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XR500 vs. XR450, which do I purchase?
Looking for a new router for my new home, the R7000 I had from 2015 was just not doing the job (range issues, random drops, etc.). I am currently looking at the XR500 and XR450. I have done some r...
- Turns out the update I had for the R7000 had issues, it could be solved by downgrading.
I did still get the XR450 though, as I figured this out after. The router was getting old anyways.
Plaster lathe does a great job of blocking wifi signals. You'll more than likely have issues regardless of what router you choose. Even a mesh setup might struggle a bit with its wireless backhaul. Any chance you have coax (for a moca adapter) or ethernet ran through your house? If so you can use that for a wired backhaul and end up with much better coverage.
Here's a thead that asked that same question that goes over the fact that it does come down to basically the 2.4ghz radio speed and that the xr450 is mainly sold at costco.
I ran a speed test in the furthest room from the router, which ran around 10/5 down/up- through many walls of plaster. The room is only used for streaming Spectrum TV, and occasionally using a mobile device. So, the plaster is not too much of an issue. Shouldn't the signal be better since the XR series has newer hardware, compared to the R7000 I currently have- even it I still face the plaster issue?
Though, I do have coax running throughout the house, so I would be able to use MoCA. Unfortunately there is none running in the room that I tested. However, I would be required to get a modem that supports MoCA. I believe and that may be difficult because I am unsure of any Spectrum approved modems that support it.
What speeds do you pay for? 10/5 isn't enough to stream 4k and might be enough for 1080p streaming. I say might because some services will lower your 1080 quality to fit your bandwidth and others don't.
When you say the xr devices have better radios, they do. But the wifi broadcast power is still set by the fcc. They can only broadcast with so much power. the newer AX devices have a little more range but that again is just a little more . So you probably won't see much improvement in distance if you're coming from the R7000.
what i'd do is setup a speedtest by distance/walls and plot it out (or just look at it). See how much impact the distance and walls are having on your speeds. Maybe an extender might be a better upgrade than getting a new router or switching to mesh. the only way to know is to do some testing.
I am paying for 200/10 down/up speed. In my room, I get around 150/10 which is a perfect amount for me. The room a floor above the room with 10/5 gets around 60/10, but it is not always that- sometimes it can be a lot less.
From what I've seen, the streaming in the 10/5 room rarely buffers- if it does at all. So, it must be streaming in 1080p. It is a 4k television, but I do not think the Spectrum TV app even supports 4K, so it is not an issue regarding the quality of the stream.