ASUS Announces Blue Cave AC2600 Wi-Fi Router

ASUS today announced Blue Cave, a stunningly designed high-performance AC2600 Wi-Fi router based on Intel's connected home technology that's built to meet the demanding needs of modern smart homes. 

Winner of a 2017 Computex Best Choice Golden Award, Blue Cave is an easy-to-use, innovatively designed router with stylish good looks and family-friendly features. It's built to cope easily with the increasingly complex and bandwidth-heavy demands of smart home networks, offering superb multi-device performance powered by the Intel Home Wi-Fi chipset, comprehensive commercial-grade security with ASUS AiProtection, and out-of-the-box IoT integration with Amazon Alexa and IFTTT.

"Combining years of ASUS experience in wireless innovation and Intel's connected home technology, Blue Cave delivers ultrafast Wi-Fi speeds throughout the home," said Tenlong Deng, General Manager, ASUS Networking and Wireless Devices Business Unit. "Not only powerful, its eye-catching design with no external antennas blends perfectly with any décor."

Blue Cave also offers easy PC-free network control, via the intuitive ASUS Router mobile app for Android and iOS devices. 

Elegantly Powerful Wi-Fi for Smart Homes
Blue Cave combines ASUS engineering and Intel's home Wi-Fi technology to deliver ultrafast AC2600-class concurrent dual-band Wi-Fi speeds throughout the home, ensuring smooth 4K UHD video streaming and gaming, and fast file downloads. With Intel technology, the router has more than enough capacity to handle the simultaneous data demands of the multiple devices found in today's smart homes and dedicated bandwidth for software and security features.

"Consumers are bringing more connected devices into their homes and need a network that can keep up now and in the future," said Dan Artusi, Vice President and General Manager, Intel's Connected Home Division. "We are collaborating with the industry to transform home connectivity and unleash a new era of smart home experiences. With a unique, eye-catching design, ASUS Blue Cave is a great example of an innovative solution based on Intel technology that fits into lifestyle aesthetics while delivering top performance."

Blue Cave's unique styling and powerful performance are both made possible by our sophisticated Wi-Fi engineering. Internal antennas are often a compromise: they allow a neater external design, but they can be prone to performance-sapping interference. In Blue Cave, the location and orientation of the four fully-optimized antennas relative to each other and to the internal circuitry was carefully decided by experiment to give the best possible Wi-Fi signal in all directions.

Blue Cave has a strikingly compact design that fits anywhere. To achieve its small size, ASUS engineers reduced the footprint of the internal circuit board by creating a special two-layer design. Additionally, a custom heat sink coated with graphene provides maximum surface area for heat-dissipation, enabling a smaller overall size. 

Ultimate protection for the whole family
Blue Cave incorporates AiProtection, the first commercial-grade security for home networks. AiProtection, powered by Trend Micro, is free for the life of the product, and protects every connected smart device on the network, including IoT devices.

Blue Cave incorporates Advanced Parental Controls, allowing users to keep a watchful eye on the family's internet usage, and decide how much internet time or what apps each family member is allowed. State-of-the-art parental controls let users block specific categories of mobile apps and websites - and apply these settings to all devices belonging to a family member - while allowing free access to the rest of the internet.

To make the protection even more complete, Blue Cave includes a year's free Trend Micro Mobile Security for two mobile devices and Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus+ for two Windows PCs. Redemption instructions are included in the box. This offer is available until December 31, 2018.

Smart home ready
Blue Cave is a smart router for smart homes. It offers out-of-the-box support for IFTTT and Amazon Alexa, so users can easily integrate Blue Cave into a smart home to make their lives easier. For example, a user could just tell Alexa to suspend the Wi-Fi during a family dinner to prevent interruptions, or use IFTTT to get an automatic email notification when children arrive home. Blue Cave enables endless possibilities for smart living. 

Easy PC-free network control
Blue Cave takes the pain out of managing a home network. It's easy to set up and easy to keep an eye on what's happening, via the intuitive PC interface or the ASUS Router mobile app. With just a few taps or clicks, users can see when new devices connect or when new updates become available, and change router settings to suit their needs.

AVAILABILITY & PRICING
ASUS Blue Cave will be available from end of February with an SRP of £179.99 in the UK.Please contact your local ASUS representative for further information.