Not really thrilled by N66U => AC68U upgrade

I've had a N66U running the latest merlin/john fork for a while and it's been solid, but it's also old and wanted to look into AC. I picked up a A68U today and, while connection speeds are definitely much faster, I'm kind of erked by the fact that the connection seems "stronger" with the old router. On average, the 2.4 band is 5-10 db louder, though the 5ghz band is roughly the same db. The A68U is running latest merlin 380.68.

I guess I was expecting more range, but I guess that's not the...

Not really thrilled by N66U => AC68U upgrade