Asus RT-N53??

[Tacoboy]

Asus RT-N53 what is the current feeling on the router, good or bad or reliability and such?

 

[NXIL]

No Reviews, does not seem popular

Not much info out there about this router--no real formal reviews I could find except this one, which is a bit suspect:

http://www.tested.com/forums/rip-an...w-solid-affordable-dual-band-wireless-router/

This review was cc:'d here by a member some months ago:

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=6971

At Amazon: 65 reviews
5 star: 26
4 star: 16
3 star: 8
2 star: 7
1 star: 8

No sales rank is given for the N53, comparing it to sales of other routers on Amazon.....not good, this means it did not crack the top 100, even at a relatively low price.

Bestselling routers at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/300189/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_e_1_4_last

In comparison, the RT-N56: 741 reviews, 550 are 4 and 5 star. #9 selling router on Amazon.

RT-N66: 232, ~190 4 and 5 star. #7 selling router on Amazon.

At Newegg: ouch.

46 reviews, heavily weighted toward the one star end (20% five star, 35% one star....and you have to give it at least one.) "Buggy firmware, loss of 5Ghz band, loss of settings", etc.

Poor Jeremy of Asus is right in there getting pummeled and staying positive and gracious. Jeremy, if you see torches outside your window: run away. They are not there trick or treating.

Open firmware for the RT-N53: the only place I could find mention of it was on DD-WRT's forums, and, well:

Posted: Wed May 23, 2012 5:58 pm
The RT-N53 is a piece of crap router that Asus never should have brought into their portfolio and the dd-wrt port for it is not complete.


http://www.dd-wrt.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=155055&highlight=rtn53

There is DD-WRT firmware for it, but the 5Ghz band does not work, and there is little or no discussion of this router in the DDWRT forums.

From a simple and cursory search: I could find no Tomato or OpenWRT support for this unit. That is not a good sign.

This router has been out for a year or more, and no reputable site has done a real field test/review on it, from what I can find--or, more concerning: they did test it, and it did so poorly that no one wanted to say anything about it.

Bottom line: seems there are too many other options in this router's price range that are better. I think this was one of Asus's first dual band routers? Seems it may have been a learning experience.

Based on Amazon/Newegg reviews, seems that there are better routers on the market, even in its price range, than this unit.

 

[Asmodian]

I just replaced my RT-N53 with a RT-AC66U. I never used any 3rd party firmware on the RT-N53 but it was faster than my very old and cheap router for wired (it had hardware NAT at least) and the 2.4Ghz wifi worked well. The 5GHz looked like it might work but I was unable to get my iPad3 to actually use it. The iPad would connect to it on 5Ghz but it was very slow and dropped a lot. The RT-AC66U's 5Ghz wifi is much better.

I had the newest firmware from Asus on the N53 as of October 1st, 2012.

Not a stong recomendation but minus 5Ghz it did work very well for me for about a year.

 

[stevech]

... (it had hardware NAT at least) ...

What's hardware NAT?