We are finally getting 21st century interwebz in the neighborhood. Right now I have a paltry 5/.5 speed with ATT. Saturday, Sharter Cable is coming to hook it up with 60/6. I prefer to buy my own router. Are any of you fine folks up to date on the newest tech. It does need to support Time Machine backups (Mac).

Is there anything to BeamForming or MU-MIMO Technology? Is the new Wireless-AC standard even necessary?

TIA.....:-)

Budget is $150ish if I need to go that high.
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Really, you should ask Charter what their protocol is and make sure you can match it. I've used quite a few Motorola (now, Arris, I think) routers with success. I'm currently using a SBG6580
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MIMO just means that the device uses multiple antennas in an intelligent way. MIMO has been around a long time in cellular and wide area wireless. Its use in home networking is all dependent on the environment. If you have a large coverage area with dead zones, the MIMO beamforming can be of use but then a repeater would also be of use. If you have pretty good coverage where you need it, then it may not be worth the cost. As it gets more and more ubiquitous, it should become the cheap standard to household and small business wireless. Not every router with multiple antennas does MIMO or beamforming.

The "MU" part of MU-MIMO is really more about multiple users each having multiple antennas. This is unusual in most home systems. Presently, very few laptops, for example, can do beamforming but can certainly take advantage of a router that uses beamforming.

My router has 802.11/n on the wireless side, 100 Mb on the wired side and 35/25 Mb up/down on the provider side. The gamers in the house are very happy and my email is pretty snappy.
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I do not recommend an AC router as I tried twice and it fails to switch bands seamlessly and caused a lot of dead time reconnects so bad for streaming and horrible for gaming.

I have had the best luck with an Apple router and good old fashioned 802.11N.

My two cents.

Of course, that was a year ago when AC routers were new so maybe they have matured as give technology a year and it's amazing how things can improve but definitely read the reviews on Newegg carefully.
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I ended up with a Netgear 6400. All the reviews are pretty solid and it should future proff me for a good while.
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I bought this one back in June and it has worked just fine for me.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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Wow, that router has thousands of reviews, good rating, and is $200 cheaper then the AC routers I had bought. Freaking crazy what a year will do! Looks like AC has arrived and at this price, well worth it.
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I use this one which has been working very well here:

NETGEAR AC1750 Smart WiFi Router Dual Core 800MHz Processor - Router Only (R6400-100NAS)

https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-AC175.../dp/B00Z0V2NQ8

We have Time Warner which plugs in to their ARRIS modem. This, along with a NetTalk DUO, plugs in to the Netgear...

Good luck on your search Chip:-)
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I bought the same one, Mark.
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me too!
TP-LINK Archer C7 AC1750 Dual Band Wireless AC Gigabit Router, 2.4GHz 450Mbps+5Ghz 1300Mbps, 2 USB Port, IPv6, Guest Network
TP-LINK

solid and fast
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