ROG Rapture GT-AX6000 Router review – Is a non-mesh router worth $799.00?

A very good router is on the coronary heart of each community, within the case of excessive stage enterprise setups; doubtlessly a number of of them. However for house use, that’s overkill… We’ve checked out various low, mid and excessive finish routers at Ausdroid over the past couple of years. At the moment we’re having a look on the Asus GT-AX6000, a prime flight, Wi-Fi 6 router with all of the trimmings.

Up to now, I’ve had the pleasure of having fun with Republic of Avid gamers gear and when the GT-AX6000 was despatched over to make use of for testing, I had excessive expectations. There’s a lot to discover on the router, a lot of which is commonplace options so we’ll gloss over them, however the extra particular gaming and Asus particular options; we’ll delve into.

The bundle contents

The GT-AX6000 router arrived with one other evaluation unit (coming quickly…) and the delivery field was huge, however that’s as a result of compared to the router I used to be working this gadget is big. However other than the aesthetics, there are a number of good causes for that. The router is nicely protected throughout delivery in a tray surrounded by cardboard packaging with mushy plastics defending the router, energy brick and, dominantly recyclable supplies.

The router isn’t your typical NBN type router with a single WAN port and 4 community ports. It’s acquired 4 gigabit LAN ports plus two, 2.5GB LAN ports that may additionally function as WAN ports, each of which may function as 1GB WAN and combination connections.

On prime of this, there are two USB ports for connecting gadgets and drives that may cowl various wants comparable to Web file sharing, Samba shares, FTP, printer sharing, a obtain supervisor or perhaps a USB 4G stick for community failover. The 4, sure 4, exterior antennas look a bit on the market however do serve a objective relating to delivering Wi-Fi efficiency throughout the dual-band providing at constant speeds.

Setup: Fast, straightforward and spectacular

A number of years in the past, I upgraded my house community from an Adhoc mess of cables to a deliberate and structured community. This was to cut back reliance on — more and more congested — Wi-Fi for gadgets able to ethernet connection and to enhance the general efficiency.

One of many necessities, after I designed the community, was to make sure I may simply change routers, which got here into play right here. The WAN cable got here out of the previous router, as did the community swap feed and into the brand new. Add energy and it was time to arrange my NBN connection.

Once I loaded the setup web page — https://router.asus.com a common to Asus, straightforward to recollect method to entry y our router — on my PC, I used to be impressed to see that after I put my NBN connection particulars in, the router had detected the IP vary I beforehand used and already assigned it, in addition to my statically assigned IPs.

Different options: Routing and safety

As already talked about, there are numerous options on this router and a few are commonplace options so we’ll gloss over the run of the mill stuff like parental controls, IPv6 settings and firewall choices. However we are going to take a little bit of a better have a look at choices like AI Safety, the VPN setup, Site visitors Analyzer and community mapping.

Let’s begin with AI safety which has been created in partnership with Pattern Micro to guard your router and every thing behind it from malicious assaults. It begins by making some options on methods to enhance the safety of your community comparable to turning off disused options and potential assault vectors comparable to net entry to your router. As soon as enabled, different options comparable to malicious web site blocking, setup of intrusion prevention and stopping contaminated gadgets from turning into a part of a botnet are enabled.

There are a few excellent choices within the VPN stakes right here, the primary being to entry your house community through a VPN. In fact, that is the best approach to do that, not leaving ports open that may be scanned and attacked. Impressively although, this additionally comes with the choice to make use of a VPN supplier and be certain that your entire site visitors is routed by that VPN — with out configuring every gadget — on your total community. Hiding your on-line actions out of your ISP and the federal government, doubtlessly additionally opens further choices for leisure by firms like Netflix.

Parental controls are one other characteristic that’s come to be anticipated in house routers today, however many routers have it as a paid possibility. Asus, nevertheless, present the safety free of charge as a part of the providing which is a pleasant little bonus, notably with the granular controls out there.

Efficiency: Protection and consistency

For the overwhelming majority of customers, sometimes the bottleneck in accessing the Web is the speeds out there on NBN. With most routers able to dealing with a Gigabit NBN connection it’s really fairly tough to push routers to their limits. What is clear from our testing time with the GT-AX6000 is simply how a lot of a distinction a top quality Wi-Fi 6 — an vital improve — router with loads of processing energy makes.

For Aussies, this can be a router that can prime out your NBN connection earlier than your router begins to wrestle. The theoretical prime speeds at 5Ghz and a pair of.4Ghz are 4,084Mbps and 1,184Mbps respectively, however should you’re transferring information internally that’s solely half the story.

From an outright pace perspective: I used to be capable of persistently prime out my 100/40 NBN connection on both wi-fi or wired connections.

I already talked about the two.5Gbps ports that are vastly helpful should you’re working a NAS — that additionally has 2.5Gbps — in your inside community. This may enable a number of, excessive pace inside connections to your NAS which is able to make inside information switch much more time environment friendly. Maybe an improve that content material creators and streamers could want to look into, long run having network-based storage may enhance normal efficiency and scale back improve prices.

Initially, this can be a gaming router and this reveals that the primary ethernet port is prioritised for gaming. In case you’ve acquired a gaming PC or console, that is the port to plug it into. Site visitors to this port is prioritised, guaranteeing the very best gaming expertise. There’s additionally a characteristic within the router software program known as Recreation Increase which recognises and prioritises recreation information, which helps to minimise — I didn’t see a single one in testing — any potential for lag spikes.

No matter what my household and I threw at it, the GT-AX6000 met the fairly vital wants of my house community together with over 60 gadgets, 11 sensible audio system, telephones, tablets, laptops and IoT gadgets. This equates to downloads, loads of streaming, gaming and outbound connections throughout numerous the related gadgets.

Is there any draw back?

The value is unquestionably the largest detractor for lots of people. With loads of choices that present Wi-Fi 6 at a considerably decrease value, there are lots of customers who merely gained’t have a look at this prime finish of the routing shelf. So the fee alone is making a barrier to entry.

The opposite detractors are very a lot subjective since everybody’s preferences on aesthetics is completely different. I don’t thoughts the “on the market” look that ROG gadgets sometimes convey, they’ve a definite really feel about them however it’s clearly not for everybody. As a part of this, and the need with the uncooked energy of the router is the bodily dimension, being roughly twice the footprint of a fundamental house router.

So is $799.00 a good worth?

There’s rather a lot to contemplate right here as a result of there are completely customers who’ve networks that can profit from a router at this stage. The easy reply is, for most individuals there isn’t the worth in spending this a lot on a router.

It’s not low cost, so take into consideration whether or not you’re going to get worth from it and it’s positively not a refined gadget in presentation. You get a really spectacular gadget from a efficiency perspective with actually good wired connection choices and never simply fast, however persistently fast wi-fi connection.

There are easy and largely automated methods to get an excellent expertise for gaming with the extra peace of thoughts of community safety and, parental controls — free inclusion — for many who need to use them. The ultimate determination actually boils down as to if or not you’ll see a distinction with the GT-AX6000 and whether or not that distinction might be value $799.00

For my use case, throughout testing, I’ve seen elevated community efficiency and an enormous improve in Wi-Fi stability. However due to the design of my community, delivering gigabit wired connection the place it’s wanted, I haven’t seen big will increase in on-line gaming efficiency. I’d nonetheless say that the enhancements make it value contemplating, however it’s tough to suggest to others on the worth.

In case you want a router with really spectacular efficiency and customisation that doesn’t require community engineering data that is an impressive possibility. Avid gamers will see will increase in efficiency, notably if the first connection is wi-fi, and this may improve your inside community efficiency.