Synology RT6600ax review — It comes well-prepared

In mid-Might, I wrote a information article about Synology RT6600ax, together with some featured capabilities such because the SRM 1.3, new {hardware}, community safety and cellular companion app. Synology was type sufficient to supply a chance to assessment this extremely anticipated wi-fi router just lately made accessible to the Australian market. Click on right here to leap on to the sooner article in the event you’d like a fast recap. It has been three weeks since my hands-on and I can’t wait to share my expertise on this system with you.

Synology is well-known for its Community Connected Storage (NAS) options. In the previous couple of years, they’ve began to enter the wi-fi router market and have achieved a reasonably good fame from RT1900ac, RT2600ac, and MR2200ac with the assist of mesh Wi-Fi. Though Synology remains to be new on this market, they aren’t far behind in satisfying customers with dependable merchandise.

The design of the retail package deal completely fits my style. I prefer it when issues are saved easy. There aren’t too many bells and whistles on the packaging, and it’s fairly according to the pattern of environmental safety. An official two-year restricted {hardware} guarantee can be famous on the package deal. Offered within the field is our protagonist right now – RT6600ax, with an Australian energy adapter, a class 5e ethernet cable (RJ-45) and a person handbook.

Synology RT6600ax equips with the next {hardware} specs:

CPU	Quad-core 1.8 GHz
{Hardware} Acceleration Engine	Layer 4 / Layer 7
Reminiscence	1 GB DDR3
Antenna Sort	4×4 MIMO Omni-directional high-gain dipole (5GHz) 2×2 MIMO Omni-directional high-gain dipole (2.4GHz / 5GHz)
LAN Port	Gigabit (RJ-45) x 3 (Twin WAN) 2.5GbE (RJ-45) x 1
WAN Port	Gigabit (RJ-45) x 1 2.5 GbE (RJ-45) x 1 (Twin WAN)
Exterior Ports	USB 3.2 Gen 1 x 1 (5V, 0.9A energy output)
IEEE 802.11ax	IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax 5GHz-1: 4800Mbps 5GHz-2: 1200Mbps 2.4GHz: 600Mbps 4×4 160MHz Simultaneous tri-band Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi Encryption	WPA/WPA2-Private, WPA/WPA2-Enterprise, WPA2/WPA3-Private, WPA3-Private/Enterprise, Wi-Fi Enhanced Open (OWE)
Dimension (Top x Width x Depth)	175 mm x 320 mm x 200 mm
Weight	1.6 kg
Energy Consumption	11.11 W (Entry) 6.77 W (Idle)
Packaging Content material	Fundamental Unit X 1 AC Energy Adapter X 1 RJ-45 LAN Cable X 1 Fast Set up Information X 1

The Synology Router Supervisor (SRM) was derived from the DiskStation Supervisor (DSM). If you’re a person of their NAS merchandise, SRM shall be very acquainted to you – it seems like a ‘deluxe model’ of DSM that comes with an entire bunch of additional options for community and safety. I used to be impressed by how easy the Web is ready up by the SRM interface. Frankly, I don’t assume anybody would ever want the person handbook to arrange this router. When connecting to the manufacturing unit pre-set SSID with a given password, you instantly have entry to the initialization web page. The steps had been tremendous simple, and it took lower than 5 minutes for me to get entry to the Web.

How simple was it?
My ten-year-old, who’s non-tech savvy, might do it for me with out studying the directions.

The expertise with SRM is phenomenal. Model 1.3 is at the moment solely appropriate with RT6600ax and shall be supported on RT2600ac and MR2200ac later in 2022. I’m accustomed to person interfaces made by Asus, TP-Hyperlink and Netgear (Orbi), however none of those presents an in depth working expertise in comparison with SRM.

Customers can intuitively configure Web, wi-fi and native community settings by SRM, regulate and monitor community visitors, handle exterior USB storage units and printers, and entry recordsdata by Win/Mac, FTP and WebDAV companies. After all, with SRM, you possibly can safe your community connection in numerous methods. In the event you want different options, corresponding to VPN, or Menace Prevention, you are able to do it by downloading and putting in the corresponding add-on package deal.

I’ve acquired two system updates throughout my use during the last month. I didn’t trouble to test the changelogs, however the exercise of ongoing updates one way or the other constructs a way of safety for me as an end-user. Every replace took 3mins earlier than it went again on-line.

Safety Advisor

Safety Advisor is an embedded safety software in SRM that scans your system settings. This software will make suggestions primarily based on the scanning end result to ship full safety to your community setting.

Menace Prevention

Menace Prevention is an non-compulsory function that may be downloaded from the official Package deal Centre. This software dynamically guards the community safety of RT6600ax and any linked units. To be trustworthy, I do assume Synology ought to make it a pre-installed software to realize a a lot safer community setting. Why is that? My screenshot under will present you an ideal clarification.

Secure Entry

Secure Entry shields your community and offers you an choice to handle the linked units. Two of the star options that I want to discuss right now are user-profiles and community safety.

Person Profile

That is more likely to be my most needed function when contemplating a router. There was an rising variety of on-line classes with college training because the outbreak of COVID-19. Since these on-line classes had been inevitable and my daughter wanted to make use of the Web for 3 hours a day at a minimal, I’ve very a lot struggled to safe a protected and dependable on-line setting for her. You understand, it’s unimaginable to ask the dad and mom to maintain their eyes on their youngsters all day lengthy. The person profile is an ideal resolution to this puzzle.

As ‘the IT man’ at house, I can see not solely the utilization of the Web by every person but additionally the variety of makes an attempt a person made for unallowed entry. That is most likely the function that I’d reward essentially the most. I can now set a restrict for my youngster about when she can have entry to the Web and robotically blocks the assets that I wouldn’t permit her to discover, corresponding to stay chat, relationship, playing, grownup and violence.

Community Safety

It is a safety function offered beneath the Secure Entry module. Your native community and linked units are beneath safety from this function. By enabling the Menace Intelligence database and Google Secure Shopping (this requires a personal API), which get up to date often, RT6600ax receives the potential of blocking intrusions, dangerous web sites, phishing, and malware with an update-to-date safety database.

Overview

I’ve had some expertise utilizing the telephone app with Netgear Orbi previously. However I need to say, DS Router outperforms it in all features, from the standing of the system and community to the extent of configurations {that a} person can do by way of a cellular platform. In my trustworthy opinion, the existence of the DS Router makes RT6600ax a whole resolution.

System Checklist

You may view all subordinated units, whether or not they’re on-line or offline. From right here, customers can management the Web entry for every system and even set the precedence of the Web entry.

Secure Entry

The person interface on a web-based SRM is kind of intuitive, however with DS Router, this expertise is close to good in my eyes.

Degree of Controls

That is the part the place it makes the DS Router stand out from the gang. Normally, a companion app for a wi-fi router would solely present basic options, however Synology endeavours to ship an expertise with minimal compromise on DS Router 2.0. In DS Router, customers can edit the Wi-Fi and select to create or delete an SSID. WPS perform could be triggered instantly from the cellular app as an alternative of bodily urgent the button. For the Web, you possibly can test the standing and monitor the visitors in real-time for all of the units which are consuming the community bandwidth.

It’s also doable to configure the VPN entry and port forwarding out of your cellular. By way of safety, modifications to firewall and auto-block guidelines could be made instantly with DS Router. Moreover, router info could be examined, such because the uptime, CPU & reminiscence utilization, management of LED on the router and system model data by the app. Final however not least, when an replace is accessible, SRM can push the notification to you by way of electronic mail, SMS, or DS Router, and it may be carried out with only a click on in your cellular display screen.

The RT6600ax is a tri-band router, that means it presents three concurrent frequency bands for sending and receiving information. The expanded 5.9 GHz spectrum assist allows further high-speed 80 and 160 MHz channels, making the whole throughput attain as much as an unbelievable 6.6Gbps.

Diagnostic instruments — easy, however sensible

Though this will likely appear redundant for some customers, it’s fairly useful if you find yourself within the SRM system and need to do fast troubleshooting for community points. Absolutely, we are able to use the Command immediate in our favorite working methods to test for connectivity, reachability and identify decision. However I wouldn’t thoughts in any respect if somebody presents a fair barely simpler and faster methodology to carry that end result. Once more, the identical occurs for Traceroute. Along with the details about every hop, the Traceroute community instrument in SRM additional offers a geographical map to indicate visualised connections. It doesn’t basically make any distinction from utilizing system built-in instructions, however I fairly like this comfort and the end result presentation in visible.

Sign energy

Since we have now thick partitions in the home, the Wi-Fi radio sign has been a serious concern after I select the wi-fi router. I’ve deployed two Wi-Fi extenders within the dwelling to mitigate the issue, and the answer has labored nicely. With a chance of reviewing RT6600ax, I want to work out whether or not I can ditch the extenders this time.
I’ve examined the alerts in three places – The lounge, bed room and the research. Their respective straight-line distances from the router enhance in the identical sequence.

Sadly, even with the assistance of six antennas, sign attenuation nonetheless appears to be a problem that can not be prevented. Properly, maybe that is only a incontrovertible fact that I have to cope with when dwelling in a home with brick partitions. Not going to complain about it; in the end, that is why the mesh Wi-Fi was created.

Stability

There was a hiccup after I tried to fiddle with the Good Join (auto-connection between 2.4GHz and 5GHz) and my Wi-Fi extenders. The extenders I at the moment use don’t assist the 5GHz band, they usually refused to work when the Good Join was turned on. Nonetheless, other than that, I’ve by no means had a single situation whereas utilizing the wi-fi community at house powered by RT6600ax. Compared, Netgear Orbi AC3000, which I used beforehand, has didn’t ship the identical expertise as RT6600ax does. I used to be stunned by its community stability and fairly proud of the efficiency.

Synology RT6600ax is accessible at main on-line retailers for $599. In the event you don’t thoughts ready for 2 weeks, mwave.com.au at the moment sells it for $549 pre-ordered. To my thoughts, sub-$600 is an inexpensive value for its {hardware} and the general person expertise I perceived. I imply, a quad-core 1.8Ghz CPU with 1GB RAM and 4GB eMMC flash storage is kind of highly effective and could be deemed as a future-proofing choice for a WiFi 6 router.

In the event you’re searching for a brand new safe Wi-Fi 6 router to improve your own home or small enterprise community, don’t miss the Synology RT6600ax. Earlier than using RT6600ax, I used to manually plug in my transportable SSD to carry out system backup for my Mac laptop (and we have now 5 of them in the home). This course of has by no means been simpler because the changeover. My iMac finds the storage connected to the router and recognises it as a community disk to carry out Time Machine backup over the air, and the identical steps could be merely repeated on the remainder of the Macs.

There are greater than a dozen Wi-Fi 6 enabled wi-fi routers available on the market, however only a few are on par with RT6600ax by way of {hardware} specification on the identical value vary. Doubtlessly, Asus RT-AX88U is one; nevertheless, as a competitor, it’s only a dual-band with fewer antennas and far smaller storage for purposes. Extra importantly, the software program and value for RT6600ax are extra aggressive compared.

Total, I’m very glad with this product by my expertise. You wouldn’t remorse getting one, particularly when a safe, steady community and good safety for youngsters matter to you.