ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 WIFI6E router review - Introduction

ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 (WIFI6E router)

We take a look at the gargantuan ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 gaming router, which supports the added 6 GHz standard, usually known as WIFI 6E. However, there is no need to be concerned since it is also compatible with 5G AX/AC and 2.4G lower bands. The GT-AX11000 with its alien appearance is crammed and jammed full of functions and is able to deliver excellent wired and wireless performance. ASUS's triple-band Wi-Fi router is also equipped with a quad-core CPU. Routers these days, you can purchase a dime a dozen. Most of them end up all being the same. As such, the more predominant manufacturers continuously seek to add new features to their products to differentiate themselves in the market. And that's difficult as there aren't many extras you can add to a router really, you are tied to industry Ethernet and WIFI standards, you can make sure the throughput of the devices is good enough for modern age high-bandwidth file throughput and you can make the firmware as sexy as possible with a nice GUI and extensive feature set. 

The new GT-AXE11000 is a heavyweight product sitting in the enthusiast-class products ready to kick punch hard, it does support the 802.11ax specification as well as the new 6GHz band for 6E also known as Wi-Fi 6e. Except for emergency transmissions, that 6GHz spectrum is more than double the capacity of the adjacent 5GHz band, providing sufficient capacity for up to seven nonoverlapping 160MHz channels. In layman's terms, imagine the 2.4GHz band as a one-lane country highway and the 5GHz+6GHz band as a three-lane interstate, yes this is a triband router. You however can see the 6GHz band as a brand-new seven-lane expressway, with access to the onramp reserved for 6E devices. There is a caveat though, one restriction is that the 6GHz WI-Fi spectrum is not accessible in all countries, and even when it is, it is not always equal. On that point, 6GHz routers are still not permitted to operate at maximum power on 6GHz, which means that these routers will likely have a bit more coverage to provide in the future. Currently, just a few phones and a few high-end Windows 11 machines support the new technology, making the user install base very limited. Other then that, perhaps your quest for the fastest Wi-Fi in the whole house has finally come to an end. This Asus easily reaches 600~700 Mbit/s at 5 to 10 meters via Wifi. 

This Rapture once again offers some game-specific features. New is a custom 'Game Boost' mode. This instructs the router to intelligently prioritize gaming traffic ahead of other processes and, while that does sound a lot like Killer LAN, it can also stop high-bandwidth traffic hogs, such as downloads, from operating while this mode is active so you don't experience any lag during gaming. The mode can be activated using a physical button on the router, but that being rather inconvenient if your router sits in a closet or something, you can select it in the GUI or app interface as well. The tech will reportedly help eliminate network lag and latency, creating a smoother online gaming experience. The ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 has a suggested retail price of $549.99, which yes, is a staggering amount of money for a router.