My Airports work just fine and have worked for years. I think that the WiFi issues are mostly that people are only willing to pay like $50 for their WiFi router. At this price point I'm not sure it changes anything.
If you try to use multiple Airport routers together without Ethernet you get severely reduced bandwidth. These routers (and other similar products) have multiple radios which allow mesh networking without reducing bandwidth as much. In a large house where running cable isn't an option having a mesh network can solve a lot of issues. In a small apartment a single access point is probably sufficient.
They have multiple radios and my bandwidth is basically capped by my comcast internet at around 180 Mbps which I get everywhere in the house with 2 airports, one extending the other.