Asus BE6500 speed via USB with latest firmware

[Pavel_S]

Hello everyone. I'm looking for a tester who can tell me the data transfer speed on the USB interface of the Asus BE6500 with the latest firmware version 3.0.0.6.102_57143.
According to reviews from 06/2025 and 10/2025 it is very low, about 35.8 MB/s. I assume that the new FW could improve it.

 

[degrub]

i would not assume that. It ( and all the other AIO routers) has a relatively slow/weak cpu that is intended for LAN to WAN and vice versa pushing packets. It is really only a marketing effort adding very basic , limited functionality to increase sales. It won't be anything like what you may have in a laptop or desktop PC. If you need NAS functionality with speed, get a real NAS or repurpose a PC using FreeNAS or the like.

 

[fruitcornbread]

Hello everyone. I'm looking for a tester who can tell me the data transfer speed on the USB interface of the Asus BE6500 with the latest firmware version 3.0.0.6.102_57143.
According to reviews from 06/2025 and 10/2025 it is very low, about 35.8 MB/s. I assume that the new FW could improve it.

It's possible. It's unusually low compared to other routers on the same Dongknows chart assuming all things equal in testing standards. Perhaps, it's their poor implementation as ASUS has been mostly using Broadcom chipset and some Mediatek for their Wi-Fi 6 and 7 routers. TUF-BE9400 uses the same CPU Qualcomm IPQ5322 and it has very low performance as well at Read 33.2 MB/s and Write 27.1 MB/s on firmware 3.0.0.6.102_58138. IRRC, GL.iNet Slate 7 (GL-BE3600) uses the same CPU and it's much better at Read 88.6 MB/s and Write 99.2 MB/s.

FYI, some of TP-Link Archer lineup have introduced V2 where they downgraded the CPU from IPQ9574 (ARM Cortex-A73) to IPQ5322 (ARM Cortex-A53) specifically the BE550, GE550, and GE650. From the shown pictures, I believe Dongknows reviewed V1 of those routers and I'm not sure if it is possible to get V1 hardware anymore. TP-Link Deco lineup is relatively untouched except for the BE63 and BE65 where they did the same CPU downgrade on V2.

 

[Pavel_S]

It's interesting with the CPU placement in routers. I use RT-BE58U (BCM6764L) and I wanted higher performance in data transfer via USB (Samba). So I was thinking about RT-BE6500 (IPQ5322). I thought that if it's more expensive, it will be better. But that's probably not true. So the closest choice would be a router from Asus again (I don't want to break Mesh) but with a BCM4912 CPU.
I am based on DMIPS values: https://mao.fan/socpk.html