Upgrade to AX68U from AX58U, worth it?

[torstein]

I have the AX58U and it works fine, but it bothers me that it only has 2x2 MIMO and that it apparently has an early draft of the WiFi6-standard, and as such not "Certified WiFi6".
The AX68U is now on sale in my country for 40% off roughly. Is it worth the upgrade to AX68U?

I mostly just stream,have a media-server, TimeMachine-server, an OpenVPN-server running and surf the web, but I would like to have the fastest speeds with the lowest latency and utilise my Macbook Pro 3x3 MIMO. I also use Merlin-wrt.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Adooni]

if you are happy with AX58U do not change it to AX68U
if you think current router is to cheap and you want to spend more like for iPhone/ Samsung cell look at AX86U that is much better compering to both routers you consider.

 

[torstein]

But the AX86U came before the 68U and hence is not a fully certified wifi 6 router, no? i read the 86u as the 58u was made with an early almost finished but not quite wifi 6 draft.

So the 68U should be more «complete» than the 86U, right?

 

[L&LD]

Should be's, and could have been's, mean little. As does 'certification' too, sometimes. From everything I can see on Asus' site, the RT-AX86U is identical or superior to the RT-AX68U in every aspect. And in performance, far superior.

The RT-AX86U is the most complete, most powerful, stable, and (so far after 6+ months of using two of them), reliable router Asus has offered so far with RMerlin support.

Without ever using the RT-AX68U, I cannot recommend it for the asking price. The RT-AC86U is still the far better router, overall, (as an entry-level product today with RMerlin support).

The RT-AX58U is an acceptable product if you can find it at a very good sale price. The link below is my opinion of that model.

Review - New In the Charts: ASUS RT-AX58U

ASUS' RT-AX58U AX3000 Dual Band WiFi 6 Router has been tested and added to SmallNetBuilder's Wi-Fi Router Charts. Also known as the RT-AX3000 and RT-AX82U, its Broadcom-based design is spec'd for two streams on 2.4 and 5 GHz. However, since the 5 GHz radio is Broadcom's BCM43684 four stream...

www.snbforums.com

I'll be curious to see what Tim finds when he tests the RT-AX68U. But I highly doubt that this will be the model to knock the RT-AX86U off it's current #1 throne.

Home - SmallNetBuilder

 

[Adooni]

do not look at it as "draft" is something wrong - In the past long time ago (2009) I bought Asus RT-N16 that have N draft and it was the most stable router I ever worked with. Is still used in my family with E3372S-150 LTE and tomato.

you want to improve your network operation and we just advice how to do it.

 

[torstein]

Thanks for the replies! I read your comment L&LD about the AX58U performance dip, but it works fine in my 40m2 apartment... I just remember my old AC68U was a community darling here, so I assumed the AX68U would also become the new go-to router, and it being newer and certified + 3x3mimo I figured it might be better to replace my AX58U.

The AX86U is still very expensive, at almost twice the price of the AX58U.

I wonder, which AX-router IS the new community-darling? Is it the AX86U? AX88U? Or will it be the AX68U?

 

[Adooni]

it is AX86U and it is advised by RMerlin
If you are happy with AX58U wait for special offer for AX86U and then take it.