I've used the same Asus RT-AC68U router since it came out in the early 2010s and really didn't know any better. I didn't care about wireless, every computer and video game console gets wired so I just didn't keep up.
It finally caught up to me. I'd find myself having random network errors playing on the Playstation or getting disconnected from games on Steam. Toward the end I'd even watch ping on discord go from 25 ms to 3000+ ms. I blamed the ISP for years and just bought the highest speed available every time they offered something faster, trying to keep up that way.
Before dropping $800 on a ROG Rapture router, I did a deep dive via chat gpt one everything from throughput to scalability and went so far as to provide dimensions, devices I have, typical use, everything up to and including a basic network map.
I ultimately landed on a Ubiquiti Cloud Gateway Ultra and a Ubiquiti U6+ Wireless access point. I also purchased a Ubiquiti POE Injector since my POE switch is too loud for inside use. All in I spent about $280.
For less half the cost of a mid-tier Rapture I'm getting a something a whole lot more stable with maybe not the gaming focused QOS but it's not too shabby and I've seen more than the advertised gig speed on the routers speed test, the ookala app for windows as well as speedtest.net. Even with several computers gaming at once a speedtest shows over 900 Mbps.
The access point was super simple to incorporate, and the software really does do much of the heavy lifting despite many reviewers saying setting up Ubiquiti gateway and router can be challenging. Even the recommended tweaks were already tweaked in my case.
The biggest difference I've noticed between the new setup and the old, or what some other friends have is the smoothness when there's more than 4 computers gaming and / or streaming at once. The gaming routers seem more focused on wifi and QOS gets meh when more than a few are gaming. The Ubiquiti set up seems to handle multiple users without issue and tons more stable. Buffer bloat doesn't seem like an issue either.
For something seemingly more small business / enterprise focused, these things make great gaming routers