ARRIS SURFboard S33 2.5G DOCSIS 3.1 Cable Modem

.After upgrading to Xfinity (Comcast) 1 Gig speed tier, I needed a new modem to take advantage. I originally purchased a Motorola MB8600. While the Motorola was indeed fast (spoiler alert: faster than the Arris S33), the Motorola was hugely unstable and unreliable on Xfinity/Comcast (Google it - you'll see its a huge problem). The Motorola was either locking up or losing Internet connection about 5-10 minutes every hour or two! Egads! It was horrible. So Motorola was returned. Enter the Arris SURFboard S33. It activated smoothly and has been rock solid for me on Xfinity/Comcast. It is also a very small modem. The box photos make it *look* large - but it is in fact only 6 x 6 x 2 thick. Quite compact and smaller than most DOCSIS 3.1 modems. It is fast...but, if to be honest it is slower than the MB8600 I had right before this one. My plan is rated at 1000 Mbps down and 40 Mbps up. The Motorola topped out at a very impressive 1014 Mbps down and 41.6 Mbps up. The S33 topped out at 933 Mbps down and 41.7 Mbps up. I ran tests on both modems probably 30 times at all different times of days and night. The above are my best scores. The S33 is consistently about 8-9% slower download speeds compared to the MB8600. But...reliability and stability are far more important than a marginal top-end speed difference. The only other (slight) negative is that the S33 runs a bit warmer than both my older SURFboard model and the Motorola MB8600. It's not hot per se, but does run warmer than maybe most modems. Just make sure to give it good ventilation and it should be fine.