The Best Wi-Fi Routers 2021

[ArenaKelly]

The Asus ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 is overkill for most home users, but if you take your gaming seriously and want to ensure that your network is providing maximum throughput for all of your play and streaming needs, this router is as good as it gets. It delivered the fastest 5GHz close-proximity throughput performance of any router we've tested, and its 2.4GHz and MU-MIMO performance numbers were also solid. It offers a bomber-load of gigabit LAN ports with built-in acceleration for gaming applications and a wealth of other gamer-friendly optimization features, all of which are controlled using a well-designed interface.

 

[Lionvibez]

The Asus ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 is overkill for most home users, but if you take your gaming seriously and want to ensure that your network is providing maximum throughput for all of your play and streaming needs, this router is as good as it gets. It delivered the fastest 5GHz close-proximity throughput performance of any router we've tested, and its 2.4GHz and MU-MIMO performance numbers were also solid. It offers a bomber-load of gigabit LAN ports with built-in acceleration for gaming applications and a wealth of other gamer-friendly optimization features, all of which are controlled using a well-designed interface.

This post reads like a sponsored ad

 

[zulu53]

That will depend on if your connection is DHCP or PPP0E.

ON DHCP you will have all hardware acceleration on CTF+FA unless you enable something like QOS or the traffic monitoring that will turn it off.

My ISP does fiber via PPP0E which only allows CTF.

CTF+FA = hardware acceleration
CTF only = Software Acceleration

So for PPP0E and CTF only when I was taxing the connection so heavy downloads and uploads cpu % would skyrocket as the acceleration is only done in software, and if I have other things running like a vpn everything combined would cause abit of slowdown.

The AX88U allows for Hardware Acceleration on PPP0E so it solved my issue and I was due for a hardware upgrade anyways since previous router had a good 5 year run.

As stated in the article the RT88U also provides link aggregation, so for all of us with an ISP that provides 2 WAN ports for the same price as 1: we have 2GB service with the same latency.

 

[MSwhip]

I would like someone who is knowledgeable of the Asus Blue Cave AC2600 to comment about its performance. Ihave read that it comes with the circuitry for MU-MIMO but was not active when it first launched. Does anyone know if firmware was added to support MU-MIMO?
Thank You. At US$ 30 for new is it a good deal for its performance for a 2 floor home with about 2400sqft per floor? My ISP provides me with about 500 MBPS download speed