Nighthawk XR500 dropping connections constantly after only 3 days

So I bought the Netgear Nighthawk XR500 after my 5 year old R7000 was broken during a domestic situation (it was still running strong) so I was given money to replace it. I ended up buying the XR500 and loved the dumaOS and everything for the 3 days it worked as great if not better than my R7000(AC1900) (had to move because domestic dispute was dad's girlfriend attacking me, and he's staying with her) so I can't use the same connection to compare. On the 4th day it started dropping both 5g and 2g connections randomly, and then on the 5th day it was dropping connections every 5 minutes. I saw the 5G band wasn't sending out any internet (maybe .25 mbs when I averaged 240) so I disabled the autoconnect for which band a device gets assigned to and changed everything to 2G. Worked fine for about 12 hours and then same thing, no internet. For the past week I've had to revert to the router the internet company gave me (4.5x slower) and it hasn't dropped at all. I'm a college student graduating in May and cannot afford all of these disconnections. I haven't done a factory reset or anything since changing back to the old router and I submitted a ticket as well, but figured I'd ask the community. I've also noticed amazon only sells like new returns of this router so I'm assuming it's a known problem? Any help is appreciated. I have downloaded a wifi analyzer app, but have not attempted using it yet since I wanted to get advice from those who know more than me. Looking for all recommendations of things to try/if it's been proven as a problem router so I can return it (bought new directly from netgear)/known fixes/or better routers for same price. My overall preference would be to keep this router and have it work correctly, but it is what it is. I also know of the future dumaOS 3.0 update, and that may be the fix all of everything, but waiting for an unannounced/unproven firmware update isn't my answer. Thanks in advance for any help!