This dual-band Wi-Fi 7 router slams

Then why do I need to pack it? This is the RT-BE86U without the 6GHz band. That’s why Wi-Fi 7’s 320MHz channel is arguably the most exaggerated feature of the protocol, as it doubles the channel bandwidth, which is a measure of the size of your data – Wi-Fi 7 phones and laptops are available compared to the 160MHz Channel Router that has been offered in several years. As I pointed out in my comment on the same $300 eero Pro 7, this could result in a higher throughput than what my benchmark rig can actually measure. Still, if you ignore all of this, the RT-BE86U feels like a worthwhile device.

Fast and stable Wi-Fi performance

The RT-BE86U may not be the ugliest object, but it is a router that looks like a router, with three high antennas piercing from the top and the LED status lights in front of it with no less than 10 LED status lights. On the back you will find five Ethernet ports: a 10GBE WAN/LAN port and four 2.5GBE LANs, one of which can also be used as a WAN connection to the Internet. There are also two USB ports there (one USB 3.2 and one USB 2.0) for connecting to network-level accessed hard drives and the like.

There are good reasons to ignore my criticism of the missing band. On the one hand, your first exposure to Wi-Fi 7 is likely to be through your smartphone before anything else. I don’t know you, but for now, I never have to wait long to download an app at home, and it’s been several years. What meeting Becoming a problem is having to wait for YouTube videos to the buffer because I’m in the wrong room. This didn’t happen to RT-BE86U, which left me in a lonely connection all over the house. My Eero Pro 6e two-routing grid setup does this only when placing a router That’s it.

Let’s talk about numbers. Within about 15 feet of the RT-BE86U, I see throughput on a Wi-Fi 7 connection averaged between 1.7gbps and 1.8Gbps, using Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 5, on Wi-Fi 5 it’s more like 1.35Gbps, testing the band of the 160MHz channel. In my office’s Wi-Fi cemetery, I still see only 580Mbps and 630Mbps throughput, which is higher than my internet plan. In theory, you can get better throughput with multi-link operation, which ties the two bands together, but the RT-BE86U only offers 2.4GHz as the second band, which adds enough to get people’s attention.

Most of these tests were connected to the RT-BE86U using the M2 MacBook Air with a pluggable 2.5GBE USB-C Ethernet adapter and a Samsung Galaxy Book 2 with an MSI BE6500 USB Wi-Fi 7 adapter. I went back and confirmed that I borrowed similar performance with the Gargantuan Asus Rog Strix G18 gaming laptop Asus, the only way I had to test Wi-Fi 5, as MSI’s adapter didn’t offer options like switching the Wi-Fi protocol.

With the benchmark completed and in great danger to my family’s sanity, I swapped my eeros for RT-BE86U for a few days. Thankfully, things don’t matter. Smart home devices are responsive, and movies are streaming perfectly on my Apple TV, both from the Internet and from the Plex server on my Synology NAS. My Nintendo Switch is an always opinionated device that uses 5GHz signals, and despite that, it does a great job in the 2.4GHz band even in my office, which is one of the worst Wi-Fi in my home. That would be of no use Mario Kart 8 Deluxebut that certainly did not hurt my chances.

All of that was impressive in my 100-year-old, three-story (counting the basement) home filled with Wi-Fi-killing plaster-and-lath walls. The RT-BE86U signal even rang over the artificial stone exterior of my home to reach more distant devices like my NetAtmo Scemance Wi-Fi security camera and my Meross Garage Door bottle opener. Both work slower, but to be fair, I would be surprised if they didn’t. Asus’ routers do support networking with other grid-capable routers in the company, which has the potential to solve this problem.

View ASUS RT-BE86U on Amazon

Configure your inner content

You don’t have to be a network engineer to use an ASUS router, but there are some learning curves when it comes to configuring a network router. If Eero’s app gives you fairly easy to understand, fast, basic information when the Asus app loads it with scrolling, meaningless network traffic visualizer.

I feel that Asus is really trying to make things friendly and approachable. For example, tap the Home tab on the home screen and you will find easy-to-understand pre-configured parental control options that let you set a schedule to reject internet connections for your child’s device device and filter internet traffic. If you click Settings and then go to network, you can directly adjust the SSID (the name of the Wi-Fi network) and password or set up the guest network. (ASUS calls it an IoT network, but it works the same way, covering the rest of the network from the device connected to it.) But elsewhere, you don’t need to dig before you get stuck in the weeds of technical network terms.

Most people probably won’t go that far – once you build your network, how long do you actually look at the router’s setup at a time? However, if you want to have more control over their router, there is a lot to fiddling with, especially in the RT-BE86U’s web interface. Options range from setting up IP subscriptions (called “IP binding” by ASUS) to adjusting transmission power and switching specific Wi-Fi features. You can also configure a local virtual network or VLAN, set up link aggregation for network switches, and view fairly detailed activity statistics for devices on the network.

If you don’t need the best features of Wi-Fi 7, that’s great

A good Wi-Fi router costs money; that’s just a fact. But when you get into the $300+ range, you get rewards very quickly, especially when most of us don’t need Super high-end Wi-Fi performance. So when I look at the router, I care more about its stability and coverage than the original throughput. Thanks to the ability of RT-BE86U to remain stable over a wide range, you can actually eat the cake and eat it even in a challenging Wi-Fi environment, at least in relative infancy with Wi-Fi 7, and most of us can’t take advantage of it.

That’s not only because Asus made a good router. RT-BE86U has the capability as a VPN server where you can route traffic when you leave your home, allowing you to mask a data point in a personal location around the world. The company also offers free malicious website blocking or virus-infected device detection stuff through its Aiprotection feature, which is available along with cybersecurity enterprise trend Micro.

If you like these features and want to make sure you have a solid Wi-Fi connection throughout the mid-sized home (my basement is about 1,800 square feet to calculate the basement) without the need for additional access points, the RT-BE86U might be a good buy. However, if you have less demand, or you think many 6GHz Wi-Fi 7 devices can be viewed elsewhere in the near future.

View ASUS RT-BE86U on Amazon