Hey everyone Patrik CK with my review of the ASUS AC1300 Dual-Band gigabit wifi router.
To be honest getting a new router has been a long time coming as I’ve been using the
same Linksys Wireless G wifi router for at least a decade, unfortunately these ancient
routers are still vary prevalent in the consumer and commercial worlds.
Obviously there are a lot of things wrong with using such an old piece of equipment
upmost of course is speed.
The max transfer speed on the Linksys is 54mega bits per second which is what I thought the
cap on my bandwidth was anyway from my ISP, Comcast.
Boy was I wrong, more on that later.
I choice the ASUS AC1300 for several reasons, of course it has the latest wireless AC technology
such as MU-MIMO which provides the ability to switch between both 2.4 and 5ghz frequencies
for multiple clients that support it so you get consistent connection all the time.
A 2x2 5dbi antenna setup for extended wifi range, a host of improved security features,
a great web and app interface to manage the network, and 4 gigabit speed Ethernet ports
with one USB 3.0 network connection for something like a NAS which was a really nice add and
one of the deciding factors between this router and the $10 cheaper AC1200 which only has
a USB 2.0 port.
I picked up this router on Amazon for $69.99 plus $4 in tax.
I would have purchased it tax free on Newegg but for some reason I couldn’t find it anywhere
on their site.
Looking over the physical router it has an interesting reflective pattern design on top
that I like and thankful it’s not a horrible glossy surface.
We can see two of the 4 antennas which itself has a nice subtle modern design with angled
surfaces.
On the front is the single USB 3.0 connection.
I’ll be interested to see how well this actually works.
Around back are the other 2 antennas, power button, reset button, power port, and all
the other network connections.
Let’s layout the antennas the way they want them and see what else is in the box.
A short and beefier than normal network cable for the WAN port and lastly the wall wart
of typical size but definitely smaller than the one it replaced.
Setting the router up was a breeze, just follow the 3 step instructions and you should be
good.
Once all the lights came on my computer automatically popped up the router setup screen where it
prompts you to change the passwords for the router and wifi and that’s pretty much it.
I would suggest making the management login screen a bookmark for easy access in the future.
Before I dealt into any of the numerous settings I wanted to run some speed test, first on
the wired Ethernet side of the network and then on the wireless side.
When I started running the speedtest.net app I all most fell out of my chair.
With my old router I maxed at around 40 mega bits per second down which again I thought
was very reasonable and my max bandwidth allotment anyway but instead went all the way to 91!!
More than double the old speed.
I didn’t even know I was allowed speeds that high.
Downloading a game on Steam I’m getting consistent 13 mega byte a secomd download
speeds I was lucky to get close to 5 before.
I was able to download an 8 and half gig game in 10 minutes.
Where has this speed been my whole life?!
I mean I knew newer equipment would make a difference but not that much!
Just to be clear your experience may vary depending on your ISP’s bandwidth cap.
So as far as the wired side of the networks goes the ASUS AC1300 has proved it worth more
than 2 fold.
I was even a little upset that I’ve been throwing my money away every month not using
the full bandwidth potential supplied to me.
I wouldn’t even have known without this new router.
But lets move on and see how the WiFi has improved.
For comparison on my HTC 1 M8 I was getting on average 20 mega bits per second down in
the next room from the old router, but now I’m getting full speed equivalent to the
wired computer at around 90mega bits per second on the 5Ghz band, which is the fastest and
which the M8 supports.
Again not all phones even newer ones support the higher frequencies or can utilize the
MU-MIMO feature.
While signal strength dropped off fairly quickly from one side of my modest home where the
router is to the other the speeds were still way better than before by at least 2 fold.
Looking at my crude signal strength map you can see the bottom floor of my home, where
my router is, has the bester coverage from the strongest point being right next to the
router at -25dbm to the den which is still well in the green.
I took these readings using an awesome free app called wifi analyzer.
Even around the outside in the garage I have a good enough signal to watch YouTube or Netflix,
not sure why you would in the garage but to each his own.
One the second floor, even though the dining room is directly above the router I lost some
signal strength but not enough to make a meaningful impact and even all the way at the other end
of the house in the master bedroom I could get 50mega bits down even with a quarter of
the original signal strength.
Wondering around in my back yard and as long as stand within line of the site with the
room equipped with the router, I could get full speed down up to 100ft away!
I imagine if you were able to actually centrally locate your router you would never have signal
problems unless you had a massive mansion or something.
Sitting back down and checking out ASUS’s network manager interface you get a very easy
to navigate GUI with access to pretty much all of the settings, good if you are tinkerer
or just a parent looking to setup parental controls.
For me everything seems set to go out of the box.
One feature that I was really interested in was the USB 3.0 network connection.
To test this I plugged in a 16gb thumb drive, unfortunately all I had was a USB 2.0 drive
so testing transfer speeds would be pointless.
It was automatically detected by the router and showed up in the management interface
immediately.
Without fiddling around with the router settings the drive appeared as another computer on
the network where you have access to all the files as if it were attached directly to your
computer.
This is a great option for something like a NAS or any USB storage device that you want
to back up to from multiple computers in the house.
Someday I’ll get or build a real NAS and test the transfer speeds, but being USB 3.0
the max will be roughly 5 giga bits per second before overhead and bottlenecks.
Of course you may have to change your computer’s network and share settings in order to “discover”
your home network and see any attached devises like the thumb drive I used.
In the end if you need a new router be it for better Wi-Fi speed, a better management
interface, a network attached USB port, or any other reason I would definitely check
out the ASUS AC1300.
For me upgrading from an almost decade old router was more than worth it!
Alright this has been Patrik CK, like and subscribe is you enjoyed this content, check
out some of my others videos, expect new videos every week and hope to see you all next time,
thanks everyone!