Best Dual Band Router?

[BigMacAttack1]

I'm currently rocking the Cisco Lynsys e1000, which was the nice price but leaves a lot to be desired in terms of speed/reliability. I'm ready to delve into the dual band routers, but not sure which way to go.

I was looking at the airport extreme - 5th generation on Amazon, which has good ratings and would play well with my iDevices (iPad 2, iPhone 5, 13" Retina Macbook Pro (2012), but I've also read that Asus are pretty good as well. I'll be getting Comcast 50mbps Blast! internet and am also looking to invest in a Motorola Surfboard SB6141 modem (white) as well.

Sidenote: would my Synology NAS device be able to hook up to the router strictly via USB rather than an ethernet port?

Anyways, if anyone can provide feedback and/or links to a great deal (hoping to keep it around $80/each-don't mind used/refurbished-and to grab a great deal this week on both), that'd be awesome. Thanks!

 

[hallux]

I have a Netgear WNDR3700 and other than a bad firmware update (that has since been pulled) I've been VERY happy with it. I'm getting 30 Mbps from Time Warner and I have ZERO issue pulling that over WiFi.

I'm not an all-Apple house but I DO have a MBP, iPad and an ATV, they all talk nicely, allowing me to use HomeSharing to stream music from my MBP on the ATV, initiating it from the iPad Remote app. AirPlay also works just fine. It has a USB port but it also has a Gb switch in it so any wired connection is speedy.

It allows dual-band so all my Apple stuff is on the 5 Ghz band, everything else is wired or on 2.4 so if I'm using AirPlay or streaming music from the MBP to the ATV it won't slow down anything else.

I have the same modem you're looking at, the white SB6141.