Question Cable Modem/Router Combo, refurbished okay?

[neogunhero]

Hey all. Moved into a new house two weeks ago, need to get new Wi-Fi. My Verizon hotspot Wi-Fi sucks at the new place plus I’m tire of the monthly data cap. The only broadband service I can get out here apparently sucks very bad if you don’t have your own Modem.
So, to save money, I’ve been looking at some cable Modem/Router combos. They make some good ones, and I don’t need anything super fast or fancy, literally anything will be better than my Verizon Wi-Fi. When looking for cheap ones, I notice that Amazon and Newegg have a lot of options between $50-$80, but they are all refurbished.
Refurbished quality aside, is it a good idea to purchase a refurbished modem? It could be potentially used, so will there be a problem with that? The hardware itself is compatible and will work with the broadband service as confirmed by one of their support agents, but I didn’t ask about a refurbished modem. One Amazon reviewer said they ran into an issue with the modem being used and the serial code registered to someone else’s previous service but they found a way to get around it, no other details.

TLDR; is purchasing a refurbished potentially used Modem/Router okay for security purposes?

 

[neogunhero]

Deciding to post this here. Went ahead and bought the refurbished modem and router. Modem is an ARRIS SURFboard SB6190-RB and the router is a TP-Link Wifi 6 AX1500 Archer AX10. Not the latest hardware but more than capable for our small home, however it will be a MASSIVE improvement over the Verizon Hotspot WiFi (granted the service works good). The home is small with roughly ~15 devices. The service is rated at a max 200mbps. This will be my first proper broadband Wi-Fi service in almost a whole year so anything would be an improvement over averaging 200-600kb/s download speeds through Verizon. Also, 1.5TB monthly data cap compared to Verizon’s 150GB, a 10x increase!!

I’m planning on doing dual channel with our smart home devices on the 2.4ghz band and our phones, computers, TVs and my Xbox on the 5ghz band. The home is small enough so the range of the 5ghz shouldn’t be much of an issue. I need to get an adapter for my PC so I can take full advantage of Wi-Fi 6, that will come at another time.

The ISP service has a 30 day money back guarantee and Amazon has a 90 day return policy on their refurbished items so worst case scenario I can get full refunds on everything.

I can’t wait to have proper Wi-Fi again, I don’t care if it’s not the fastest speeds. House Flipper took 7 hours to download the other day, that’s a 5GB download…

 

[neogunhero]

Today is the day we get our new internet. I ran a couple speed tests last night and this morning on my phone with the Verizon hotspot wifi. Two tests last night, came out 0.77mbps then 0.62mbps around 10pm. 11pm I had 4.09mbps and 4.16mbps, presumably because one TV stopped streaming Netflix at that point. This morning at 5am I had 7.99mbps. This is how inconsistent the Verizon wifi is, which is understandable for 4G LTE home internet. If the speeds were faster, and didn't dip all the way down to 0.62mbps then it wouldn't be much of a problem. I don't mind it being inconsistent as long as the lowest lows were still decently fast, but as you can see this is barely usable. It's the worst when everyone is on it, streaming and whatnot. This new broadband plan is rated for 200mbps, and I got a pretty good router capable of up to 800mbps, and the router I got supports Wifi 6 AX which at this time only our phones can support. Going to try to connect my PC to ethernet if I have a long enough cord. This is a lesser known, more local/rural ISP, but the reviews seem to be decent. As I said before, any increase will be a major improvement. Will keep this post updated once we get everything installed and switched on.

 

[neogunhero]

Holy crap!! It went up to 27MB/s!!! All in all the refurbished modem and router are working perfectly. Just had to give the MAC address of the modem to the ISP and update the routers firmware. So far no disconnects but haven’t tried gaming yet. SpeedTest came back at 216mbps!!