Router for a place saturated with other Wi-Fi networks

I'm looking for a wireless router with a stable, highly reliable connection in a place heavily saturated with other Wi-Fi networks and Bluetooth connections. One client will be connected through 2,4 GHz 802.11g connection and another one through LAN, while the data rate will be low (max 200 KB/s). There has to be no packet loss and uptime has to be 100 %. I have already tested Linksys WRT54GL in such environment and it crashed within few minutes with occasional packet loss beforehand. On the other hand, Cisco Meraki MX64W worked without a single problem.

Cisco is out of my budget, I am looking more towards ~200 $. Currently I aim for Asus RT-AC68U, Asus RT-AC87U, Linksys WRT3200ACM and Netgear AC1900 (R7000), but I don't really know what is the crucial thing to look for. Which router would you recommend? Thanks for any suggestions.

 

Channel selection and not a router brand or model will be IMO more important.

Using inSSIDer I see about 50 SSIDs but luckily only 5 are on the 5ghz band.Four of the 5 seem to be active evenings and weekends.Presently I'm the only one on channel 48.

The computer should be within 6' to 15' and in line of sight with the router if possible for better signal strength.

Use inSSIDer to find the least used channels

Use Google to find the download for the old FREE version of inSSIDer.

Get on the Amazon waiting list for a factory refurbished Netgear R7800

When I got mine over a year ago it was a 2 week wait.Now?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XD5DT5J/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Pair that router with a Killer 1550 wireless-ac card also9 available on Amazon or order an Intel 9260 on ebay from China

 

@krneki I don't think Linksys WRT3200ACN is ideal for that job. I have one and it's a good router overall (although far too pricey and advanced for that particular job you require) but its downsides are arguably the Marvell radio chips.
It's not that anything is wrong with them as such but Marvell is no QCA and they don't exactly have the same open source community developing open source drivers as QCA has, so if something goes wrong you might get stuck with no update for a certain problem for a while.

As for Wi-Fi cards I wouldn't recommend Intel 9260/Killer 1550 for one reason only - this card only supports Windows 10. While you never mentioned the OS of the computer running on Wi-Fi, if it's anything but Win 10, this card won't work at all.

 

Apart from the hardware, you might also look into the modulation scheme, if you hadn't already.

Deploy wifi in a fairly congested neighbourhood myself and use a pure-n network with 5 access points/hubs. These cheap units don't offer load-balancing or even simple pinching, so I've set them to MCS 5, which accomplishes the same thing and has much better error-control as well. For such a low data rate on an 11g network you could even opt for MCS 13 at a measily 6Mbit; snail pace, but a most reliable connection.

While you're on that setting page, also check the other advanced options. Many are a trade-off between speed versus reliability and switching on nice-to-haves also means further complications for the device and clients.

If you're in Australia, Europe or Japan you also have a few more channels at your disposal. Here it makes sense to do some prior research on finding routers and cards that actually support those bands; a lot of the bulk consumer device are made to be sold on all major markets at once, limiting possible channels to the lowest common denominator due to simplicity (ch. 1-11 in the US). The free edition of inSSIDer doesn't even show channels 12-14 on the chart axis and very few devices actually broadcast on them since people buy those cheap, container-quantity models. Result being that in Europe the sparsely-used channels 12 and 13 tend to be great options, provided your clients support them, of course.