Asus RT-AC88U in the test

The Asus RT-AC88U convinces not only through its chic exterior, but was also the fastest WLAN router in our test. Especially in the case of bad connections, we achieved the highest transmission rates with the device in both the 2.4 and the 5 GHz band. The same applies to the read / write speed of a memory at the USB 3.0 port, which is hidden behind a door at the front of the router. However, this port did not accept some older USB 3.0 memory that was easily recognized by other routers.


Perfectly protected


With AiProtection, the RT-AC88U has a multi-stage network protection and child protection with content filter. The network protection lists unsafe router settings and fixes them at the push of a button. Access to malicious Web servers can also be blocked by the enabled service. The child protection system has an adult content filter, can block streaming, file sharing or instant messaging and regulates the online access of a client on schedule. LAN ports 1 and 2 can be aggregated via link aggregation, a LAN port can be defined as an additional WAN port for failover or load balancing.


MU-MIMO


Also exemplary is the comfortable monitoring function, which makes the whole network traffic very detailed and by the excellent visual preparation also very clear. The monitoring function as a basis for the likewise very successful setting of the QoS functions of the RT-AC88U. With the GameBoost setting, the game PC always gets the fastest available route.


Conclusion


For the Asus router, the MU-MIMO function was disabled in the factory settings with the appropriate hint. After activation, we achieved a reproducible sum rate of 370 MBit / s on both Wave-2 clients at the same time. After deactivation of MU-MIMO the transmission strangely rose to 410 MBit / s. Actually, the value would have to fall without MU-MIMO. Both transmission values ​​could be reproduced by multiple measurements with and without MU-MIMO. In this case, we can push the unexpected measurement result onto the Broadcom chipset built by Asus, which does not (yet) understand the Qualcomm chips of our two WLAN clients.


The Asus router shows fast transmission rates and is in terms of functionality and equipment a real all-round carefree package. Price and power consumption are also high.