Archer C7 2.0, pretty effort for less bucks. Strong 6 antenna machine for 2.5/5Ghz wifi that have amplifier chips to reach desired output. 3 antennas for 5Ghz can be replaced with 8dbi booster. Full compatible to openwrt/lede and runs around 4 Watts and 1Watt idle power consumption.
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What do you think of the TP-Link Talon AD7200, the D-Link AC5300 Ultra Wi-Fi Router (DIR-895L/R), and the Asus RT-AC5300 Wireless AC5300 Tri-Band Gigabit Router?
Probably wrong thread,but since TP Link has removed second RJ45 port on v2 of CPE210 and with that POE passthrough that my organisation uses in all of our AP locations to power multiple CPE210s.
What would you recommend as AP with POE passthrough?
just get a r7800. ipq8065 soc and ath10k wifi.
IIRC the AD7200 was just a C2600 with additional QCA9500 chip and larger flash. I have the C2600 installed now and it's quite powerful for the money. Dual-core 1.4GHz ARM with 512MB RAM & 32MB flash.
Unless you have 802.11ad kit already I would stick with the C2600 or another 802.11ac router until the 802.11ad hardware is more widely available and better priced. The AD7200 costs almost twice as much as the C2600 right now.
Also, 802.11ad makes more sense on hardware with at least 1x10GbE interface. The AD7200 has only gigabit ports (being basically a C2600 + an additional wifi module).
Also its not supported by LEDE yet..
I'd honestly be very surprised to break 110MB/s on 802.11ad. Saw some tests where a laptop could hit 108MB/s download but that was only 2m from the router which seems unrealistic. Even then upload is still only a around 300Mbit. Let's face it, if you move your laptop to be only 2m away from the router you could use a $5 cable instead. 
The article is here: https://arstechnica.co.uk/gadgets/2016/12/802-11ad-wifi-guide-review/
Regarding AD7200 support it looks like there were some commits but the code didn't make it past review (https://github.com/lede-project/source/pull/414).
I would still recommend C2600, range testing is promising especially on 5GHz.
Which of the enthusiast routers do you think has the most stable Wi-fi? Our problem is that the Wi-Fi keeps going down on our router.
I am running a WRT1900ACS V1 with the optional high-gain antennas in a 2K square foot two story house. Works very well on 17.01.2 and .3. I've had to reboot it ONCE (when running 17.01.2) because wireless devices (phones, tablets) could not see the Chromecasts on the wireless, but that's the only problem I've had.
Any recommendations for a router that supports NAS devices like my 24TB Synology over USB + ethernet? Maybe the Netgear R8000? Have had a D-link 890L but in light of stuff like http://www.devttys0.com/2015/04/hacking-the-d-link-dir-890l/ and this whole KRACK insanity I figure now might be a good time to switch to an enthusiast router that I can install LEDE on to ensure I get arguably more reliable security patching, etc on on top of the FLOSS benefits.
WRT1900AC v1 here. I've put OpenWRT on three other routers, and only one is capable of being dubbed "acceptable fallback". This 1900AC, though... it's the last consumer grade router I will probably go with; it's been such a great device that I can't see any other being much better without buying a fully capable server (or -like) machine with pf/opnsense!
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any update about this?
does r7800 is the best and better than the wrt3200acm?
The ZyXEL NBG6817 is also worth checking (similar to the Netgear r7800).
what about wireless performance and stability...
and open source software?
The hardware is very similar to the Netgear r7800 (more onboard flash, no eSATA), pretty much the same advanages and disadvantages apply (the r7800 had a little head start in terms of LEDE support, but two pending pull request will push the nbg6817 roughly to the same level). Except for the ath10k wireless firmware, a problem shared by all 802.11ac routers, the complete firmware is open source. ath10k/ QCA9984 is reported not to be 100% stable in all environments (it has been for me so far), but that's exactly the same issue as for the r7800 - and reports for mvebu/ mwlwifi or mt7621/ mt76 don't sound any better.
so the nbg wifi driver is opensource? ath10 looks more developed...
The ZyXEL NBG6817 router has two QCA9984 wlan cards, both are powered by the opensource ath10k driver in the mainline kernel, but this driver does need to upload a closed source firmware blob into the wlan card (same story with mwlwifi or mt76, except that neither of them are part of the mainline kernel so far). By now ath10k works quite decently on the NBG6817/ QCA9984.
another question currently we have no opensource wifi that support ac right?
anyway in the performance part... they should be the same except the lack of esata port (that IMHO is better supported than usb3.0 port)
Opensource kernel driver, yes (ath10k, brcmfmac, mt76, mwlwifi).
Opensource firmware, no (mt76 is the only one which uses a relatively small firmware, the other drivers do most of their connection handling in firmware).
I Have 17.01.4 running on a WRT1900ACS v2 and it is rock solid and has good range on 2.4Ghz wifi. Most of my devices don't have 5ghz, but my wife has a macbook pro and it connects and isn't noticeably slow. I don't think overall the wifi speed is particularly fast, but it does support something like 12 devices and two WDS stations on 5ghz that act as a wireless backhaul for 2 other older TP link devices that extend my range into front and back yards.
My requirements are not really that it be super fast, but it can't be flaky. Also I use a fair amount of VOIP calling, and it definitely improved that over the ancient buffalo router it replaced (circa 2011 era or something).
All that being said, can someone recommend other rock-solid well supported devices that can be flashed from factory web console or via easy TFTP procedure without opening the case, or plugging a USB stick and running magic dd commands and stay up for weeks at a time with 20 devices on one or another band no real problems?