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United States of America, Springfield
1 Level
731 Review
79 Karma

Review on πŸ“Ά ASUS AC1750 WiFi Router (RT-ACRH18): Dual Band Wireless Internet Router with Easy Setup, Parental Control, USB 3.0, AiRadar Beamforming Technology, MU-MIMO - Enhanced Speed, Stability, and Coverage by Kurt Manning

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Finally a decent Wi-Fi router

In my experience most consumer Wi-Fi routers have software issues. They usually start and work fine for a period of time, after which the problems start. My last round of router upgrades came about because the Netgear Nighthawk router suddenly started dropping all 2.4GHz connections in the house (all Google hubs, printers, etc.). The ONLY way to reconnect them is to reboot the router, even if the SSID is still broadcasting. At first it happened once a week or so, then it became a daily problem. Having experienced similar random failures in the past, I knew it was time for a replacement. I bought a TP-Link A9 and it worked for a few days before it also started dropping 2.4Ghz connections. I thought: what are the odds of two different routers behaving the same way. The only difference was with TP-Link, connections were restored. I was beginning to suspect radio interference, but we have very few neighbors and they are not close by. However, I disabled automatic channel selection and started manual channel selection. No bone, same problem with channels 1, 6, 11. I returned TP-Link and bought this Asus. Finally the sky smiled at me. This Asus router is very stable - so far. My 2.4 GHz devices don't crash. My 5ghz devices don't crash. While the router has a scheduled reboot option that lets you choose when and on which days to automatically reboot (which btw fixes a lot of crappy firmware bugs for these consumer devices), Asus just doesn't. . need this. I originally only enabled nightly reboots, but have since reduced it to weekly and can turn it off all together. It's as fast as any other AC1900 router I've tested. This easily saturates my incoming/outgoing bandwidth. The customization software is decent, although the dark theme is clearly aimed at gamers. I would like to have nice, clean, hygienically white skin, but that is purely aesthetic and has nothing to do with functionality. TPLink really had an attractive interface. Asus is just kitsch. I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 because the mobile app focuses more on looks and features than ease of setup. However, it does have some interesting statistics features. The web interface is functional but oddly designed and appears to be aimed at a specific demographic. However, these are knitted photos of performances. The hardware and networking software feel premium and reliable, which is what I want more than anything else. At the time of writing this article, Asus is up to the task. I can absolutely recommend it based on my previous experience.

Pros
  • cool product
Cons
  • retirement