T
he RT-AX68U is Asus’ latest mid-
range router, having just hit the
market early this year. Its pricing may
seem surprisingly high given its relatively
modest AX2700 rating, compact form and
mere count of three antennae, but it’s a
surprisingly capable unit. It’s not short though.
Designed to stand upright, with its trio of non-
removable antennae sprouting from its top, it
measures a cool 305mm in height. This almost
certainly helps with range but it also limits your
options for placement – it may be too tall for
some shelves and its top-heavy design might
be a problem if it’s left out on an open surface.
That said, we didn’t find the unit to be
particularly unstable, despite its tiny 236 x
60mm footprint. It’s also a classy-looking
router that forgoes the more aggressive
angular design of many competitors and
instead looks, well, like a handbag. As such, it
may be more welcome sat next to your TV than
in the corner of the room, for instance. Even the
compact power supply that doesn’t encroach
on neighbouring sockets looks classier than the
much bulkier units of some competitors.
In terms of specs, if sports the same four
Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports and single Gigabit
Ethernet WAN port configuration as the other
routers on test – there’s no 2.5Gbps Ethernet
option in this price range.
ASUS RTAX68U /£165 inc VAT
SUPPLIER ebuyer.comThese ports are joined by two USB ports
(1 x USB 3 and 1 x USB 2) that can be used
for the usual shared USB storage and printer
applications, as well as some more esoteric
features such as mobile broadband dongle
connection and a service for downloading
straight to USB storage, rather than via your PC.
The Asus was also the only router on test to
even recognise a SATA SSD on a USB dongle.
All the others were limited to small FAT32-
formatted thumb drives, in our tests.
That’s it for external features, other than
the standard WPS and reset buttons; these
are well hidden around the back of the unit,
which makes using WPS a bit tricky. The
default network settings are also printed on
the bottom, which isn’t all that convenient.
Internally, a 1.8GHz dual-core processor
and 512MB of RAM power the router and
there’s 256MB of flash for firmware. The
Wi-Fi configuration is dual-band, with both the
2.4GHz and 5GHz bands using a 3x3 stream
configuration, hence the three antennae. These
bands can be combined to appear as a single
Wi-Fi SSID, allowing the router to choose the
best connection, and further access points can
be added to form a mesh network. However,
we left them separate.
In our Wi-Fi tests, this router impressively
delivered among the most consistent results
in all our tests locations. It wasn’t always the
fastest, but neither did it completely drop theball at any point. It just delivered a rock-solid
connection from both bands that tailed off
gradually with distance – we suspect the extra
height of those antennae helped out.
This router also packs in loads of features,
such as Amazon Alexa support (so you can ask
Alexa to turn on the guest network for instance),
Trend Micro security integration and a router
traffic analyser tool.Conclusion
The Asus RT-AX68U has impressed us
with its combination of excellent all-round
performance, class-leading USB features and
compact form factor. It’s not always the fastest,
and its interface isn’t as slick as some, but it’s a
dependable unit at a reasonable price.SPEC
Weight 630g
Dimensions (mm) 236 x 60 x 155 /
305 (W x D x H) / with antennae
Ethernet 4 x Gigabit LAN, 1 x Gigabit WAN
Wi-Fi Dual band (AX2700), 861 + 1,802Mb/sec
Antennae 2.4GHz 3x3, 5GHz 3x3
USB ports 1 x USB 3, 1 x USB 2
Processor 1.8GHz dual-core
Memory 256MB flash, 512MB RAM
Extras USB modem support, Asus AiMesh
support, Amazon Alexa supportVERDICT
Rock-solid performance and plenty of
features makes the RT-AX68U a great option.TRANSFORMERS
+^ Dependable
performance
+^ Compact footprint
+^ Class-leading
USB featuresGOBOTS-^ Hidden WPS button
-^ May be too tall for
some shelves
DESIGN
16 / 20FEATURES
16 / 20OVERALL SCORE
82 %
PERFORMANCE
26 / 30VALUE
24 / 30c
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stom P
CA
P
PROVED