|
Top Customer Reviews
|
Good Router for first years
By
Antonio Marin
on
June 12, 2017
Verified Purchase
Well, I bought this tiny and beautiful Router in September 2012, I live in a Small apartment, and for that moment I bought it, looks pretty nice and much better from ASUS Brand, ok, Five years later the Band 2.4GHZ begin to lost internet connection, sometimes work sometimes don’t, I've change the Router from Place, I’ve modified several times the settings with the last firmware that ASUS release on 2015…after that no more firmware release =(, I've change channel to 10 o 9, Change the RTS 2307, Change the beacon Interval to 30, etc... without success, I have several devices that work only with 2.4Ghz but not this Router anymore. Band 5 GHZ works OK, but not too much range….at least.
Nowadays My Family grow up and we have several new devices, SmartPhones and laptops 802.11ac compatible, Printers, but when we Connect more than 10 Devices, No one has internet access...sadly, Given that I considering to bought a new WIFI Router…Maybe the Famous and well named Nighthawk R7000….Or again another ASUS Router, I like this brand, but my concern with Asus is that I’ve read a lot of people with asus routers claiming about this same defect , Band 2.4 GHZ begin to get defective over the time.
Read more
|
Excellent Router that Punches Well Above its Price Point -- Buy It
By
Tech Dude
on
October 3, 2016
Size: AC1750
Style: Router Only
Verified Purchase
I found this router through a third party website review (the Wire Cutter), that aptly called this, "the Best Wi-Fi Router (for Most People)." I would probably amend that title and say, "the Best Wi-Fi Router (for Virtually Everyone)." Do not let the low price fool you into thinking it's an entry level or low-end model. It only costs around $100 but, from my observations against four other routers that cost considerably more, it performs well beyond its price point.
I have purchased a number of routers over the years as the technology and performance improves, and the number of devices my family uses has increased. Over the past few years, I had migrated to the more expensive ($300+) routers in the hopes of greater performance. Right before this, I had an Asus RT-AC5300, a beast of a router that exceeded $400 when I bought it. But what I found was that as the price point goes up, the performance does not, and the reliability goes down. These expensive routers tend to be buggy and drop connections; they simply have too many features and are way too complex, all to provide functionalities that no one uses, or that none of your connected devices support anyway. The ASUS got so bad it was rebooting itself every few hours. The days of the rock-solid Linksys WRT54G seemed long gone... So I returned the ASUS RT-AC5300, gave my WRT1900ACS to a friend, and bought an Archer C7 (v2).
After two weeks of testing it, I have four words: it just works -- period. The signal is strong and punches through the lathe-and-plaster walls of my nearly 100 year old house. Its signal is considerably stronger than the WRT1900ACS that I had (which cost almost three times what this one did), and rivaled the signal strength of the $400 ASUS. It doesn't drop connections, doesn't reboot itself, and delivers a strong and steady stream of data to all devices, wired and wireless.
Only one word of warning; you need to make sure the Archer C7 that you purchase is NOT a first version. Everyone on the web has reported that TP-LINK badly botched the V1, especially for Macintosh/Apple devices (which is most of my house); most of those should be out of circulation or in landfills by now. The one I bought from Amazon was a V2, and it works perfectly with all of my Apple and non-Apple devices.
Read more
|
Awesome hardware, but be sure to set it up properly!
By
Nicolas Siemsen
on
September 23, 2013
Color: Black
Verified Purchase
The Asus RT-N66U is absolutely an impressive piece of hardware. Seriously powerful, feature packed, aesthetically pleasing, and at an approachable price point for the hobbyist. I think you'll find that this holds true by reading all the great reviews here.
There are definitely two weak points to be aware of, however.
The first - the firmware that it ships with is in pretty rough shape.
After unboxing and plugging in my router I went through the setup wizard to change the SSID, change the router password, and set up WPA2 key. This went fine. After that, I went in to the router settings and made one small change, saved it, and was disconnected from the router as part of the change. It should have reconnected shortly after, but instead my browser presented me the page that comes up when a web address cannot be reached. I tried for a while but the router was suddenly inaccessible on the default IP address. Basically, from what I could tell, the change I made however benign had buggered up the router. I ended up resorting to a reset - accomplished by holding the reset button for 5-10 seconds with the router turned on.
So lesson #1 here is to immediately install the newest firmware available at the Asus website THE MOMENT you unbox your and plug in your router. The firmware update went smoothly after I got the router reset to factory setup and working again, and now it's been working flawlessly for a month.
OK, second weak point - the router, as far as I'm concerned, comes from the factory improperly configured. That is, the default settings in the router hamper its full and proper operation.
What I mean by this is that after installing the router I was getting less than ideal performance out of it. While it was working well enough to give me good download and upload speeds (25mb/sec down, 15mb/sec up) from my cable connection, internal network speeds and coverage were below expectations. For example, paired with a matching dual band NetGear USB wireless adapter on my office computer, Windows wireless client was showing network speed fluctuating between 78Mbps and 216Mbps with it usually in the middle somewhere around 120Mbps. Better than the approx 50Mbps speeds I would see with my 802.11g router and adapter previously but not what I'd expected. In addition, the signal strength was rather poor in the back room. As another example, I was getting a consistent 144Mbps from my XPS M1530 laptop, with an older single band 2.4Ghz draft-N internal card, in the living room right near the router. Also less than my hopes had been for this router.
So I did some more thorough review of the wireless settings and found two big issues that needed to be change to get this router working as it should be.
The first was that the wireless control channel setting for both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz bands is set to "Auto" be default. Ideally, this would mean that the router would dynamically select the best channel based on local interference in that band. In the real world, though, this Auto mode on most routers doesn't work that well and this is no different. I performed a wireless network scan with my Android phone using a free app, and found that my router was camped out on Channel 6. As some may know, this is the default channel for most consumer routers and most home users never change away from it. Sure enough, there were three other wireless networks that I could detect around neighborhood that were on channel 6 as well. To remedy this, I took the 2.4Ghz band off of Auto and set the channel to 1. For those making this change themselves, be sure to scan using something like WiEye on your phone or inSSIDer on your computer. Assuming that most of the other routers in your area will be using channel 6, you will need to move yours to the far ends of the channel list, choosing either 1 or 11. This because the signal from the routers set to channel 6 do not stay there perfectly, instead they overlap substantially. A router on channel 8, for example, will have a pretty good overlap with those on channel 6 and will still see interference. The only way to avoid this is moving all the way to 1 or 11. I left the 5Ghz channel selection on Auto for now, as the 5Ghz band is much less interference prone currently, and in fact I don't believe there are any other 5Ghz networks in range in my neighborhood currently so it's a non-issue there.
The second major problem I found with the router's default setting was also in the router settings. The RT-N66U has the option to change the bandwidth for a given band. By default, I found that both the 2.4 and 5Ghz bands were set to a signal bandwidth of 20Hz. The reason this is a major issue is that at 20Hz, there is simply not enough throughput on the given band to allow for this router to hit its full speed potential. So I went ahead and set the router to use 40Hz bandwidth for each band.
With those two changes, my network performance and signal strength increased dramatically with real world results to prove it. Now, that dual-band network adapter in my office shows pegged at a solid 450Mbps (x2 for the dual bands for a theoretical 900Mbps hence the N900 designation on the router). Now that's what I'd been expecting all along! As for the laptop in the other room, on single band 2.4Ghz it is now hitting a rock solid 300Mbps which is the max for that older draft-N card. This extra speed has even helped me attain the max internet speeds I can expect from my cable plan, I'm now seeing 30+Mbps download speeds and 20+Mbps uploads.
Now that it is properly configured, I have set it up to do all sorts of other fun stuff. I set up the VPN, with encryption, and can now connect to that with my Android phone and tablet when traveling which is a great feature for secure and private browsing when at airports, hotels, etc. I set up a separate "guest" SSID that is segregated from my internal network for my phones and to connect to since they are the only devices that regularly leave the security of the internal network. There are still 5 more guest SSID's I can set up. Additionally, I connected a USB hard drive to it and it's running as a local share folder as well as a DLNA and iTunes server. It's doing all this with a desktop computer, two laptop computers, three Android phones, an Android tablet, a chromecast and a PS3 all connected to it and it's not even breaking a sweat.
So that's a lot of info, but I hope you can see that in the end with some know-how and research on the internet (like reading this review) this router can be just about the best thing you can do for your home or small business network at this price point. I would not hesitate to recommend it with the above provisos in mind.
Read more
|
USB 3.0 easily jams this router's Wi-Fi
By
Big Daddy
on
December 16, 2014
Size: AC1900
Style: Router
Verified Purchase
Purchased this router in January 2014 and have had no issues. Firmware is still at 3.0.0.4.374, hardware version is A1. I purchased this router after I bricked a Cisco router from a bad firmware update. I'm writing this review (actually more of a potential solution) because I noticed a little over 10% of the reviews are 1 star (which is "normal" percentage of any product) and after scanning through the 1 stars the common theme is intermittent wi-fi drops and "weird" router behavior when using the USB 3.0 port. Something to be aware of is that USB 3.0 ports, cables, and devices transmit on the 2.4 GHz - 2.5 GHz range. From the Intel White Paper:
"As previously shown in Figure 2-2, the noise from USB 3.0 data spectrum can be high
(in the 2.4-2.5 GHz range). This noise can radiate from the USB 3.0 connector on a
PC platform, the USB 3.0 connector on the peripheral device or the USB 3.0 cable. If
the antenna of a wireless device operating in this band is placed close to any of the
above USB 3.0 radiation channels, it can pick up the broadband noise. The broadband
noise emitted from a USB 3.0 device can affect the SNR and limit the sensitivity of any
wireless receiver whose antenna is physically located close to the USB 3.0 device. This
may result in a drop in throughput on the wireless link."
I experienced this when I built a new computer and placed the router on top of the tower on my desk and plugged my Patriot USB 3.0 thumb drive in the USB 3.0 port on top of the tower which is about 8 inches from the router antenna. My desktop is Ethernet, so was not affected. Laptop1 was using 5.0 GHz band and was not affected. Laptop2 was using 2.4 GHz band and could not connect wirelessly. Took an hour to figure this out (only variable that changed was distance of thumb drive to antenna). My old computer's USB 3.0 port was at the bottom back of the tower and farther away. So basically, USB 3.0 acts as a router wi-fi jammer if located too close and it's easy to mistake this common issue as a router intermittent wi-fi drop issue.
Read more
|
Excellent! Awesome! Wow!
By
FrankT-CA
on
November 29, 2014
Verified Purchase
After 2 months of use, I can say this is one of the best routers I have purchased so far. Not only because of the AC speed, but also the rich tools and remote tools like shared storage and remote access for files from anywhere. I never had to reboot the unit since I got it. I just purchased a new notebook with AC wifi adapter and i am getting very close to 900mbps+ speed without adjusting the settings. The coverage is excellent despite the not so optimal location where i have the unit situated (in a corner - closer to my broadband cable/modem)
Read more
|
I approve
By
Thom Brereton
on
April 26, 2016
Verified Purchase
First, I would like to share with you my experience with the router. I know that people have different experiences with products and it looks like not everyone's experience with this router has been positive; I would like to speculate about the negative reviews and why some are having a negative experience.
I've had the router for about a week. I got it at Micro Center for $65 with a $10 mail in rebate. I couldn't believe finding a 1200AC router to finally make use of my 100 Mb/s down 20 Mb/s up internet. I was using the modem/router combo that comcast gave me. It would barely ever go over 50/10. I decided to inspect all the settings. They had disabled anything useful on the modem that would even allow me to troubleshoot or make a difference; basically, the modem is locked down suit the way comcast would like it to be. I called them up and they ran through diagnostics with me (basically 2 hours just to restart it a few times) and they decided to send me a new one. Same s***. I knew it was their fault, so I decided to grab this router for a steal.
After some simple configuration, I get 90-100 down and 15-20 up when plugged in. Pretty good. I could not believe the wireless though.... You can see it in the attached picture. This is wireless. You can choose to believe me or not. I put the wireless sys tray icon in the screen shot. I am currently sitting one floor up and about 20 horizontal feet from the router. In my experience, I am sitting at much more distance than desired, but with this router, it doesn't seem to matter. Also take note that this is on the 2.4GHz band. Side note: for those of you thinking 5GHz band should be better, faster, etc just because it is a bigger number and newer technology... it is rarely the case. The 5GHz band will be phenomenal if you are within eye shot of the router. You might be able to get away with one thin wall. For all other cases, the 2.4GHz band will be better. If you would like a better explanation, you can read all about it with a quick google search.
Now, for those that have not had so a great experience. Here are some potential reasons.
Your modem is not in bridged mode: If you have a modem router combo from your ISP, you should put it in bridged mode. The bridge will disable all routing functions on the modem so that the router can properly govern them. If you simply plug this router into your modem, then you have multiple layers and things are not going to work as intended. If you do not know how to do this yourself, call your ISP and tell them that you have decided to buy your own router and ask them to please put the modem in bridged mode. After you do that, power off both devices, power on the modem. Wait till you see the "online" light, then power on the router.
Right out of the box, your router should be set to default settings, but you may want to reset to default settings anyway. If you have messed with any settings and cannot get good results out of it, try to reset to default settings.
Once you set to default, try to upgrade the firmware. I personally have not upgraded the firmware because it is working so well. If I told to an obnoxious know it all tech geek, he would tell me I'm an idiot, but if it isn't broke, don't try to fix it. I have a career in IT myself, and I know that you can always take steps to make things work more efficiently, and firmware is definitely one of them. I will upgrade the firmware, but right now I am enjoying some of the best internet I have ever had.
*** For those that have had issues with the firmware, you may want to try again. ASUS admits that their last series of firmware for this router messed things up more than it helped. They release a new version literally today, right before I started this review. You can download it here: [...]
Channel Bandwidth (can be found under Advanced settings > Wireless > General tab): I would recommend leaving this at 20/40. The router should operate at the most appropriate channel, but it doesn't always get it right. If you are having wireless problems, try switching it to 20MHz. If you have a lot of other networks broadcasting around you and they are trying to use 40MHz as well, you are going to have lots of interference issues. The 20MHz channel is more refined and less affected by other signals in the air.
QoS settings (located under traffic manager > QoS tab): This should be disabled by default. You may have been looking through the settings, read the description for QoS, and thought to yourself, "Wow that sounds very desirable!" QoS settings are tricky. If you enable this, your speed test is going to be crap. That is because the router is saving bandwidth for other things. If you are interested in learning more about QoS, there is a terrific guide here: [...] Personally, I would recommend leaving it off. I might turn it on if I had many people in the house all using bandwidth in unique ways. If you decide to use this setting, instead of letting ASUS "smart QoS" govern your bandwidth, I would recommend choosing the dropdown, choosing user defined QoS rules. Take note that if you do a web based speed test, your speed test will only be as fast as what you set it to.
Other than this, I can't think of any reason you would be having a bad experience with this router. I know that it is always hard to troubleshoot if any issue is with the router or the modem, but your issues could be something to do with the modem. Call your ISP and tell them about your woes. The router could even be restarting because of incorrect modem settings.
Make sure all the antennas on the router are properly connected, and ALWAYS have network secured. Make sure it is not a password that could be guessed like password, admin, or your address. Make sure your password is not the same as the broadcast name, or any variation of it.
If all of this fails and you are still having a bad time with this great product, call asus and ask them if they will replace it because you suspect bad hardware. Good luck everyone!
Read more
|
![ASUS RT-N65U Dual-Band Wireless-N750 Gigabit Router]({"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5167V7ha27L._SX466_.jpg":[466,466],"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5167V7ha27L._SY450_.jpg":[450,450],"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5167V7ha27L.jpg":[500,500],"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5167V7ha27L._SY355_.jpg":[355,355],"https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/5167V7ha27L._SX425_.jpg":[425,425]})
