can dispose of it without any niggling concerns that I'm just a firmware update away from fixing it?