G'day.

I'm thinking I might upgrade to Full Flavour's gigabit plan from my current 100/120Mbps plan, given a recent price drop. And doing so would avoid me entering into a 12 month contract, as annoyingly required for a slightly lower priced 100/20Mbps plan. I'm fairly sure FF won't turn to custard over the next year, but I prefer to keep my options open nowadays, unless I'm avoiding a large initial fee like with getting fibre originally.

Anyway, as I have only an 802.11n router right now (supplied by FF - a Huawei HG253s V2 that has been reliable and stable as :-) ), and most of my devices I stream video to are on WiFi only, I really want a decent 802.11ac router first.

Now FF offers an $80 discount on this Linksys XAC1200 https://www.noelleeming.co.nz/shop/computers-tablets/accessories/networking-equipment/linksys-xac1200-au-ac1200-dual-band-with-smart-wi-fi-modem-router/prod132772.html , but before taking the plunge, I wonder if there are better choices for not much more, or preferably cheaper (since I am by nature cheap ;-) ), yet still balancing value and likely to last at least three years (I'm always happy when cheaper home networking tech that runs hot, manages that much).

Advice? I need to be able to do minor config like manually opening and routing a couple ports, and UPnP/NAT traversal must be solid. And as I say - WiFi able to handle gigabit networking is a must. I'm not worried about range much, as I'm in a small place. Dual band 2.4/5GHz is very handy to have.

TIA :-)