Need advice on new WiFi router for under $100.00

I bought the below model and i'm not particularly impressed with it , it costs me $79.99 + tax, i see Amazon has a 750 model for $10.00 more .

NETGEAR N600 Dual Band Wi-Fi Router (WNDR3400)

My computer is a Dell Inspiron running Win 7 sp1 64 bit , just a basic bare bones model really . A tablet running old android is the only other thing thats connects wirelessly and i'm not convinced the dual bands make a difference .

The tablet is still painfully slow and i see no improvement over my old 150 rated speed single band router .

Open to all suggestions

Thanks

I have had a couple of years of good service from my Western Digital N750 Gigabit Dual-Band Wi-Fi Router and it cost about $60. I'm feeding 5 Desktops plus 2 Network printers connected by Ethernet cable with an 8-port Switch and always 2 or 3 Wi-Fi Notebooks. Using WinVista, Win7, Win8.1, Mac OS X and Linux Mint.

jonnyhillow said:

i'm not convinced the dual bands make a difference

As DMHolt57 states, your adapters must support 5ghz. 5 ghz is a short range frequency, i.e., a small 'bubble' of reception. It's advantage is that it minimizes interference. Others can be close by yet not in your 'sphere' of wifi. It also eliminates 2.4ghz interference. Some areas are rife with 2.4ghz signals.

It's beyond the budget you mention, but the Asus RT-N66U is an excellent router.

jonnyhillow said:

i'm not convinced the dual bands make a difference .

The painful truth is that you need to pay on a mid-high end Dual Band router, namely AC1200 router as well as having a device that supports the 802.11ac standard to really see a difference. PCs can be easily upgraded to 802.11ac with a $30 Edimax AC1200 USB adapter but you need to purchase a "high end" tablet/smartphone to get 802.11ac

No 2.4 GHz single band router can achieve this kind of speed:

Thanks guys for the info , yeah this tablet is about 3 years old so i guess your saying it will not work with a new AC type router .

Regarding the adapters for 5 ghz , i don't think the computer has any adapters , are they a USB type of adapter .

Regarding tablet, it'll work with an AC router but it will only connect at N speeds and not at AC speeds. AC routers are backwards compatible so no need to worry about your old devices not getting connected.

As for 5 GHz adapters they're mostly USB 3.0 but they should still work on USB 2.0 ports. Drivers are usually provided but you can easily download from the manufacturer's site.

jonnyhillow said:

My computer is a Dell Inspiron running Win 7 sp1 64 bit , just a basic bare bones model really . A tablet running old android is the only other thing thats connects wirelessly and i'm not convinced the dual bands make a difference .

The tablet is still painfully slow and i see no improvement over my old 150 rated speed single band router .

Open to all suggestions

Thanks

You say the tablet is slow. Does this mean the dell is ok? If this is then the problem is probably with the tablet. Many tablets, especially older ones, only support single band n (and many of them do so very poorly). Changing the router won't help in this case. Also - how are you measuring the speed between the router and the tablet? Connection speed is the maximum theoretical thoughput. In practice you will often get less than half of that.

Other things to consider. Many older tablets have very slow flash, cpus, and gpus, making surfing seem very slow even when the connection is ok.