This is a great thread because home automation does not come without its price in routers. I have tried so many systems and each have their pros and cons.
Your TP link has a poor device limit as do the telus routers so you are going to have to start looking at upgrading like you planned. A few things to think about is what home automation you are going with an what devices. The Orbi seems to have issues with nest devices and Asus has issues with LiFX and other devices that don't work well with airtime fairness. I settled on the Velop after testing a lot of systems but its not for everyone as a power outage leaves you with having to reboot each node manually which when out of town can be an issue (only issue i have with the Velop TBH).
The Deco 9 and Eero have been getting great reviews lately and new firmware updates to the google mesh have made it considerably better. what's are price range, your device needs and do you have the ability to run a network cable to each node?
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