So do not many people like the AC 2400 or 3200?

[RedBatman89]

I have been reading the reviews on Amazon and from what I can tell is either these people can't set up a router properly or that it wasn't for what they hoped for.

I mean nothing is Perfect, while I may sometimes get issues with my RT-68U I still prefer it over my old EA4500 and I really like how in depth the software is too.

What are peoples thoughts here on the new ASUS routers?

 

[sentinelvdx]

I have been reading the reviews on Amazon and from what I can tell is either these people can't set up a router properly or that it wasn't for what they hoped for.

I mean nothing is Perfect, while I may sometimes get issues with my RT-68U I still prefer it over my old EA4500 and I really like how in depth the software is too.

What are peoples thoughts here on the new ASUS routers?

In my case I love them... I currently have an N66U and an AC87U and both are really powerful, with lots of features and way more stable than the linksys I had before.
Also with Merlin's firmware these ones works amazingly

 

[LoneWolf]

I am one of the people who has had a relatively stable experience with my RT-AC87R after the first couple of firmware updates. Starting with .2769 firmware, I have had no major issues.

That said, there are enough people out there that have had issues that I cannot discount them. Probably the most noted issue is that people have complained of inconsistent performance on the 5GHz band -for some, it disappears, for some it drops connection. There is widespread speculation that it could be a firmware issue, or a temperature issue caused by inconsistent quality control of the product. In my case, I have never had temperature issues (having periodically checked by running checks from the router command-line); this could explain why I've not had recent issues. Early on, I did have some of the 5GHz dropout issues people mentioned, but it was resolved with firmware.

I think there's always some risk of being on the bleeding edge. The AC 3200 product is extremely bleeding edge, and the AC 2400 is relatively new (though out long enough that a consumer should expect stability by now) and the Quantenna radio it uses is a young product. Also, these are pretty advanced units; they have features far in excess of your average cheap router, such as gateway antivirus, VPN, and dual-WAN, making them fairly complex products, enough that I wouldn't purchase one for someone not wishing to tinker at least a little. Finally, 802.11AC is still pretty new in the wireless world. It took awhile for previous wireless standards to fully mature, and the same applies here.

I don't think people dislike the products as much as they dislike the issues they may be experiencing on a product that has a high enough cost that it begins to overlap with small-business products. When a router costs $250-300, you expect more from it, and plenty of people have had an uneven experience.

 

[jerry6]

of all the routers I have gone through the RT AC-3200 is the best so far , great connection rate , reaches spots nothing else has in my house , blazing fast transfers of large files , all around worth it . I do not use any smart connect though , so no comment on that .

 

[dlandon]

of all the routers I have gone through the RT AC-3200 is the best so far , great connection rate , reaches spots nothing else has in my house , blazing fast transfers of large files , all around worth it . I do not use any smart connect though , so no comment on that .

I agree. I moved to the ASUS AC3200 router from a Netgear R7000 and the ASUS has better range, overall speed, and firmware stability. I am using Smart Connect and have adjusted the settings so it works well for my environment.

I like all the features in the ASUS firmware and even though there are a few issues, ASUS is far ahead of Netgear when it comes to firmware. The Netgear R7000 is a good router, but Netgear is still struggling to get a stable firmware on the R7000. The last straw for me was a firmware update that killed the Internet responsiveness and Netgear's only answer to issues - reset to factory defaults and re-enter settings, even after I told them I already did that.

I think I convinced Netgear to perform a factory reset automatically whenever firmware is updated to minimize these issues if it is that important to reset after a firmware update. They called me and said they would implement that in a later firmware.

 

[microchip]

I agree. I moved to the ASUS AC3200 router from a Netgear R7000 and the ASUS has better range, overall speed, and firmware stability. I am using Smart Connect and have adjusted the settings so it works well for my environment.

I like all the features in the ASUS firmware and even though there are a few issues, ASUS is far ahead of Netgear when it comes to firmware. The Netgear R7000 is a good router, but Netgear is still struggling to get a stable firmware on the R7000. The last straw for me was a firmware update that killed the Internet responsiveness and Netgear's only answer to issues - reset to factory defaults and re-enter settings, even after I told them I already did that.

I think I convinced Netgear to perform a factory reset automatically whenever firmware is updated to minimize these issues if it is that important to reset after a firmware update. They called me and said they would implement that in a later firmware.

I don't agree. I have a R7000 since 3 weeks and stability for me is the same as my AC66U. I'm currently on my 2nd firmware on the R7000 and it's been up for 6 days now without a single glitch

While I appreciate all the options offered by the ASUS FW, I hardly make use of them. I don't want to turn a router with limited resources into a full blown computer serving VPN, SSH, DLNA and what not. There are far better solutions for these

 

[Stephen]

In my case I love them... I currently have an N66U and an AC87U and both are really powerful, with lots of features and way more stable than the linksys I had before.
Also with Merlin's firmware these ones works amazingly

From your experience, how do the N66U and the AC87U compare in range?

 

[dlandon]

I don't agree. I have a R7000 since 3 weeks and stability for me is the same as my AC66U. I'm currently on my 2nd firmware on the R7000 and it's been up for 6 days now without a single glitch

While I appreciate all the options offered by the ASUS FW, I hardly make use of them. I don't want to turn a router with limited resources into a full blown computer serving VPN, SSH, DLNA and what not. There are far better solutions for these

I understand. I did not intend to start a dog fight. My dog is not in this fight. The R7000 is a good router - it just didn't work well for me. The latest firmware has probably solved a lot of issues. The firmware previous was so bad they had to pull it. I moved on before the latest firmware was released.

The AC3200 may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it works very well for me. I don't use all the features in the AC3200, but I like the traffic monitoring and QoS.

 

[RMerlin]

Netgear, Asus, D-Link... To be honest, it's all the same thing when it comes to wireless reliability. If you buy the latest product from any manufacturer, it's usually based on new technology that hasn't been as extensively tested as the previous ones. Wireless is hard to FULLY get right, because it involves dealing with external sources of interference, and also compatibility with a lot of different types of wireless cards and antennas, not always running up-to-date drivers (as laptop manufacturers rarely bother to update these on their website).

The issue became more prevalent when wireless started to become one huge experimental farm with the addition of 802.11ac. A lot of optional features might or might not be implemented, and when they are, they aren't always fully tested. Broadcom's band-steering technology as used by the R8000 and RT-AC3200 is just the latest one.

That's why products that are labelled as "business class" tend to use what appears to be "old technology". The home/SOHO market tends to provide a nice set of "lab rats" for testing new technology, and assisting (...) in debugging it. Once it reaches a sufficiently stable state, only then they start appearing in business class products.

The bottom line isn't to pay a premium to go with business class products, unlike what some people claim. Just get a SOHO product from a previous generation, and you should be good.

Getting those latest product is fine, provided you are willing to take the risk, and accept the fact that you might need to spend quite some time trying to get it to work right. If you want a "plug and forget" type of device, best you go for an older, more mature product.

Tim often preached about this in the past, how people buying bleeding edge products should expect to... bleed. It's not the fault of one singular manufacturer, it's a widespread problem.

 

[Stephen]

Netgear, Asus, D-Link... To be honest, it's all the same thing when it comes to wireless reliability. If you buy the latest product from any manufacturer, it's usually based on new technology that hasn't been as extensively tested as the previous ones. Wireless is hard to FULLY get right, because it involves dealing with external sources of interference, and also compatibility with a lot of different types of wireless cards and antennas, not always running up-to-date drivers (as laptop manufacturers rarely bother to update these on their website).

The issue became more prevalent when wireless started to become one huge experimental farm with the addition of 802.11ac. A lot of optional features might or might not be implemented, and when they are, they aren't always fully tested. Broadcom's band-steering technology as used by the R8000 and RT-AC3200 is just the latest one.

That's why products that are labelled as "business class" tend to use what appears to be "old technology". The home/SOHO market tends to provide a nice set of "lab rats" for testing new technology, and assisting (...) in debugging it. Once it reaches a sufficiently stable state, only then they start appearing in business class products.

The bottom line isn't to pay a premium to go with business class products, unlike what some people claim. Just get a SOHO product from a previous generation, and you should be good.

Getting those latest product is fine, provided you are willing to take the risk, and accept the fact that you might need to spend quite some time trying to get it to work right. If you want a "plug and forget" type of device, best you go for an older, more mature product.

Tim often preached about this in the past, how people buying bleeding edge products should expect to... bleed. It's not the fault of one singular manufacturer, it's a widespread problem.

I am testing Windows 10TP, along with lots of others. The forums are full of people who installed it on their production computer in spite of all the warnings, and who are now bashing Microsoft because they have issues. I realize bleeding edge retail routers are not the same as beta testing Windows. But I fear your and Tim's preaching is not being heard by a number of people.

 

[jerry6]

I don't agree. I have a R7000 since 3 weeks and stability for me is the same as my AC66U. I'm currently on my 2nd firmware on the R7000 and it's been up for 6 days now without a single glitch

While I appreciate all the options offered by the ASUS FW, I hardly make use of them. I don't want to turn a router with limited resources into a full blown computer serving VPN, SSH, DLNA and what not. There are far better solutions for these

Only trouble I've had with Netgear and linksys is they drop fw updates after they come out with a new revised hardware , netgear 3700 v1 and linksys wrt 600n v1 , both eol after a short time , my Asus wrt n-16 bought in 2009 is STILL supported , the previous 2 lost support 4 years ago ! I prefer companies that stand behind and support their products

 

[microchip]

Only trouble I've had with Netgear and linksys is they drop fw updates after they come out with a new revised hardware , netgear 3700 v1 and linksys wrt 600n v1 , both eol after a short time , my Asus wrt n-16 bought in 2009 is STILL supported , the previous 2 lost support 4 years ago ! I prefer companies that stand behind and support their products

I know from an insider source that NETGEAR is committed to supporting their "new" R7000 and up routers. Was he telling the truth? That I don't know but I certainly hope so as the R series are very decent hardware

NETGEAR has released the R7500 and R8000 but the R7000 is still getting new updates, they just released one a week or so ago

This is my first NETGEAR device and so far I'm happy with it and the support I got for a few minor issues I had

 

[RedBatman89]

Well it's nice to know that people like the new routers but any other complaints about them or Netgear?

 

[dfran1]

Oh where to begin.........
the best router I ever had was the rt-ac66r.

the rt-ac68r well, 5GHz is totally useless (range wise), and USB sucked big time, otherwise 2.4GHz band was great.

the rt-ac87r, lets create the list
THE BAD
1. WIFI drops on 5GHz band like crazy (tho disabling beamforming may fix it)
2. WIFI to LAN device control is intermittent at best, but may be due to #1 above
3. Anywhere from 2-24 hours (depending on your ISP), you will get game lag. until you reboot.
4. The DNLA server will just drop, and when you try to find it its gone, until you reboot
5. You will always be disappointed when new firmware comes out and claims everything (or even something's) got fixed and when you install it, its the same crap.
6. You will never feel good about the price you paid for it.

THE GOOD
1. WIFI range is great on both bands, tho 5GHz could be better.
2. USB works, noway near the speed as USB on your computer though.
3. You can install other firmware (dd-wrt) and most problems go away.
4 You save on tax, from the interest in the bank you would have had to claim. (though not much at all)

Would I buy it again, at this point in time NO, but what merlin stated above does hold true.

 

[got_milk]

I've owned an RT-AC87U for a couple of months now, upgrading from an RT-N66U which was a brand new product when I bought it.

I feel as if I'm in the group of people that don't really have any issues anymore - 5GHz is rock solid for me on the latest firmware and default settings (with Apple devices thrown in the mix as well). I do plenty of VPN and SSH connections with no dropping issues and lots of gaming with absolutely no issues with lag whatsoever.

I would agree that these latest and greatest routers are quite expensive but compared to similar offerings from Linksys, D-Link and Netgear, Asus offers a lot more functionality for a similar price. One of the biggest selling points on the RT-AC87U for me is Adaptive QoS - bandwidth here is fairly limited and it's always been a struggle finding the right balance in traditional quality of service implementations. I think Adaptive QoS is simply an amazing addition - without any additional configuration beyond providing the bandwidth available to me it has done an amazing job allocating bandwidth even when the line is saturated, and it's very welcoming to be able to play games or make VoIP calls without any interruptions whatsoever if somebody starts a BitTorrent download on another machine.

 

[RedBatman89]

I have been also hearing a lot of complaints on beamforming. Is it bad to enable that on routers now?

 

[dfran1]

I have been also hearing a lot of complaints on beamforming. Is it bad to enable that on routers now?

I can't speak for anything but the 87 , but on the 87 it's best off for now.

 

[RMerlin]

I have been also hearing a lot of complaints on beamforming. Is it bad to enable that on routers now?

As with any particular wifi technology, it's situational. Some clients are not compatible, some others will benefit from it, and for others it won't make any difference at all.

 

[sm00thpapa]

From what I have read and from reviews these 2 new routers are just out to steal your money. Stay with a 1900AC router for at least another 1 or 2 years before upgrading to anything new. On the AC3200 routers the so called band steering is broke.

 

[doubleroll]

I had both the Netgear 8000 and Asus 87R and returned both within a week and went back to my AC66R. Mostly for the reasons already posted on here.