Hands down the most informative site on the topic: https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html#routers

I have a simple Ubiquiti setup at home, with a security gateway and 2 wireless APs. It's worked flawlessly for 2 years.

I got tired of the performance and inconsistency of my 'high end' residential setup and recently bought/installed a DreamMachine. Already had a Unifi nanoHD AP, and added one more to the opposite side of the house. This setup has been running for a couple months, but so far has been the most consistent and reliable setup we've had. Good management and security tools, decent UI/UX for the controller. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, and wish I went with this (or similar) setup a long time ago. It costs more than what a residential setup costs, but not more than the 3 or 4 setups I've tried over the last 4 years. If you can swing the higher entry price, I feel that it's worth it. It's simply a superior experience in every way for us (meaning: there is no experience for the household - things work and I don't have to fuss with it unless I want to).

Absolutely recommend this too. You can also buy an edgerouter from Ubiquiti for maybe $50 for the gateway/routing/switching, and then spread a couple of the Unifi access points around your house for the WiFi. I did that since I balked a bit at the cost of the dream machine. This would be way more powerful (the edgerouter has a lot of advanced features) and reliable (access points in high use areas) than a high-end consumer WiFi router at the same cost. And the mobile apps + dashboard are super nice.

What is it about wireless routers that makes them stop working correctly after about two years? That has been my experience. I feel like an old laptop doing the same job would last longer.

Yes, I learned it is best to avoid any crapware with completely closed down firmware which doesn't get more updates after year or two. I still use 10 years old Tp-link wifi 300Mbps router on Openwrt/LUCI to cover my house upstairs. Now I am in a search of router/AP for downstairs to replace crappy ISP's one. My criteria: 8 LAN ports and OpenWRT compatible for another decade.

I've had better luck since only buying ones with good OpenWrt support. The Netgear R6220 has treated me well. Often around $20 on eBay.

Mine seem to last about 5 years or so.

Get a PoE switch. Get a Raspberry Pi 4 with a PoE HAT. Setup a VLAN for your ISP with the port to the modem unlabeled and a labelled port to the Pi. Setup one or more VLANs for your home network and label them on the same port to the Pi. Install OpenWRT and configure VLANs like real interfaces. Put a Ubiquiti AP on the home network VLAN. Profit!

A bit of a tangent, but is anyone else holding out for a Wireless 6E router? I've been limping along with an old Asus RT-AC66R for many years, but will probably finally upgrade once a good 6E router is on the market, so that I hopefully won't feel a need to upgrade for a very long time after.

Eero has been a nice plug and play mesh network now that we have a full house of computer users everyday.

These Maxwell WiFi routers featured on CrowdSupply look powerful and include first-class support for OpenWRT: https://www.crowdsupply.com/andy-haas/maxwell

If you are in Europe i can recommend the Fritzbox. Generally works everything really well -> https://en.avm.de/products/

Unifi edge router x paired with one or more of their APs is my go to lately.

Google 3point MESH.

Mikrotik and nothing else.

openWRT compatible, not splashed all over CVEs.