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Asus RT-AX86U Review: One of the Best Wi-Fi 6 Routers for the Money
Like
- Terrific use of Wi-Fi 6, with fast speeds and excellent range
- Best-in-class latency management
- Multi-gig WAN port
- Full-featured app with device prioritization
Don't Like
- Somewhat bulky design
- No additional 5GHz band for dedicated gaming traffic
- "Smart Connect" band steering slows down average speeds
Before Wi-Fi 6 came along, the Asus RT-AC86U clobbered fancier, more expensive competitors in the gaming router category. The speeds were fast and consistent, the lag was nice and low, the features were deep -- and the price tag wasn't too painful. I liked it so much that it didn't just find a spot atop our list of the best gaming routers: It sat high on our list of the best routers, period.
Asus followed that one up with a new model, the Asus RT-AX86U, available now for $250. As the addition of an "X" in the model number might suggest, it supports 802.11ax, better known as Wi-Fi 6. That means that in addition to the existing, gaming-centric features like device prioritization and open NAT port forwarding, it supports new Wi-Fi 6 features like 1024-QAM and OFDMA that make your home network faster and more efficient.
At $250, the RT-AX86U is a definite step up from entry-level Wi-Fi 6 routers like the $70 TP-Link Archer AX10 and the $150 Linksys MR7350 , but neither of those felt like much of an upgrade when I tested them out at my home. The RT-AX86U easily outperformed each of them and felt every bit the part of a top-of-the line access point as I used it. In our lab, it registered impressive top speeds, clocking in with local transfer rates on the 5GHz band as high as 1.8 Gbps at wireless distances of up to 37.5 feet (at 75 feet, speeds only fell to about 1.4 Gbps). In my home, it maintained low latency better than any router I've ever tested, which is exactly what you're looking for if you're a gamer, and terrific even if you aren't. $250 for a router like that doesn't seem unreasonable to me in the slightest.
In sum, this router checks all of the boxes. It's fast, it's full-featured and easy to use, and even without Wi-Fi 6E, it feels sufficiently future-proofed with a WAN port that supports incoming speeds as high as 2.5 Gbps. Gamer or not, this Editors' Choice-winning router belongs right at the top of your wireless networking wishlist.
The Asus RT-AX86U, available now for $250.
Ry Crist/CNETSpecs and features
The RT-AX86U is a dual-band AX5700 router, which means that it supports Wi-Fi 6, and that the top theoretical speeds from its 2.4 and 5GHz bands add up to 5,700 Mbps, or 5.7 Gbps. Don't let that figure mislead you -- those numbers are based on optimized, lab-based tests that don't take real-world factors like distance, interference and physical obstructions into account, and you can only connect to one band at a time. Translation: Your actual speeds will be a lot lower.
That's not to say that they'll be slow, though. The router boasts of top transfer rates of up to 4,804 Mbps on the 5GHz band and 861 Mbps on the 2.4GHz band, and it also features a 2.5 Gbps WAN port that allows for multi-gig incoming wired speeds from your modem. All of that makes it a good pick if you're living in a home with a gigabit internet plan, and support for 4x4 MU-MIMO connections on the 5GHz band makes it easier for the router to handle multiple devices at once, or to aggregate multiple lines of traffic to devices that use multiple antennas.
In our lab, with a MacBook Pro wired to the router's extra-speedy WAN port, we were able to transfer files wirelessly to a Wi-Fi 6-equipped PC at a maximum rate of 1,795 Mbps, or nearly 1.8 Gbps. Even after we increased the distance between the MacBook and the client PC to 75 feet, speeds only fell to about 1.4 Gbps. Keep in mind that you'll only be able to pull data from the cloud as fast as your ISP plan allows, but still, this is a very capable piece of hardware.
The Asus app offers a bounty of gaming-centric features that promise to boost your network performance while you play.
Screenshots by Ry Crist/CNETAsus gaming routers also boast a very well-featured app, with lots of settings and tricks to help you tweak your network connection as you see fit. Along with the adaptive quality of service engine for prioritizing traffic to specific devices on your network, you can just tap a button on the home screen to launch Mobile Game Mode, which instantly prioritizes traffic to your phone. There's also an Open NAT database of game- and platform-specific port forwarding rules that can help ensure the best possible performance when you're playing online with friends.
Beyond the gaming-centric features, the RT-AX86U also includes the usual options for things like parental controls and guest network management. On top of that, it supports Asus' AIMesh feature, which lets you add additional Asus devices to the network to create a mesh. If you're already using an Asus router that supports AIMesh, you can upgrade to this one and use the old one to extend its range.
The RT-AX86U averaged impressive speeds on the 5GHz band -- but the SmartConnect feature, which automatically steers your connection between the 5 and 2.4GHz bands, brought those averages down by too much. Thankfully, you can turn it off.
Ry Crist/CNETAt-home speed tests
At my home, a smallish, shotgun-style house where I have an AT&T fiber internet connection of 300 Mbps, the RT-AX86U was able to hit max speeds at close range on the 5GHz band, which isn't surprising at all. What was surprising as I ran speed test after speed test was that the router was able on occasion to hit download speeds above 400 Mbps. Those were isolated spikes, mind you -- the ISP limit always pulls that average back to down to what you're paying for, and in this case, the final close-range average rang in at 339 Mbps.
Still, I don't think I've seen any other router notch a result above 400 Mbps in this test before. If your router is a bunch of balloons, and your ISP speed is a kid holding the string that keeps them from flying away, then the RT-AX86U was strong enough to lift the kid off the ground an inch or two.
All told, I ran dozens of speed tests over the course of about a week from multiple spots throughout my home. The 5GHz band was able to keep me covered throughout most of the space, though my average download speeds did fall to about 70 Mbps in my back bathroom, which most routers I test struggle to cover. 70 Mbps is better than most single-point routers I test are capable of in that dead zone, but most of the mesh routers I've tested are able to keep speeds back there up above 150 Mbps. If you're more concerned with covering a big space than you are with high-speed gaming, then a mesh router like that might be a better choice.
The Asus RT-AX86U (yellow) delivered fast speeds throughout my home -- not quite as fast as fancier Wi-Fi 6 routers that cost hundreds more, but noticeably faster than entry-level Wi-Fi 6 routers that cost less.
Ry Crist/CNETIn the end, the average download speed across all of my tests from all corners of my house was 218 Mbps. That's a good result, but not as strong as fancier Wi-Fi 6 routers, including the Netgear Nighthawk AX12 and Asus' own RT-AX89X, which clocked in at 250 and 289 Mbps, respectively. Just keep in mind that each of those costs hundreds more than the RT-AX86U.
As for entry-level Wi-Fi 6 routers that cost less, the TP-Link AX1500 and the Linksys MR7350 each felt underpowered in my tests, with whole-home average speeds of 189 and 97 Mbps. The RT-AX86U is a worthy upgrade over each of those.
After testing both the 5GHz and 2.4 GHz bands throughout my home, I turned on the SmartConnect feature, which combines both bands into a single, unified network. With SmartConnect, the RT-AX86U automatically "steers" you between the two bands depending on which one it thinks is better for your connection -- but speeds fell noticeably after turning it on, and I saw inconsistent performance depending on how close I was to the router when I'd first connect to the network. If I connected at a distance, where the 2.4GHz signal strength was stronger, and then moved close to the router, where the much faster 5GHz band is ideal, the router wouldn't realize it and steer me to the 5GHz band without me disconnecting and reconnecting. That's not what you want at all.
That said, I re-tested the RT-AX86U in 2022 after upgrading my home network to gigabit speeds, and didn't see nearly as much of a bandsteering issue, so perhaps the firmware has gotten smarter. And, in fairness to Asus, the bandsteering feature might be designed with a mesh setup in mind, so once I get a chance to test it out in a setup like that with other Asus devices on the network extending the system's range, I'll update this space. But for most users, especially those using the RT-AX86U on its own, I'd recommend turning the feature off and just sticking to the 5GHz band for most of your heavy traffic if speeds seem lower than you'd expect.
The leader in latency
One last point on performance (and I really can't stress this enough): The RT-AX86U is flat-out fantastic at handling latency, easily the best router I've ever tested when it comes to lag.
Each of these graphs show you how much lag I recorded across 90 speed tests for a single router. Routers that keep the colored line closer to the center of the graph are better -- and the RT-AX86U (purple) is the best I've ever tested.
Ry Crist/CNETLag, or ping, is a measurement of how long, in milliseconds, it takes your router to send a signal to a specific server and receive an answer. In my speed tests here at home, I always ping the same server in Lexington, Kentucky, about 80 miles away, and I record the ping time for each and every test. Each router I review goes through a minimum of 90 speeds tests, so that adds up a lot of data on lag.
Now check out those radar graphs. Each one shows the lag results of those 90 speed tests for a single router. The colored circle graphs each one's ping time across those tests. Spikes represent tests where the lag was unusually high, so the closer each line stays to the center, the better.
Just about every router will see occasional spikes at some point in my tests -- but not the RT-AX86U. It never, ever registered a lag time any higher than 20 ms, which is why the purple line representing its lag results looks like such a tight ring around the bullseye. That pattern held up here in 2022, when I ran my tests again on a gigabit connection -- the RT-AX86U never returned a ping value any higher than 16ms.
The verdict
The RT-AX86U is a highly capable router that takes good advantage of Wi-Fi 6, and it offers lots of extra appeal for gamers. You'll enjoy better range of coverage with a mesh router, and it suffers from inconsistent band-steering -- but thankfully, you can turn that feature off and just stick to the isolated 5GHz band, which offers fast top speeds and enough range to bring adequate coverage to small-to-medium-sized homes.
I think the price is right, too. At $250, the RT-AX86U is more expensive than an entry-level Wi-Fi 6 router like the TP-Link Archer AX10 or the Linksys MR7350, but it justifies the cost with superior performance, decent features and steady, reliable networking, and it can even compete with fancier-looking gaming routers that cost hundreds more. It's an excellent pick and a clear Editors' Choice winner -- not just among gaming routers, but among routers, period.
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