Looking at the specs and comparison tables isn’t helping me much – too many models, and too many marketing buzzwords. What in particular should I be looking for in the Technical Specifications ?

My primary requirement is for number of devices on 2.4GHz Wi-fi band.  Smart home / IoT wifi devices (including the ones TP-Link markets) are physically small, cheap, low bandwidth and use 2.4GHz only - so I assume they are using old wifi 4 technology.  Problem is that my current AP maxed out at 15 devices connected. 

I intend to continue using my existing internet router, so the new router will be in Access Point mode. I was looking at Wi-Fi 5 (AC) but thinking newer (Wi-fi 6 AX) routers are likely to have faster CPU and more RAM for device tables, and longer support life.

For example, comparing TP-Link Archer models AX20, AX55 and AX72 (all available locally):

• The AC and AX numbers are for overall bandwidth – but most of that is for 5GHz band; giving the same WiFi speed “2.4 GHz: 574 Mbps (802.11ax)” for each model.
• These 3 models all sport multiple antennas, High-power FEM, OFDMA, Airtime Fairness, MU-MIMO and multiple streams – yet the same 2.4GHz wifi speed suggests none of these has an effect on 2.4GHz band ?
• Similarly some routers support DFS to “access an extra band to reduce congestion”; or 4T4R for “Multiple streams in the same band” - but do they impact 2.4GHz band ?

It seems therefore that a WA-1201 would give the same IoT 2.4GHz performance as an Archer RT-AX72 for 1/4 the cost.  Are there any features that would affect 2.4GHz performance and number of connections ???

Unfortunately this important information is not provided ... except that I found on the Archer RT-AX72 page Overview includes "Connect 100+ Devices^§ – Supports MU-MIMO and OFDMA to reduce congestion and quadruple the average throughput.^‡** " but the footnote states "§Archer AX72 can connect 64 devices on the 5 GHz band, and 48 devices on the 2.4 GHz band. Performance may vary depending on the applications and environmental factors."

Can you please tell me how many concurrent 2.4GHz connections the following models can handle ?  Also the year it was introduced, and RAM/flash memory (to give an indication of its longevity)

Thanks