Hi, I'm helping a friend build his home network, in particular I'm helping to connect his house with his parent's house that is in direct line of sight using a pair of point to point transmitters, and I need to find a router for his parents.
His parents definitely don't need anything too powerful, from an hardware standpoint I just need something with at least 3 Ethernet ports (1Gbps is fine) and WiFi-5 with decent coverage.
The biggest issue however is the aesthetics, since the router needs to be positioned in a very visible position it needs to pass the mom approval test
Ideally it should be:
Not too big
Possibly not bright (unfortunately so many devices are shiny white, which is very unfortunate)
Not something with antennas or that looks like a giant spider.
Not expensive, again I wanna stress out they're not power user nor need super fast LAN speeds, just something that reliably connects the computers to the net.
Just to give a better idea of what I'm looking for, I think that a black Fritzbox 7530 would be ideal (you can find them with that color from Eolo, a local provider) because it's low profile and I know from experience that the WiFI coverage is very good, but they're branded and I'm not super keen on getting one because the debranding and install process might be a bit finicky.
Do you know of other models with similar characteristics? One of those "tower" router that usually are part of mesh systems might also be interesting, after all they're still quite sober.
Cudy M3000 is a table-top cylinder style (internal antennas) which is mostly subdued black except someone thought it a good idea to put bright red trim on the top.
They are not expensive but seem to only be sold in sets of two or three identical units for mesh use.
