Router for Audio Streaming

@nmolnar , thank you for this!  Duly noted!

My Netgear is from late 2018, and just got its firmware update.  It has been and is performing fine.  Our house is not very big and we do not experience drops while roaming around with mobile devices, but my focus is audio performance.

I still have on my hands the sealed TP-Link X60 3-pack mesh system which I'm about to return in the interest of cashflow...  Do you think I should bite the bullet and install it now, postpone for a year or two, and/or in any case steer clear from TP-Link?

Thanks!

I would install it now. There is a difference in technology between functionally and technically obsolescence. Hardware can still work but does not have the benefits (performance & security) of the rapidly advancing underlying technology. I suggest you compare the specs of your old router to the new one. If you bought the TP-Link X60 3-pack mesh system from Amazon and its within its return window, try it out being careful to keep all of the box and packings in case you wish to return it. 

@nmolnar , thank you.  I'm inclined to follow your advice.  Will report outcome.

Personally, I'd take a pass on the X60 if you're getting good coverage with your existing router.

We've got a mesh system in our house (ASUS XT8). The WAN port is in the basement and now that my wife works from home, she needs to have a better signal on the second floor. We also have a combiner box for our solar system on an outside wall that was sometimes dropping connection when there was only a single access point.

It looks like the X60 doesn't have a dedicated wireless backhaul. That means the mesh nodes will have to contend with devices for bandwidth back to the main access point if you don't want to run Ethernet cabling between the nodes. You might want to consider a product that has this feature, sometimes advertised as 'tri-band mesh'.

The good news is that even if your router stops being officially supported by Netgear, you have the option of installing DD-WRT, an open source Linux-based firmware. ASUS sometimes even takes features from DD-WRT to use in their official firmware releases.

@yage , thanks! I am really trying to avoid running ethernet wires -- no easy way to do it in this house cleanly and cheaply. Maybe a mesh system is an overkill in our situation? There is one line I ran from the router (ground floor) to my wife’s office upstairs. All other devices are fine accessing the router via wifi.

Per @nmolnar ’s advice I might be inclined to update to a newer tech router but do not want to create new issues where there are none at present...