Stop Renting Your Cable Modem

tl;dr

If your wireless router is separate from your cable modem, buy this and return your rented modem to your cable provider. It's high quality and will pay for itself in rental cost savings very quickly.

Details

Chances are, your cable bill has a monthly charge on it in the neighborhood of $5-$8 for cable modem rental. You can buy an excellent cable modem for under $100 and start saving in about one year.

I recommend keeping your cable modem and your wireless router as two separate devices. Cable modem technology evolves slowly, and the current models will easily last you another 2-5 years. Routers and wifi have both been evolving much faster, and thus have a faster upgrade cycle. Keeping them separate means being able to easily upgrade your router without the expense of upgrading your cable modem at the same time. Cable modems with built-in wireless routers are the TV/VCR combo of the 2010's.

Buy this

If you have a separate cable modem and wireless router as I suggest, I use and recommend the Motorola Surfboard SB6121. It's incredibly reliable, and unlike so many modems provided by the cable company, you don't need to reboot it all the time to keep it working. This modem can handle 172Mbps download speed and 131Mbps upload speed. If you don't know what those numbers mean, it's probably 5-10 times faster than you're currently paying for with your cable company. As faster plans get cheaper, you'll have plenty of room to upgrade your account with your cable provider.

Oh, you fancy, huh?

If you're the kind of person who likes to spend a few bucks extra for further futureproofing, I recommend the Motorola Surfboard SB6141. It's essentially the same as the SB6121, but can handle 343Mbps downloads. If you think you'll pay your cable company for that kind of speed in the next few years, the modem will cost you an extra ~$25.