While working, the RT-ax88U router was faster everywhere in my house with different clients than the Asus RT-ac68U it was replacing. However, the router has lost internet connection a few times. At this point in the product life cycle, it doesn't seem as rock solid as my RT-ac68U was that I want to replace. I am going to try an Asus AC3100 next. I wanted to get the newest hardware when spending my money; however stability is the most important factor.
##Update 1/29
Asus released a new firmware just after I got this router. The WIFI has been up for 5 days without issue now. I am upping my review from 2 to 4 stars... I will up again later to 5 if it stays rock solid like it has been since the latest firmware.
Dear All
I tried 3 not 1 of this Router
And I have 2 NetGear X10 also
If you have New Phones New Laptops Asus RT-AX88U will be your choice
Or
Do not come and cry that your devices are not working on this new technology
These devices work for me all the time without stopping and I'm satisfied with the experience completely
Excellent user interface and excellent speed
I find it a strong choice now
I've owned every top-of-the-line consumer router that's ever been released. All of them. I'm a bit of a router junkie. That being said, I feel like I know my routers pretty well. After a nightmare of an experience with the Nighthawk x10, I picked up the ax88u. My connection at home is 400/40, and I'm using a mesh node with wired backhaul. This thing is lightning fast. Throughput shows precise speeds, devices stay connected, and also move between mesh nodes seamlessly. This may be an early adopter model, but ASUS seems to hit a home run with this one. Next review will be on the AX11000 when I get it.
I bought a Netgear XR500 last november for the very impressive looking DumaOS... to find a buggy, completely not fleshed out (event he VPN function advertised wasn’t implemented until a late December firmware update), insanely unstable (crashed at least once a week every week, i had to resort to using my 4yr old Netgear R7000 that was perfectly reliable) router with the company that makes DumaOS having an incredibly apathetic, “we’ll fix it when we fix it” and “No ETA’s on fixes, we make updates, Netgear releases them. Ask them” tone on all forums, i gave up on hoping it would be fleshed out at any point soon. So i got rid of it for the AX88u and flashed Merlin on it.
I was looking for a traffic analyzing, enterprise-functionality router with the XR500 with every nerd knob possible (like Tomato firmware offers), and got a dumbed down buggy experience with barely even basic configuration options. The AC88u was the exact opposite. From a conditional VPN to IPS/traffic analysis/web logging/firewal/features you normally need to outfit a network with separate dedicated devices for, this handles it all with absurd speed and responsiveness in the interface. Everything i thought might be a gimmick (like trendmicro’s ‘aiprotection’) is the real deal and you could not ask for more to secure a home network unless you did go with those dedicated devices. It’s super stable (i changed core router settings that have to restart services in AsusWRT, while transferring 150GB worth of data from a client to an SSD connected to it to test network/USB speeds, and downloading a giant BFV patch on my gaming PC while on a work skype call and never even got a blip of cut-out or noise on my call. The web interface locked up because i made one kinda dumb change while doing this but the call never did!), inSANELY fast across the board (from using it as an OpenVPN client to enabling all the COU-taxing security features to topping out its resources by reading and writing to a USB-connected SSD), i can’t even convey how great this is.
I wanted to see my clients’ connection rates, which interfaces they were connected to, and very importantly their life bandwidth and traffic- and within a couple clicks i can do this as if i’m navigating a Cisco ASA firewall. Just function after function, it’s all available, and it all works.
I also got this for increased theoretical AC speeds and eventual AX speeds, along with wanting the fastest chipset available (my R7000 nighthawk was extremely modular, but its dual-core 1ghz CPU definitely struggled to pass VPN traffic at full bandwidth. My XR500 bricked itself after about 5 minutes of use whenever i even tried to configure the VPN. The AX88U has zero issues with that speed or stability there). So far i haven’t been able to bottleneck the CPU with anything yet without the ethernet Gb bandwidth limitation topping out first. Maybe when AX clients come into play and i set up an aggregated 2Gb link the router could start chugging in some cases, but i have no idea and really doubt it would cause a sweat at this point.
Lordy, even gaming-wise i’ve been casually checking my ping in Battlefield V and Anthem, i’m getting response times i’ve never seen anywhere i’ve lived with any hardware i’ve had before (7-12ms pings, better than 95% of everyone on any server i’m put in).
I even use this to manually reserve IP addresses for my non-configurable IoT devices so I know where everything is on the network. The XR500 would wipe its memory every few days, destroying the work i did there. This is super stable, leases every IP to every device i tell it on-call and never has an issue. It’s just too freaking good. My R7000 was the king of the mid 20-teens. The AX88u is the successor.
In summary this thing is an utter beast. If you’re looking to go with a ‘gaming’ router, i was looking between this and the GT-AX11000 when i decided to get rid of the XR500. I chose this because they have the same horsepower, same specs, and the gimmicky 3rd band of 5Ghz the 11000 has id just that... a gimmick unless you have 300 devices in your home. I run about 50 clients in an apartment with plenty of neighbor networks and never have a problem with congestion or needing more bandwidth, especially for gaming, that this extra band ‘gives’ you. Also, the main reason i chose this is because the gaming ROG firmware on thr GT-AX11000 actually IS gimmicky. Read reviews on the GT-AC5300 and you’ll see a lack of Asus updates, constant bugs, broken features (recently an update actually stopped that 3rd 5ghz band from even broadcasting), and poorly implemented gaming functions unique to the router that just don’t work most of the time. I have a friend that runs an AiMesh with an AC88u and GT-AC5300 since Christmas and it has given nothing but issues. The worst part is, NO 3rd party firmware support with the ROG firmware. So if Asus doesn’t fix a bug, you’re out of luck. The AX88u is supported by Merlin which is the snappiest, slickest firmware out there for Asus routers. That’s the key, the firmware- and the AX88u has the one you want with no big compromises to the AX11000.
Last thing, AX11000 has the 2.5GbE port. Neat, but with the 8x 1GbE ports on the AX88u you have plenty of available ports to run link aggregation on, say, a separate switch with 2.5/5/10GbE support in the future for a 2Gb pipe into any of the direct router clients, while you can put any insanely fast clients on the switch directly later when those speeds start being adopted. It’s all a win-win with this router and any future scenarios you can think of.
10/10 best router of 2019, true Netgear Nighthawk R7000 successor.
So far the router works fine. My laptop had an outdated firmware and I needed to update it before it could see the wifi network from this router - the router had instruction on checking this. The router doesn't have default password set for both wifi and router login / so it definitely need to be changed immediately - instructions provided.
The user interface isn't as simple as I would like, and I couldn't find out how to release the IP DHCP renewal menu.
Feature Product
- Next-gen Wi-Fi standard - 802.11Ax Wi-Fi standard for better efficiency and throughput.
- Ultrafast Wi-Fi speed - 6000 Mbps Wi-Fi speed to handle even the busiest network with ease.
- Wider usage and more convenience - 4 antennas + 8 LAN ports to support more clients at the same time.
- Commercial-grade security - AiProtection, powered by Trend Micro, blocks internet security threats for all your connected smart devices.
- Better partner with mesh system - Compatible with ASUS AiMesh Wi-Fi system for seamless whole-home coverage.
- Nextgen ax Wi-Fi is backward compatible with 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi devices and Supports current Wi-Fi devices.
Description
The RT-AX88U offers the fastest 802.11AC Wi-Fi experience while also being ready for Next Gen 802.11ax devices. It can offer Gigabit+ wireless speeds for the 1ST time with the latest smartphones, laptops, Mini PCs & motherboards. If you need even greater coverage, Pair it with a second compatible ASUS router for mesh Wi-Fi
This is an awesome router...I've played with just about every feature and it's performed flawlessly. I have a rather complex home network over several building with 2 bridged connections and NAS, that has taken many hours of tweaking with other routers and this thing took over with no problems at all. The interface is responsive and clean, and the additional security features seem to be working(I disabled bitdefender on one of my kids laptop so we will see) The WTF gaming didn't seem to make any improvement but other than that everything is as advertised. Most of my heavy hitters are on glan, but was able to get 115mbs file transfers from laptop to pc, phone and nas both wired and wireless. I have no AX devices so that part I can't test. The mesh works better than expected great, not as easy to set up or "pretty" as Eero or Orbi, both which work nice (in fact I have an Eero bridged to this through an Engenius 5mhz setup right now) but the actual wireless coverage per device is not as strong. I bought and returned both systems before trying this before trying this. I added two RTA 66 mesh routers and they cover 2800sq feet in the house and stretch about 20-30 feet outside, the AX88 is in my barn with all my main gear, metal building, 2500 sq feet. On the side the router is on I can get about 40 feet through the steel and on the furthest side only 5-10 feet. Both the orbie and the eero could not get a usable signal beyond the walls. So with 56 registered devices and seven people using everything from 4k streaming to Spotify, I can still get ping times almost identical to hard lining my connection to my pc...and when I'm wandering around waiting for a fight on clash of clans...I never have to reconnect. Very happy customer.
I'm a long time Asus user and I am replacing a four year old Asus AC router. It works great but over the years the number of devices in my household has increased significantly (almost 50 devices) and many of them are Chromecasts streaming Hulu Live TV. The older router would max out on memory and CPU and sometimes disrupt our activities. I decided to upgrade to a router with more performance and decided to future proof it a bit and spend the extra money to get an AX/WiFi-6 compatible router.
This is the second router I purchased. Even though I am a long time Asus user, I initially tried the TP-Link Archer AX-6000. That router performed very well for speed and range but I had CONSTANT problems with it going offline/online - usually 3-4 times per day. I have a family of 6 so unless you want to call an immediate family meeting near the router, it's got to be solid. I worked with tech support who was very responsive but they could not fix the problem. I'm not sure if I had bad hardware or if it was just a firmware issue that might be fixed at some point, but I couldn't accept the disruption of all my devices especially when we're streaming TV. So unfortunately, the TP-Link went back to Amazon. I knew I should have never left Asus!
I purchased the Asus and I'm very pleased to report that this thing is rock solid. I have not even once gone offline and all my devices connect and work perfectly. Range and speed are outstanding. I have 115Mbps service in my house for now (hoping 500+ will be available sometime soon) and I'm able to get those speeds anywhere in the three story home. Using a throughput app, I'm seeing 700-1000 Gbps depending on where I am at in the home. Ping is very low, lower than both the old Asus and the TP-Link. So overall excellent performance and range. I have my network setup in "smart" mode where the SSID is the same for both radios. I'm not sure if it makes a difference because I've always set mine up that way, just never had the "smart" feature as an option. The smart mode I think tries to balance the number of devices on each radio and will move them if demand is too great on one or the other. Seems to work well although I haven't tested it without it turned on.
So overall, I definitely recommend this router. I've only had it for a short time but I will come back and update the review if something changes. For all those that are having connectivity issues, have you updated to the newest firmware? Mine is rock solid.
I have used RT-AX88U around one month, the wifi is stable, not encountering wifi drppping.
Pros:
1. Easy setup
2. Excellent range
3. Great throughput
4. Stable wifi
5. Supports AiMesh. I use RT-AX88U and my original RT-AC86U to create a mesh system in my big house.
6. Future-proof: supports the new wifi standard 11ax
Cons:
1. Expensive
2. Pretty huge, occupying a big space
First one died in 4 days, neither the 2.4GHz LED light turn on nor it will broadcast any of the SSID. Called ASUS support they said to replace it after an hour of troubleshooting. Amazon sent the replacement in no time, reconfigured it and working so far since couple of days, shall update if I run into further issues. Configured as Smart Connect (Dual-Band Smart Connect) which will auto change between 2.4 and 5GHz depending upon signal strength and device supportability. I have couple of older ASUS AC66U-B1 routers, shall enable Ai-Mesh feature and see how that works.
Received Router ahead of schedule. Setup was a breeze! I Meshed it with an RT-AC86U and 2 RT-68U with no trouble. Then connected them together with Cat 5e and they went to backhaul after I rebooted the main router and each node 1 at a time. Never had a router so stable. Enabled manual DHCP reservations, worked flawlessly. Not a hickup. have 31 devices connected to it as of now. Have an SB8200 modem and have 20/400. and am getting 22/456 at the moment wirelessly. AiMesh is working great. It is juggling the connections around to get the strongest signal. So far so good. Never dropping any connections, and everything is working perfectly.
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