Asus RT-AC68U or Asus RT-AC87U

[avi68]

Hi all,

I have had my Asus rt-n66u for a couple of years now and just recently it has stopped working. After hours and hours of fault finding, it looks like something inside has gone faulty as it keeps dropping internet connections to both WAN and WLAN clients. Trust me Ive done everything from changing cables to resetting the router.

Anyway I'm looking to buy another router, I was first looking at the Asus rt-ac3200 but when reading about the tri-band technology it didnt look like it was worth spending over £200 on one as all it does is just "ease" the load of the 5ghz band? So I started to look at mid ranged routers and have narrowed it down to 2 routers the AC68U or AC87U.

Looking through reviews the AC68U seems better but the AC87U has a better spec overall. There is a £40/50 difference between the two.

My question is which one should I go for and the reason why?

EDIT: I forgot to add Im looking for reliability, good wireless range and good wireless speed

Many thanks.

 

[joegreat]

Looking through reviews the AC68U seems better but the AC87U has a better spec overall. There is a £40/50 difference between the two.

My suggestion can be found here (all-tough it was related to the AC88U discussion).

And I am more then happy with the AC87U as my main router (see footer)!

 

[PolarBear]

Looking through reviews the AC68U seems better but the AC87U has a better spec overall. There is a £40/50 difference between the two.

My question is which one should I go for and the reason why?

EDIT: I forgot to add Im looking for reliability, good wireless range and good wireless speed

Many thanks.

General concesus on here seems to be that the RT-AC68U is a solid reliable performer, especially with the Merlin 378.56_2 build.

For some users, the RT-AC87U seems to work ok, but others report lots of problems, some of which seem to be related to the Quantenna chip used for the 5GHz radio. Other manufacturers seem also to have had problems with the Quantenna chip, and AFAIK the latest Asus routers no longer use it.

 

[avi68]

Thank you for your replies.

Polarbear that is interesting, I was not aware of that, thank you for pointing that out.

I went ahead and bought the ac68u due to excellent expert reviews, the excellent user reviews and the overall performance in reports.

 

[MarkyPancake]

I had an N66U and got an AC68U a few months ago and performance wise it's working out better with handling our broadband across multiple devices. The N66U was no slouch, but everything is snappier with the AC68U. The wireless range has remained the same, so still weak in the places it was weak with the N66U.

 

[mike2h]

either go with the 68 or step up to the 3100. avoid the 87- way to many reported issues which I have personal exp with. my 68 was great and no issues.