ASUS RT-AX88U (AX6000) router review - Introduction

Asus RT-AX88U - Super Fast Wi-Fi?
Going AX and WI-Fi 6

We review the hip and new ASUS RT-AX88U, this premium router is compatible with the new AX standard also labeled as WIFI 6 standard whilst retaining it's compatibility with AC and lower bands as well. The AX88U seems to be a bit of a beast alright, loaded with features it should offer really good wired and wireless performance. The dual-band Wi-Fi router from ASUS has been fitted with a quad-core processor (Broadcom BCM49408) even.

Routers these days you may purchase a dime a dozen and most of them end up all being the same, as such the more predominant manufacturers continuously seek to add new features to their product in order to differentiate themselves in the market. And that's difficult as there isn't a lot of extras you can do with 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 RT-AX88U is the first router from ASUS to support the 802.11ax specification, also known as Wi-Fi 6. The router is very similar to the RT-AC88U but has new radios and a new quad-core processor. The aerials antennas 4x and 8x gigabit ethernet ports remained the same, as did the USB 3.0 ports. The RT-AX88U is controlled by a Broadcom BCM49408, a quad-core Arm chip running at 1.8 GHz and assisted by 1 GB of RAM and 256 MB of flash. Both the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz radio use the BCM43684 chip and therefore have 802.11ax support, 4x4 MIMO and 160MHz channels. The router also supports AiMesh, a technology from Asus that allows you to build multiple routers as a Mesh network.

The Asus RT-AX88U Wi-Fi Router is based on the design of the popular ASUS router series. This model though, has a Broadcom BCM49408 quad-core 1.8 GHz processor, 1024 MB DDR3 DRAM, 256MB Flash storage and is fitted with four antennas. These units these days even come with USB 3.0 connectivity ports for a bit of UPnP NAS functionality. Following the latest standards, the AX88U is compatible with 802.11.AX, 802.11a, 802.11ac, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n and will manage up to a combined 4804 Mbit/s on the 5 GHz bands and 2.4 GHz band at 1148 Mbit/s.  A nice feature of the router is that it offers multiple guest networks as well, so your friends and family can use their iOS or Android smartphone or tablet on your network completely isolated and secured from your LAN. Network Map is a visual topology map that shows all the devices that are connected to the network. Users can simple manage each device by clicking on its icon and change parental control settings, select wireless bands, filter by device type, or even remove devices from the network, plus more. The router can be used a gigabit switch as well, you'll spot 8 Gigabit ports. Unfortunately, ASUS has not advanced to faster-wired connectivity like 2.5, 5 or 10 Gigabit.

By the way, at the moment there are no devices that support 802.11ax. Intel has two WiFi adapters for laptops and PCs in development, the AX200 and AX201 and Asus is working on a PCE-AX88 adapter. This router, however, is amongst the most pricey ones, tagged with a price of roughly 369 EURO / $399 will it be worth it? Have a peek at the product and then let's dive into the review. 

Okay, why am I seeing a Daft Punk similarity here?