ASUS RT-AX68U Dual-band - WiFi 6 -reititin

I bought this because the Wi-Fi at my home was getting really crowded with a lot of devices and possible interference with neighbour's Wi-Fi. Recently, I started adding a lot of home automation Wi-Fi connected devices to my Virgin Media hub and I believe this was leading it to cause random connection drops. So, I had to get a proper router.

This router is not the top of the line from ASUS, but it fits my use case pretty well. One of my selection criterion was that the router must be able to run custom firmware, and this could run ASUS-MerlinWRT firmware. Merlin WRT firmware adds a ton of additional capabilities to your router - like network wide ad blockers, VPNs, etc. They even have games that you can deploy on these routers. So I wanted a router that would be highly customizable. Now, you may be worried that flashing a custom firmware is difficult or that it would void warranty; you don't have to worry. Flashing Merlin firmware is just like flashing ASUS firmware - very easy, and ASUS fully supports it. They do not take away your warranty for flashing this firmware. So, it's all good. And my review below is based on MerlinWRT firmware on this router.

Anyway, I setup this router (using MerlinWRT) and so far - everything looks real good. No more connection dropouts on Wi-Fi and the Internet connection appears to be super stable. Speed tests done on the router are showing that I am getting the speeds as Virgin mentioned. Pings are below 10ms. So it's all good on the WAN area,

Coming to the LAN capabilities, it is pretty powerful there too. Because this is a Wi-Fi 6 router, it gives good speeds, and you can also create a load of guest networks on this. You can create at least 6 different guest networks with Merlin firmware - and individually provide access to your LAN.

You can redirect your DNS queries to variety of external IP addresses or your own internal server.

You can configure OpenVPN clients or setup VPN server, so that your mobile devices can connect to your home router and tunnel traffic through there - giving you a excellent, additional layer of security - even when you are on the move. You can even selectively route traffic via VPN.

This has got two USB ports (one 2.0 and one 3.0), so you can share USB drives or printers throughout your local network.

The only bad thing I would say is regarding the lack of more RJ45 ethernet ports on the router. There are only 4 LAN ports (and one WAN port for internet connectivity). This is why I took off one star from my review.

Thumbs up !! Easy to set up and way better than ISP provided router

Great product, worked out of the box. No proper user manual on Asus web site however (just the quick start guide).

Had to download the AX58 manual and guess it from there.

Losing connection at times. High ping. Requires daily reboot.

Oli pakko palauttaa tuote. Kytkin laitteen kiinni ja se näkyi verkossani hienosti. Seuraava vaihe oli Asuksen applikaation lataus ja konfiguraation aloitus laitteen takana olevan QR-koodin avulla. Eipä löytänyt, eikä manuaalinen etsintä myöskään. Näiden vehkeiden asennus on yleensä rutiinihommaa. Asuksen vastaavia reitittimiä näytti olevan palautuksina Tampereen Verkkokaupan hyllyssä useampia alennettuun hintaan. En voi suositella.