I have owned a 7363, R500, and now an R700. I upgraded to each from the former in pursuit of better throughput. I am now running firmware 9.8.3.0.14 on my R700 and experiencing throughput during windows file transfer that I consider to be pretty poor. I can only get around 18 MB/s in local file transfers involving a NAS which is very fast and a Dell XPS15 9550 laptop with a 3x3 card and a fast SSD. This is with sitting 10 feet LOS from the AP or in testing putting the laptop right next to the AP.
I feel like my 7363 was about this fast to a 2x2 n laptop. My R500 was a little faster to a 2x2 ac laptop, but not by much. I feel like a 3x3 AP like the R700 going to a top of the line 3x3 laptop should be much faster. I don't have any other spectrum hogs on my network and I am not in an apartment with lots of interference around.
What should I be expecting in this scenario?
Also, of little consequence to this discussion but just to note, I find the firmware situation with this AP to be a bit frustrating. I'm running 9.8.3.0.14 for stability since I had issues with the other firmware trains on my R500. But this firmware seems to have many important features disabled. Later 9 prefix firmwares seem to be better, but they are only available with premium support? I find it pretty weak that I can't get a stable firmware that has all the important features enabled. I see references to a promising 104 prefix firmware for the R700 on other AP's download pages, but it is not accessible anywhere. No bueno. I understand that I don't have premium support, but can't I just get a darn recent and fully featured firmware image?