Asus RT-AC66U 802.11ac Dual Band Router review

INTERACTION
The RT-AC66U has a very attractive setup wizard and web interface, but it’s not always easy to find the setting you want to change. Also, you can only have one user logged in to the router’s web interface at any one time, which is annoying. If your PC is logged in to the web interface in another room, you can’t then connect with your laptop or iPad to change a few settings.

Conveniently, the Asus RT-AC66U has two USB ports to which you can connect USB drives and printers. The Netgear R6300 provides better control and configuration of USB drives, but it doesn’t have a built-in print server.

As you’d expect, the Asus RT_AC66U has a DMZ, port forwarding and Dynamic DNS, which means you can configure it for online gaming and remote access to your home network when you’re out and about. You can even download iOS and Android apps to easily connect to the router to access attached devices. Unfortunately, we found the iOS app a little buggy and it would crash when we tried to access certain network PCs.

CONCLUSION
The Asus RT-AC66U is a great 802.11ac router. It’s insanely fast compared to 802.11n routers, but it’s nowhere near as fast as the truly excellent Netgear R6300. It also has a very pretty web interface, but we found it difficult to find the settings we wanted to change quickly, unlike the R6300’s. If speed’s your prime concern, go for the Netgear R6300, but if you want a fast 802.11ac router that also lets you connect USB printers, go for the Asus RT-AC66U.