ASUS RT-AC86U Dual Band AC2900 Wireless Router Reviewed

[heidarren]

More interesting is, channel 44 has more power than channel 36

 

[heidarren]

So I think if you wanna do a review, better bring the best out of the device before doing any test, it’s ain’t fair to put it at a lower side to do comparison

 

[heidarren]

This is R7800 FCC report, you can see it has almost the same power between high and low channel, so if we do a comparison between it and the AC86U, it’s like 230mW vs 995mW

It’s better to do it at channel 157, then it will be 999mW vs 957mW, and see who perform better

 

[Grisu]

What are they doing in Taiwan???

So we in EU wont get any good channel as 149 to 165 is blocked in our devices!!!

 

[heidarren]

Ops, my mistake, the AC86U is actually 658mW in lower channel, but still it’s much lower than the R7800

 

[heidarren]

What are they doing in Taiwan???

So we in EU wont get any good channel as 149 to 165 is blocked in our devices!!!

If you are using iOS devices, you should have minor problem because I remember their antennas design love channel 100~112, read it from a review, not sure if it’s true

 

[CriticJay]

View attachment 14380
Found this FCC report, showed AC86U has actually much more power in high channel

This is hardly news. We already know from various posts/threads on this forum that the "2 digit channels" have power restrictions due to FCC. 3 digit channels like 149, have no restrictions.

 

[heidarren]

This is hardly news. We already know from various posts/threads on this forum that the "2 digit channels" have power restrictions due to FCC. 3 digit channels like 149, have no restrictions.

Yes, it’s a well known fact, but FCC has actually allowed lower channel to have the same power limit with high channel, not sure why Asus still limit it.

But it’s not what I try to claim, i wanna say is better review it with high channel especially if it contains some comparison, due to R7800 has advantages in low channel

 

[Grisu]

This is hardly news. We already know from various posts/threads on this forum that the "2 digit channels" have power restrictions due to FCC. 3 digit channels like 149, have no restrictions.

Exactly thats the problem: It is NOT due to FCC, its only because Asus is extremly lazy and ignoring everything!
FCC is the same for Asus as it is for other vendors!

If you are using iOS devices, you should have minor problem because I remember their antennas design love channel 100~112, read it from a review, not sure if it’s true

Sorry, we dont have any 'bitten into' products ...

 

[heidarren]

As for R7800, I’ve found a way to boost the WiFi signal

As you can see, even in the same channel (I use Channel 44), enabling HT160 will actually boost the output power to higher, from my personal test, I’m using iPad Pro 10.5, using Airport Utility, my result shows that my signal boosted from -46dBm to -40dBm when HT160 is enabled.

Many reviewers may pointed out that no benefit gains from HT160 for this unit but what I think is they might using high channel as they knew high channel is always best, NO, at least for this unit, a big NO! Switching from HT80 to HT160 in low channel did really give me a boost, try it out and you will see

 

[doczenith1]

I'm curious about these FCC values. Are these the max values that the router supports or is capable of producing? If so that may not be max power that the router is outputting in the region where it is operating. If I'm not mistaken the output power is limited by the region. In this image that I found it appears that in the USA the lower channels and the higher channels have the same output power limit.

 

[maxbraketorque]

It is true that UNI-1 and UNI-3 now have the same tx power limit in the USA, but my experience for the AC86U and AC68U is that UNI-3 has better range than UNI-1, and within the two bands, certain channels have better range than others even when operating in 80 MHz channel width. The latter aspect is rather interesting because of course 80 MHz band width requires all four available channels in the band, so that means the total power must vary with the control channel.

 

[sfx2000]

Keep in mind that with FCC and power limits - newer AP's might bump up the power, but many clients are still in the 16 to 18 dB range, esp. smartphones, so more power doesn't necessarily equate to better performance...

Clients generally rule the roost - so AP location is very critical for getting the best performance, and this is why the slider to reduce power on many AP's is there.

 

[maxbraketorque]

Keep in mind that with FCC and power limits - newer AP's might bump up the power, but many clients are still in the 16 to 18 dB range, esp. smartphones, so more power doesn't necessarily equate to better performance...

Clients generally rule the roost - so AP location is very critical for getting the best performance, and this is why the slider to reduce power on many AP's is there.

I imagine that the 250 mW limit for clients is partly or maybe fully responsible for why the performance difference between UNI-1 and UNI-3 is relatively small compare to the indicated tx power difference.

 

[dlandiss]

Keep in mind that with FCC and power limits - newer AP's might bump up the power, but many clients are still in the 16 to 18 dB range, esp. smartphones, so more power doesn't necessarily equate to better performance...

Partially softening that blow is that in most cases less bandwidth is required upstream, so reduced upload bandwidth due to weaker signal strength is less critical than it might seem at first.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Here I made a table of supported WiFi channels for different regions of chinese version RT-AC68U with changeable region:

@Grisu I think that's a typo. Did you mean to say RT-AC86U?

 

[Grisu]

@Grisu I think that's a typo. Did you mean to say RT-AC86U?

Thank you very much (little dyslexic sometimes is dragons fashion), corrected and made small bandwith complement for 80MHz.

 

[glimerman]

new problem found with this first it does not get full speed on my desktop after hours and hours just gave up on it . now updated my firmware to asus newest 3.0.0.4.384_32797 and now my qos bandwith limiter stoped working . i think it is time to try merlin what one should i run on this router? can someone point me to the right download file for my ac86u . my first asus router worked flawless this one has been nothing but a huge pain i love all the fancy stuff it has but half don't work right

 

[glimerman]

update figured out the trouble it after useing some devices and seeing it work and others not i figured it out its ipv6 when i disable that bandwith limiter works perfect . can any one let me know if ipv6 bandwith limiter works on merlin ? thank you very much

 

[Grisu]

There has been added a new wifi-region Russia with latest firmware 384.45149 or merlin 384.9.
For me it seems to be same as EU setting.