In today’s world, a good and efficient router is an important part of any home or office life. More and more devices are acquiring support for wireless technologies that require an Internet connection or local area network. A huge number of gadgets and devices have accumulated in my small apartment, and some of them are already working with the Wi-Fi 6 standard. It’s more and more difficult for me to manage without a modern router with multithreading support and other newfangled chips. We recently reviewed a powerful yet expensive solution from TP-Link, and now let’s talk about a more affordable router ASUS RT-AX82Uwhich also supports Wi-Fi 6 and other modern technologies.
PACKAGING AND DESIGN
ASUS RT-AX82 comes in a black rectangular box with white edges. The obverse features his image, as well as various logos with features and the pcmag.com Readers’ Choice logo. Inside are the router itself, a 150 cm long commutation cable (patch cord) and a power supply unit (for 19V and 1.75A), as well as documentation.
The design of the router is made in an aggressive and futuristic style with many broken lines in its outline. The body consists almost entirely of beveled edges. ASUS RT-AX82U looks like a sports car like McLaren P1 (its rear end) or a car from the futuristic WipEout racing series. Two LEDs on the front, which light up like the rear lights of a car, reinforce this association. Well, on the opposite side, on the back of the device, there are 4 antennas, as well as many connectors and buttons that can be divided into three sections. On the left side there is an input for a power supply, a toggle switch that turns on the device, and USB Type-A 3.1 Gen 1. In the center there are four LAN ports, one of which is designated as Gaming Port and allows the connected device to receive priority during operation. On the right is the WAN connector, as well as the WPS and device reset buttons. If you look at the router from above, then at the left edge you can see 4 small indicators showing the connection to the mains, the state of Wi-Fi and the Internet. In general, the appearance of ASUS RT-AX82U will delight lovers of futurism and sports cars.
Full device specifications:
- Network standards: IEEE 802.11a, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g, IEEE 802.11n, IEEE 802.11ac, IEEE 802.11ax, IPv4, IPv6
- Baud rate:
- 802.11ac (1024 QAM): up to 4333 Mbps
- 802.11ax (2.4GHz): up to 574 Mbps
- 802.11ax (5GHz): up to 4804 Mbps
- Antennas: four external antennas
- Transmit / Receive: 2.4 GHz 2 x 2 and 5 GHz 4 x 4
- CPU: 1.5 GHz tri-core
- RAM: 256 MB Flash and 512 MB RAM
- Encryption: WPA3-Personal, WPA2-Personal, WPA-Personal, WPA-Enterprise, WPA2-Enterprise, WPS support
- Firewall and access control: Firewall: SPI intrusion detection, DoS protection
- Administration: UPnP, IGMP v1 / v2 / v3, DNS Proxy, DHCP, NTP Client, DDNS, Port Trigger, Port Forwarding, DMZ, System Event Log
- Utilities: Router setup wizard; Firmware restoration; Device discovery; printer setup utility
- Connectors: RJ45 for 10/100/1000 BaseT for WAN x 1, RJ45 for 10/100/1000 BaseT for LAN x 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 x 1
- Power supply: AC Input: 110V ~ 240V (50 ~ 60Hz) and DC Output: 19V with max. 1.75A current
- OS support: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Mac OS X 10.6, Mac OS X 10.7, Mac OS X 10.8
- Dimensions: 275.5 x 184.4 x 165 mm with antenna lengths and 275.5 x 184.4 x 65 mm without antennas
- Weight: 740 grams
INTERFACE AND CONVENIENCE
At the first start, the device prompts you to tune in to your provider and quite quickly and easily connects to the network – even if it works through a “bridge” from the provider’s router. Due to the nature of the connection, I cannot use third-party routers directly, so this simplicity saves time.
To configure the router, you can go to the browser or use the special ASUS Router app for Android and iOS devices. The menu contains many tabs and options. It has everything you need to control connected devices, monitor system operation, and enable and disable various functions, such as prioritizing traffic by categories such as games, streaming media services, or pages of various social networks. There you can also specify the bandwidth limitation for any of the connected devices, as well as configure individual profiles for family members. In addition, you can adjust the illumination of the LED “headlights” that are on the front face of the ASUS RT-AX82U. The router is preinstalled with a special protection system AiProtection, which uses Trend Micro technologies to analyze traffic in real time and warns users against sites with viruses and other malicious code.
Separately, it is worth mentioning a special option “Game profile”, in which you can select the desired one from a wide list of games, after which the device will automatically adjust to it. The list contains almost all popular franchises – from DOTA 2, Battlefield and Call of Duty to Animal Crossing and For Honor. On the latter, I tested the router in conjunction with the PS5.
TESTS AND WORK
One of the main features of ASUS RT-AX82U is support for Wi-Fi 6. Compared to the previous iteration of this wireless standard, it has increased bandwidth and multi-threading, which allows multiple devices to work in parallel without interfering with each other. ASUS RT-AX82U supports speeds up to 5400 Mbps and 160 MHz channels. Thanks to four antennas, the range of the Wi-Fi point is fairly stable throughout the apartment.
Sony PS5 supports Wi-Fi 6, so you can play comfortably wirelessly, although the speed is higher via cable. This is shown by tests inside the console. When connected with a patch cord, downloading from the network stably reaches results around 450 Mbps, which is very close to my tariff plan. At the same time, the download to the network shows a much larger spread of numbers and sometimes reaches the 20 Mbit / s mark, but in general, the results most often fluctuate around 120-150 Mbit / s. When the PlayStation 5 was connected via Wi-Fi, the download speed dropped to 205-250 Mbps, and the return remains about the same as with a wired connection. It should be noted that the test inside the console is not very accurate, and the results obtained are approximate. A footnote about this is present at the bottom of the screen when displaying the results.
In online games, the speed of downloading and uploading data is no longer the main factor, much more important is the response time from the server to the player. To get a sense of how things are in practice, I decided to play several matches in For Honor, first over the wire, and then over Wi-Fi. During testing, both options performed very well. Ping in both cases ranged from 24 to 35 ms, which makes it comfortable to play. In other projects, I also did not find any significant difference between wired and wireless connections.
Support for Wi-Fi 6 both on the side of the router and on the side of the console allows you to play over a network with a wireless connection in about the same way as over a cable, which undoubtedly pleases. If your provider’s tariff plan assumes a speed higher than 250 Mbps, then, of course, downloading data from PSN with a wired connection can theoretically be higher than over Wi-Fi. However, if this does not matter to you or the tariff plan does not imply such “overclocking”, then you can safely connect wirelessly and not worry about the stability and quality of the connection during network battles.
In addition to the console, I tested the router on a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ smartphone, which also supports Wi-Fi 6, but for some reason it flatly refused to connect to an access point with 5 GHz and worked exclusively with 2.4 GHz. For this reason, the speed test on the speedtest.com site showed results of about 70 Mbps. What is the reason for this problem, I could not find out, but most likely the matter is in the smartphone, since other devices can easily find the point with 5 GHz. However, even in this mode of use, the Note 10+ loads sites fast enough and YouTube works well, so there is no discomfort.
On a computer with a wired connection, everything works fine, as it should be according to my tariff. Testing at speedtest.com gives ping: 2, download speed 624 and upload speed 617. In general, the personal computer, as well as the PS5, performed well in conjunction with this router. At some point, I even forgot that I was testing a new router – the Internet worked without any complaints.
ASUS RT-AX82U is an interesting device and relatively affordable compared to other Wi-Fi 6 routers. Futuristic design and customization of various game modes will delight fans of online battles. This device works great in conjunction with the PlayStation 5 and is perfect for those users who do not want or cannot connect the console to the network with a cable. If you have a large number of gadgets that require a network connection, or you just want to upgrade your router to something modern and with Wi-Fi 6 support, we recommend that you pay attention to this ASUS RT-AX82U.
The test was carried out on the MGTS provider (the rate at the tariff is 600 Mbit / s), and the Internet connection was carried out through the “bridge” mode on the provider’s device to which the ASUS RT-AX82U was connected.
Author: Azamat Tegaev (Azzy)
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