I've had the WNDR3700 v1 for many years, and ever since installing OpenWRT (or really Gargoyle back then) it has been rock solid, including now even with the latest LEDE release (in fact wifi got a bit faster!). But a family member's router is dying so my plan is to give them the WNDR3700, then get a new router myself.
Having done a good amount of reading on here, there doesn't seem to be an easy choice on a high-performance router that doesn't have some sort of flaw at the moment. Given that, here are my likely choices, hoping to hear feedback on which you'd chose and why.
Netgear R7800
This would be my top choice, except it seems there are issues with wifi crashing and slow 2.4Ghz wifi. Also the ath10k seems to not be as open as the MediaTek devices.
That said, Netgear sells a ton of these (just look at how many reviews there are on Amazon) and I can see they are popular on this forum. I'm sure I've benefitted from the popularity of the WNDR3700 all these years, and this seems on track to be another hit like that.
Is there pretty high confidence the wifi issues will be fixable? Obviously no one can see the future, so I am just looking for likelihood.
Zyxel NBG6817
Seems it's highly similar to the R7800, except it seems almost no one that has it (there are 40 reviews on Amazon, compared with the thousands for the R7800) or at least that gives feedback on how well it works with LEDE. On Amazon it's also $30 cheaper than the R7800.
TP-Link Archer C7 V2
I set two of these up for other people since it seemed well-supported, decent with performance, and relatively cheap. But I was unable to get SQM working without tanking download speeds. Others have had issues with SQM as well it seems (high latency).
Dlink DIR-860L Rev B
This one is intriguing due to the low cost, high performance, and most open drivers, but it seems there are issues with SQM that cause crashes, it's end-of-life, and getting the right revision looks to be quite challenging. I'd be concerned about development dropping off down the line due to availability issues.
Storylink SAP-G3200U3
Seems pretty similar to the Dlink, and ironically it seems at least at this point I can get it more reliably in the US even though it's a Korean router. But again it's clearly not very popular in the LEDE community.
PCEngines APU2
This would probably be the most powerful, but I assume that means it would consume more power, plus it seems to be more difficult to set up and install, not to mention the most expensive after all the pieces are purchased. Also it looked like you could only have one wifi card, unless you resorted to adding a USB device or used a separate AP. On the other hand, it's modular and x86 so if I wanted to try Linux or PFSense at some point I assume I could do that.
All that said, any recommendations? Is anything I noted above wrong or outdated at this point? I am looking for basically the next WNDR3700: well supported, popular, and reliable through the years, just more powerful.