Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
As I am writing this review, it still is not possible to test AX or WIFI 6, AX clients are simply not yet available to the consumer, otherwise, I would have been able to show you what this puppy can really do. But realistically 99.99% of the WIFI clients out there are either 2.4 GHz N/G, and 5 GHz AC based, which these days is labeled as WIFI 5. That said, the Rapture leaves a very nice impression with especially good performance on the 5 GHz frequency. We've updated our testing conditions a bit and at 10~15 meters we're still reaching 500 Mbit/s on AC WIFI, me likey.
WIFI 6 - 802.11ax
The specs overall for the GT-RX11000 are of course impressive. But should you buy an AX router already with no clients available? It's a difficult question to answer really. I am inclined to say yes for the simple reason that a router is probably going to last you five to ten years. During that time technology will evolve and AX will become a standard that will be supported broadly on many devices. The downside, you'll need to pay a price premium which at this time cannot be justified. So price wise it doesn't make much sense right now, but over time that extra money might be well invested as we move towards AX WIFI, which promises amazing and amusing numbers and performance.
Performance
The ASUS GT-AX11000 Rapture is a dauntingly nice product, the range, performance on the 2.4 and 5 GHz AC band are matching what we see only the best routers do in performance. That performance, the cool options, the sheer hardware and of course a very wide range of WIFI functionality as well as the Ethernet ports are great and, albeit not top of the bill, 2.5 GigE is much welcomed. ASUS does have one big thinking flaw here though, they offer one single 2.5 GigE port. With just one port how would you hook up more Multi-GigE devices like a NAS to a PC (e.g. switch)? You really cannot use that 2.5 GigE connector for its purpose, and right now its only functionality is thus limited to a hyper-fast WAN connection (which is not relevant). Regardless though, at 419 EUR you probably want to purchase a product that will last you many years, and you do want to be prepared for faster Ethernet so I would have preferred more/multiple 5 or a 10 Gbit/s jacks.
The GT-AX11000 is loaded with features, like priority game packets, the ability to use a private network, VPN options, server routing options and very strong diagnostic and monitoring options all are present in this four-core CPU beast. How often and how many of you are actually going to use that feature? Yeah, we thought so. Wifi range is good, really, really good - every little corner of my house got coverage, I was able to pick up plenty of AC signal to stream, say, Netflix in Ultra HD on my Smart TV. Range wise this puppy is excellent, but I do need to say it, not exponentially better than, say, the competing MIMO Multi-band AC routers from names like Dlink, Netgear, and TP-Link. What is worth some extra dough though, is the level of support. The routers are getting firmware updates pretty actively, and that's great in these vulnerable times. There is a second comment I need to make as well, I like the admin interface, which does offer extremely advanced network settings. The GUI, by the way, needs an aesthetic overhaul. Nice to see are the USB 3.1 ports for which you can make a UPnP / SAMBA network share with a flash disk or external storage. Unfortunately, the router is using an outdated V1 protocol, which is depreciated by Microsoft for security reasons. You can bypass it, but it would be nice if ASUS would get stuff like that up-to-snuff, otherwise you'll never detect the files and directories on your Windows 10 PC in a secure manner.
Overall Performance
Overall wired throughput is good, for LAN to LAN measurements we topped 940 Mbit/sec but that's normal for any gigabit router these days. The power consumption is fairly high as far as I am concerned, at roughly 13~14 Watts continuous we do think that the product is consuming quite a bit of it; remember, these devices are on 24/7/365. With your household devices online 24/7 these days your power bill will increase 25 to 30 bucks per year just for that router. If you take into account that you can also use the unit as a bit of a NAS with external storage connected to the router, well that does help out in the equation, of course. The USB 3.1 throughput performance is good enough for that, reads are close to 110 MB/s, writes are lower at ~63. The web interface works and responds quickly as well but could use an updated GUI. It offers a freakfest of settings, tweaking nirvana really. For the time being, we're all waiting for proper ax clients and more routers before we can really check out what the new WIFi 6 standard is really all about. In that respect, this review needs to be considered a preview.
Concluding
Crap, I would never ever recommend a router that costs over 400 bucks, but I really do like this one. The ASUS GT-AX11000 Rapture ticks most of the right boxes, the performance is good and even excellent on 5G, and you are AX ready which could justify the increased price tag to be a bit more future proof. The obvious downside right now is that there are no AX clients available but, as stated, you'll be ready for it and, trust me when I say this, AX or WIFI 6 is coming sooner rather than later. The range, while good, remains trivial... all routers need to follow the same government regulated maximum wattage. So the WIFI radio band and your environment is often more the defining factor for your WIFI performance. WIFI will, however, be WIFI, signals outside will be harder to reach and, sure, each and every WIFI router is limited to that maximum power output. Good hardware helps a bit, as well as extra antennas. A bit of a warning to ASUS; watch the power consumption of these devices, it's all lovely with RGB LEDs and what not, but this unit is closing in on 15 Watts, that's a continuous value 24/7 for merely a router. Imho routers should never consume more than 10 Watts, preferably sitting in a 5 Watt range. We like that this router offers at least one single 2.5 Gbps ethernet jack, but just one is fairly useless..? And why not 5 or 10 Gbps? I mean give me a router with 4 ports of 10 GigE functional/configurable as a switch, and I'd be happy to pay that 400 bucks. That said, bigger changes need to be made as we've been stuck at 1 Gbps for too long now. But hey, the single 2.5 GigE connector is progress, albeit... what are you going to do with it if you cannot switch two lines in between, say, a multi-GigE PC and NAS. Combined with the right AC WIFI NICs and AC enabled devices you'll enjoy very good WIFI performance throughout your house. In the end, the product comes recommended, but yes, of course, it is a lot of money for a consumer slash gaming router alright making that preliminary move to AX hard to justify. We hand out a recommended award. I really want to hand out a top pick award here, but single 2.5 GigE opposed to multiple 5 or 10 GigE connectors is preventing me from doing so for this flagship product. That remark aside, this is a lovely product.
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