tp-link routers are consistently the wirecutter consumer pick. They've always done me fine, although it's time to upgrade my 6-year-old one. (which prob demonstrates i'm not a router power user).

I run OPNsense with a collection of Unifi radios (local controller) with great success.

This feels like the painkiller autism thing. Some crazies theory became law

What does this really matter when everyone is running agentic AIs on all of their devices?

Installing "apps" that have access to everything on a device?

Those same "apps" record everything around the device and upload that to the "cloud"?

For the average user, security doesn't even matter any more. I used to say people are running around in plain text mode, but it looks like that has been degraded to broadcast mode.

For example, They will call some device Deco / Archer ABC with a Qualcomm chip that's latest and greatest. They might sell it for 499$ for example and then let reviewers do their thing to review these products everywhere with 5 stars. Great!

Six months or maybe a year down the road when the product starts getting traction as people start buying new WiFi standards like 6/6E/7 etc. they will swap out the chips inside and launch a v2 of that same product with either mediatek chips or a slower Qualcomm SOC. This affects performance and stability and it also drives down the pricing with cheaper hardware.

This has been done a lot with Deco units. Reviews are for original v1 hardware but what's being sold is a different hardware completely. Not only is this a firmware problem but keep in mind such practices really show lack of trust.

Great example of how to lose trust in a brand.