Review New In the Charts: ASUS RT-AX86U

[torstein]

I meant ask you to ask your ASUS contacts.

What he said and also, please will you?

 

[anthonyng5p]

I want to chime in here, but people reading these posts already have this idea. This is an amazing router. The 5 GHz performance is fantastic. I have a two-story home with a basement, and the router is installed in the front, top floor office. I can get excellent 5 GHz signal throughout most of the first and second floor. I replaced a Netgear EAX50 with the AX-86U, and the performance was clearly better. This is already evidenced from the chart. Also, I have to attest that the AImesh is also super handy; it is true, do NOT use range extension, but AImesh with WIFI6 is the way to go to reach even further. Regarding the software, I am super fickle with reliability and performance. I have never had an issue with the router since I purchased it in January, I have only ever rebooted it for maintenance, or when I needed to reconfigure wiring and disable the power. The 2.4 GHz performance is good, and provides the right coverage, and is about the same as the EAX50. I can get 940 Mbps LAN to WAN, although the latest software updates have given me problems on max throughput (posts suggest i need to disable some QoS features but I haven't gotten around to it yet).

 

[thiggins]

What he said and also, please will you?

I didn't mean to put Merlin on the spot. I think he's already weighed in with suggestions of where/how to check.

No security is perfect. WPA3 is better than WPA2, which is better than WPA which was better than WEP.

 

[RMerlin]

I would need a more precise question to ask than "Are ALL WPA3 security issues fixed?". I haven't been following the situation. Which specific security issue are you wondering about?

Also, there's a chance Asus might not want to publicly announce these kind of things, as they are security-related. I'm not aware of other manufacturers coming out and being open about it either.

 

[hornedfrog]

That sounds crazy, it defeats the whole purpose of having a certification-program, doesn't it? If no one is using it due to costs?

I wonder how I can find out if the issues with WPA3 have been adressed or not. Looking through Rmerlins changelog and Asus's own router changelogs mentions nothing of dragonblood or side-channel-leak attacks, yet it was adressed in december 2020 according to WFA and Mathy vanHoef (the guy behind dragonblood)

I called ASUS tech support, but the rep had no idea what I was talking about. I sent customer support an email instead, hopefully an engineer will get it and provide answers.

Do you know where I can find out if the issues has been fixed?

I would love to know this, too. Thanks.

 

[David Arnstein]

I am getting great performance and reliability with my two RT-AX86U routers. Apart from that, I really appreciate the small physical footprint. Vertical for the win!

 

[kantonburg]

I am getting great performance and reliability with my two RT-AX86U routers. Apart from that, I really appreciate the small physical footprint. Vertical for the win!

I'm on the hunt for one. Everyone is back ordered.

 

[Lazlo2019]

I'm on the hunt for one. Everyone is back ordered.

I bought one from Amazon yesterday for $279 yesterday. There was twelve left when I ordered in the AM. By 3pm 8(price shot up to $384) as of now one left at $309. Direct from ASUS

 

[kantonburg]

I bought one from Amazon yesterday for $279 yesterday. There was twelve left when I ordered in the AM. By 3pm 8(price shot up to $384) as of now one left at $309. Direct from ASUS

I'm going to have to keep checking. It's $350 now. I'll get one at $279 if I can find it.

 

[kantonburg]

I snagged one from B&H Photo. They're still in stock at $279 if anyone wants to grab one.

 

[Lazlo2019]

I'm going to have to keep checking. It's $350 now. I'll get one at $279 if I can find it.

In stock as of this moment.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1584970-REG/asus_rt_ax86u_ax5700_dual_band_wifi.html

 

[hornedfrog]

Looks like a great deal where everyone else has really raised the price.

 

[yamin2000]

what the max speed while QOS active ?
i have tp-link archer c4000 and i get 100 mbps,does all the routers max speed 100 mbps while qos active ?
and does ax86u consider upgrade ?

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[RMerlin]

An RT-AX86U should be able to reach 300-350 Mbps with Traditional QoS enabled, close to 900 Mbps with Adaptive QoS enabled.

It all depends on your usage pattern (i.e. how many concurrent connections).

 

[SAL9K]

About the SNB test charts... any insights as to why the ax86u ranks/performs so poorly on routing and multi-band latency testing? Is this a buffer-bloat issue, where the ax86u wasn't yet optimized (or can't be) to handle the WAN-to-LAN, 2.5-to-1 GbE transition, that perhaps has been resolved with updated f/w, since the SNB tests were posted way back in 6/2021.

 

[thiggins]

About the SNB test charts... any insights as to why the ax86u ranks/performs so poorly on routing and multi-band latency testing? Is this a buffer-bloat issue, where the ax86u wasn't yet optimized (or can't be) to handle the WAN-to-LAN, 2.5-to-1 GbE transition, that perhaps has been resolved with updated f/w, since the SNB tests were posted way back in 6/2021.

I would have to go back and dig into the data. Since testing was done many firmware revisions ago, I would not use them as the basis to rule out buying the router today.

 

[Tech9]

any insights as to why the ax86u ranks/performs so poorly

@SAL9K, with up to 400Mbps ISP in a smaller area with mostly AC 2-stream clients you won't "see" any big differences in user experience between much older RT-AC68U and newer RT-AX86U, no matter what the numbers in charts are showing and what some people are telling you. I currently have 2x Asus routers to play with - RT-AC86U and RT-AX86U and both perform exactly the same as range and speed. See how many other Asus routers I had recently in my collection. I did test every single one of them in real life conditions and found RT-AX88U the best in range, followed by RT-AC5300 (with its single working radio on my unit). You have to test what works better in your environment. For me RT-AX86U is just a good router for the price.

 

[SAL9K]

I've had the ax86u for over a year, it's been an excellent router, rock solid and great 5G range and speeds.

The SNB testing has the ax86u at the top (or near the top) of almost all of the WiFi testing. What jumped out to me was, although it has very good throughput results, the ax86u's latency scores are all at the bottom of the SNB tested 11-router pack ,which I'm having a hard time wrapping my mind around. It's created a cognitive dissonance of sorts, high throughput scores, but also low latency scores (or high latency times)?

 

[Tech9]

Just continue using it and don't get stressed by the numbers.

 

[SAL9K]

Oh, believe me, I'm super happy with it. Just trying to understand the test results, knowledge is (purchasing) power.

EDIT: I should add that the SNB test-bed is pretty awesome, and I appreciate all the hard work that must have gone into producing the test results.