I can certainly recommend the Zyxel 8924 as a good stable device. Note that the 8924 has 5Ghz WiFi, which is not present on the 8324 or 1312. There are usually plenty on eBay at sensible prices - I believe my one was £20.
You say that you ISP will be providing a TP-Link VR400 and that should be reasonable too as it is Broadcom based. If I were you I'd give it a try before splashing-out on anything else.
Hello! I'm glad to hear someone thinks the vr400 will be ok for the job, I was relieved they weren't offering another take on the bt hub lol. Never owned a TP Link before so its new territory.
I will certainly give it a go, also want to look at the configuration on it and what they setup on it before looking further out there. Might grab the 8924 though...never know when it will become so hard to find that prices will go crazy lol.
Eventually i'll be going Ubiquiti USG, switch, cloud key and AP for the setup but that wont be until October or later so this is just me, fiddling with things I have no business fiddling with lol.
I think it's the freedom getting to me: hearing a tech support guy at an ISP saying, sure use your own equipment, sure whatever brand it is just call us and we will try to help you set it up even if it isn't ours, and no, if you have problems we wont be asking you to put back the original *optional* router supplied to you.
Sky by contrast needed me to send them a photo showing I had their own bundled modem cable plugged in before they would send Openreach lol.
thanks again pal, really do appreciate all the support you guys on here give out!