ASUS RT-AC5300

[dlandiss]

ONE BIG HONKIN' ROUTER DOESN'T CUT IT ANYMORE. Stop drinking the Wi-Fi marketing Kool-Aid.

Well said! That ought to the first message, pinned to the top, of each subforum in the WiFi section.

 

[RMerlin]

ac5300 looks insane, im guessing a 400+ price point

399$ USD at most US retailers.

 

[Puppa]

I don't see anything exciting there, quite frankly. We don't even have clients yet capable of running at the full speed of last year's platform. Bigger numbers on the wifi rates mean nothing so long as laptops still ship with 150 Mbps single band NICs, tablets ships with 2x2 clients. Those numbers are nothing but marketing material at this time.

"Exciting" for me is when I see Asus adding the Trend Micro DPI engine, or when Securifi releases a router that sports home automation support.

My standard for excitement in routers has gone way down over the years. I'm most excited when I can count on my router to actually work well with the firewall and other security features turned on without doing things like choking for 60 seconds (each) on successive (not simultaneous) DHCP requests from 3 separate devices over the course of 10 minutes while only streaming a 480p Youtube video over a wired connection to a single client. (Happened last night on my 3200 w/.9313 FW). Looks like it's time for me to start turning off security features again...

 

[connorm]

Lol well put


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[l0ud_sil3nc3]

In stock at Newegg, just snagged one time to retire this AC87U for good

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320244

Will post some pics once it arrives.

 

[madhatter01]

Ordered, thanks.

 

[DaveMishSr]

In stock at Newegg, just snagged one time to retire this AC87U for good

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320244

Will post some pics once it arrives.

I refuse to pay $400 for a router. I am going to wait for an AC88U to appear on NewEgg as either an "open box" or "refurbished" purchase.

 

[l0ud_sil3nc3]

I refuse to pay $400 for a router. I am going to wait for an AC88U to appear on NewEgg as either an "open box" or "refurbished" purchase.

I feel you, but I have my AC 87U sold so that will offset the cost substantially. Regardless I would do it again in a heartbeat as the 87U causes massive drain on all my devices after a recent fw update and I'm done with it.

 

[sfx2000]

399$ USD at most US retailers

Yikes!!!

But consider the market - the targets are perhaps gamers that want the ultimate - and they're willing to pay for it, regardless whether it works best or not - mindset here is costs more, must be better...

Asus has made darn good money at fooling folks that bigger is better - my son has a G751 Asus Laptop - it's a beast perhaps, but performance is actually similar to my Macbook Pro 15 (non-retina) - and it's easily twice the physical space...

It's about the same price actually, and the MBP still has better performance overall..

 

[ssahnan]

Should have mine today. Will see it guess how this bad boy performs. Been on edge last few years of not needing repeater so always up for trying new routers to see 'if this will be the one'.

Gave the x8500 a whirl a month ago. Was an improvement in distance for me but gave up on it for other issues.

 

[madhatter01]

Mine will be here tomorrow. Newegg was supposed to have it here today.

 

[L&LD]

I refuse to pay $400 for a router. I am going to wait for an AC88U to appear on NewEgg as either an "open box" or "refurbished" purchase.

As long as a customers budget allows for 'xxx' amount of dollars for 'yy' amount of hardware, the absolute dollar figure is not relevant to me.

What is relevant is how long the purchase lasts while delivering satisfactory performance for the customer.

I am still 'stuck' on an RT-N66U for personal use. But I could see myself spend $1,000 today for a router that embodied the full features of AC class WiFi that I read about so many years ago. (But I would also need to be satisfied that I would be using that same device in some capacity in 2020 too).

What I'm saying is that everything is relative. How much would you save on an 'open box' or 'refurbished' price in the next few weeks? Not enough for me to wait for if I wanted or needed the best router I can buy today.

(Why the next few weeks? Because by then, other products may be available and most certainly, the 'new' price will have fallen naturally too).

 

[doeboy]

I am also on the N66U ever since it was released and in my basement, where I spend most of my time online, is spotty and unreliable at times. That and it reached my bedroom, but the signal is weak and sometimes drops. I am looking to upgrade to the 88U or this one. I am going to keep it for years to come, so I don't mind making the purchase somewhat (the wife might mind though lol). I am looking for something more stable and more range compared to the N66U.

So with that in mind, does this router offer $100 worth of extra's compared to the 88U? or should the 88U be more than plenty to cover down for years to come?

 

[RMerlin]

I am also on the N66U ever since it was released and in my basement, where I spend most of my time online, is spotty and unreliable at times. That and it reached my bedroom, but the signal is weak and sometimes drops. I am looking to upgrade to the 88U or this one. I am going to keep it for years to come, so I don't mind making the purchase somewhat (the wife might mind though lol). I am looking for something more stable and more range compared to the N66U.

So with that in mind, does this router offer $100 worth of extra's compared to the 88U? or should the 88U be more than plenty to cover down for years to come?

The only differences are that, aside from having only 4 LAN ports, you get a second 5 GHz radio, to allow you to distribute your mobile devices. Only you can say if you have a need for two separate 5 GHz radio or not. You will get no range/coverage benefit with the AC5300 vs the AC88U.

 

[ssahnan]

I am also on the N66U ever since it was released and in my basement, where I spend most of my time online, is spotty and unreliable at times. That and it reached my bedroom, but the signal is weak and sometimes drops. I am looking to upgrade to the 88U or this one. I am going to keep it for years to come, so I don't mind making the purchase somewhat (the wife might mind though lol). I am looking for something more stable and more range compared to the N66U.

So with that in mind, does this router offer $100 worth of extra's compared to the 88U? or should the 88U be more than plenty to cover down for years to come?

Had a ac3200, when working, the smart connect three band system was convenient and noticeable. We have a ton of wifi stuff going on in the household and that's what the tri band stuff tries to address. The issue with the ac3200 and all other tri band band routers on the first generation was, the smart connect feature that managed it all was tremendously flakey. Most, myself included, eventually turned off the smart connect and went to separate ssid's for the bands Left you with a damn good router but one of the fundamental selling points of it was unusable. My hope is a year later, the second generation has addressed the smart connect feature better. If not, then this is probably going back. I'll know over next few days as I setup and test it out.


For you, I don't think one will have better reach over the other when comparing the ac88u vs the ac5300. The issue you've got to weigh is do you have enuf wifi clients to where you want to ease up network congestion by having an extra band to offload workload to. Otherwise, my guess is performance between the two will be relatively the same with regards to distance, throughput and so on. If the ac5300 doesn't impress, I will be trying the 88u and just forget about the tri band smart connect dream. I'll just get what I hope becomes the best dual band solution.

As I mentioned before, I did try the net gear second gen tri band, x8500. It's smart connect feature only links the 2 5ghz bands to a same id. The 2.4 by default is named something else. The ac3200 attempted to have all three bands as the same ssid.

 

[doeboy]

I don't use the lan ports at all right now. The modem and router are just sitting by themselves and everything is connected via wi-fi. I only have a few things on 5G like my desktop, TV and 2 consoles. I would have my iPhones connected, but its a weak signal going through the main floor to basement coming from the N66U. I have heard good things though from people who have upgraded from the N66U to the 88U about better coverage on both bands. Smart connect sounds cool, but its not needed if the 88U can do the job. I have about 20 devices connecting throughout the day off of the router. At night time I feel that the N66U can get a lil bogged down and I loose connection here and there. Why couldn't the 88U be tri-band lol. It would make my decision a lot easier lol

 

[ssahnan]

Well it's go time over here. A little comical spending the time to connect 8 antennas. I'll judge over time, quick thing I noticed is smart connect now has option of all three bands or just the two 5ghz bands.

 

[ssahnan]

I still won't be sold until it holds for a few days but so far this thing has been an absolute rock star so the excitement in me wanted to report back a little.

I've always been fighting for distance with routers because frankly I was always close to not needing a repeater and the multiple ssid headache that has with it. Plus with where the repeater had to go because of house configuration, Placement wasn't ideal to retain high speeds on the repeater so as new routers gave me more throughput closer to the reaches of where I needed it, I've felt I'm close enuf to keep trying but inevitably, the repeater always came back. Each year I would knock off of a few more feet with newer tech, but last year I didn't get anything better when going to the ac3200. The smart connect issues frankly made it a troublesome purchase. I should have returned it. This ac5300 bad boy not only got me the last 10-15 feet I wanted but I been surprised at the throughput at that distance. Going with simple iOS speed test app for now as frankly, my internet max is the upper limit of what I need as my nas is slower then that anyway and that's the source of file transfers for me.

So far in sticking to smart connect on all three bands, stock settings, default security settings. In a room where my ac3200 could barely give me 5-10 Mbps, I'm getting 35-50 so far, with a decent amount of stability to it as well. It seems to have enuf umph so far to knock out my dead spots completely as well, the 3200 did have spots it just couldn't keep stable at this going back to the repeater. I know power output is limited in these things now but it does seem to 'so far' have enuf of a marginal gain in distance to give me just the extra few feet I needed for total house coverage and the throughput it has at those distances are definitely, noticeably higher so far.

Only hiccup I had so far was it was an absolute pain in the butt to get connected to my nest devices. Have a few nest thermostats and 2 dropcams, one pro, other the latest nest branded one. They just hated the smart connect, would not connect at all until not only I turned it off but changed the ssid on each band. Once I figured that out and did it, the pro cam and thermostats stayed connected once smart connect was turned back on, the new nest cam still wouldn't connect. At this point I did get it going, not sure how exactly, was trial and error over and over again. I sort of expect it to go down again.

I think the test will be the smart connect switching when moving around. Let's see how it goes. But I really want this to work out as we have more then 40-50 devices that can connect either wifi or bridge/hard wired so having a device potentially capable of handling this load is something worth pursuing for me. I'd say at any given time, 15-20 devices connected via wifi if not more.

 

[Puppa]

I still won't be sold until it holds for a few days but so far this thing has been an absolute rock star so the excitement in me wanted to report back a little.

I've always been fighting for distance with routers because frankly I was always close to not needing a repeater and the multiple ssid headache that has with it. Plus with where the repeater had to go because of house configuration, Placement wasn't ideal to retain high speeds on the repeater so as new routers gave me more throughput closer to the reaches of where I needed it, I've felt I'm close enuf to keep trying but inevitably, the repeater always came back. Each year I would knock off of a few more feet with newer tech, but last year I didn't get anything better when going to the ac3200. The smart connect issues frankly made it a troublesome purchase. I should have returned it. This ac5300 bad boy not only got me the last 10-15 feet I wanted but I been surprised at the throughput at that distance. Going with simple iOS speed test app for now as frankly, my internet max is the upper limit of what I need as my nas is slower then that anyway and that's the source of file transfers for me.

So far in sticking to smart connect on all three bands, stock settings, default security settings. In a room where my ac3200 could barely give me 5-10 Mbps, I'm getting 35-50 so far, with a decent amount of stability to it as well. It seems to have enuf umph so far to knock out my dead spots completely as well, the 3200 did have spots it just couldn't keep stable at this going back to the repeater. I know power output is limited in these things now but it does seem to 'so far' have enuf of a marginal gain in distance to give me just the extra few feet I needed for total house coverage and the throughput it has at those distances are definitely, noticeably higher so far.

Only hiccup I had so far was it was an absolute pain in the butt to get connected to my nest devices. Have a few nest thermostats and 2 dropcams, one pro, other the latest nest branded one. They just hated the smart connect, would not connect at all until not only I turned it off but changed the ssid on each band. Once I figured that out and did it, the pro cam and thermostats stayed connected once smart connect was turned back on, the new nest cam still wouldn't connect. At this point I did get it going, not sure how exactly, was trial and error over and over again. I sort of expect it to go down again.

I think the test will be the smart connect switching when moving around. Let's see how it goes. But I really want this to work out as we have more then 40-50 devices that can connect either wifi or bridge/hard wired so having a device potentially capable of handling this load is something worth pursuing for me. I'd say at any given time, 15-20 devices connected via wifi if not more.

Not surprised that the Nest gave you some difficulties. If you really like Smart Connect, couldn't you just make a guest network to connect them and leave your private SSIDS all set the same? It's a little ironic that Google owns Nest and their OnHub will not even let you assign separate SSIDS to the band. Guest net worked like a charm for me on a different WiFi thermostat.

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[sfx2000]

Only hiccup I had so far was it was an absolute pain in the butt to get connected to my nest devices. Have a few nest thermostats and 2 dropcams, one pro, other the latest nest branded one. They just hated the smart connect, would not connect at all until not only I turned it off but changed the ssid on each band.

Makes me think that SmartConnect would be much more clever with a single 5GHz 4-stream AP/Radio, and two 2.4GHz radios - one 2 or 3 stream on the same SSID as the 5GHz for client band-steering, and a second single stream 2.4GHz low power radio on a unique SSID for the internet of stuff... and that low power radio could also be bluetooth 4.1/Zigbee perhaps...