Asus RT-AX86U AC5700

I bought this to replace the job of my temperamental provider router, and it works fairly flawlessly. It has many features that I have taken full advantage of, including the built in VPN with Nord as my host, I have it controlling my upstairs AX56U as a Mesh device, using its WAN port rather than WiFi, so I have full connection to the same network wherever I am in the house over WIFI, and also benefit from using the same mesh device as a wired LAN router. Best part is I can control basic settings and see the status of the router and its connections from my phone without having to power on my computer. Love it.

It’s better than latest virgin media router and works very well with any vpn (I’m using NordVPN)

Great router with great Wi-Fi speeds

Loving it. Has wifi6, and hooked my fileserver up to the 2.5gigabit port. Have used similar asus router before and this is all very familiar. Installed Merlin. Excellent 10/10 can’t be happier with it.

Bought this about two months ago now and the coverage it produces is second to none. Highly recommend!

OFDMA, MU-MIMO, 1024QAM, Agile Multiband, Ai Protection, Regular firmware updates, free available custom firmware with even more regular updates, home management, Fq-Codel QoS, Cake QoS, NAS storage options, FTP, SFTP, 802.11 b/g/n/a/ac/ax, custom centre channel selection, custom channel width selection, custom extension channel selection, full diagnostic logs, channel spectrum surveying & analysis. Network statistics, encryption functionality, numerous VPN features, TOR node functionality, Ai Mesh networking with ethernet backhauling, Guest Networking, error correction features, advanced radio settings, WPA 1, 1-2, 2, 2-3, 3, Enterprise & personal, AES & TKIP, 160mhz channel width, a complementary app to manage the router, hardware acceleration and the list goes onnnnnn........ I get signal from across the street. Just think about that...

I bought an AX58U initially, but opted to make this my main router instead. Very pleased with the signal coverage over 2 floors with solid walls etc, which lacked for me with the AX58U. Looks really cool as well. So much better than the virgin media router given as standard. Only down side is that so far, there is no Merlin support (hopefully soon!), but that is not taking anything away from this router, which has been stable and superb in the last couple of weeks since I have started using it.

I've bought this device in order to be able to reach 1 Gbps speeds over LAN. I have a single device capable of taking advantage of 160 Mhz channels (a laptop with a Killer Wireless AC 1550). The router + 160 MHz capable client combo managed 1.2 Gbps in synthetic benchmarks. The device was also able to max out my WAN speeds. Unfortunately, the 160 Mhz channel was very unstable / unreliable. Even at short distances the connection between my laptop and router would often drop. 80 Mhz channels were stable but not so great. My old and reliable AC68U was constantly beating the AX88U at short distances. Don't get me wrong: The AX88U has great range; its CPU is also very capable and It can handle multiple clients + VPN without breaking a sweat. Unfortunately, the 5Ghz channel soon died on me. It was most probably a hardware issue since power cycling, "enabling and disabling" 5GHZ and even a full factory reset didn't solve the issue. Other than that, I don't have any AX clients at home. I would love to make my network future-proof, however, the slowdown for AC devices was disappointing. Hopefully this can/will be fixed by firmware updates at some stage. For current gen devices you can buy routers able to deliver better performance and a great experience for half of what a AX88U sells for (e.g., R7800 and ASUS own AC-86U). The bottom line is: While the AX88U features are promising, it is too early in the AX / Wi-Fi 6 life-cycle to really make use of it. Since my unit was faulty I've ended up returning the device. I may revisit this product a couple of years from now, when AX technology goes mainstream. At the moment however, I wouldn't recommend the AX88U for anyone but tech enthusiasts. Only buy this product if you are willing to pay a premium, sacrifice AC performance and deal with the headaches of an emerging standard for the sake of future-proofing your network.