ASUS RT-BE96U WiFi 7 Tri-Band Router Review 

Finally, a router review that doesn't immediatly start talking about an "app", and actually reviews the product. Cheers Level1.

That intro was amazing!

The power switch is awesome. Dont ever change ASUS

@2:45, I use the power switch when i leave the house for weeks... i.e. on business trip. I tend to power off a lot of equipment when i need to leave for extended amount of time...

Hope Wendell does a follow up on Asuswrt-Merlin

Wow. That router is massive. I've experimented in the past building my own routers, I can't remember the name of the software but I ran something linux based around 2006 (I remembered: IPCop) and then a few years later I built a pfsense router. I remember originally needing to do this because off the shelf home routers would often crap out when torrenting.

I slapped a two port 2.5GbE NIC into an HP mini desktop with a 12th gen i3 in 2022 because multi-gig routers were astronomically expensive compared to my $160 solution. Wendell, is there any hope for a "forbidden AP?" Having to spend $700 for a WF7 AP for my house is beyond absurd, but I do live near multiple airports so getting away from 5Ghz would be lovely.

I love the way your reviews are lightyears ahead of the other fluffy immaterial nonsense. Contextualizing the nat performance around teleconferencing and the 2gb is dare I say… Fantastical! Much appreciated!

Loving the intro! Effects as advanced as early Star Trek

I have an ASUS RT-AXE7800 and run my DNS through a pihole instance I have running on a used Chromebox CN60 running CasaOS. Works great!

The production values are getting mindblowing! :D

Custom firmware as in Merlin-WRT? Also maybe the Power switch to help do the factory reset? Where you hold WPS or whatever before you flip it on. Could be easier than putting in the cable while holding the button

At 22:22 I thought he'd add, "Let's boldly take this router where no router has gone before." A missed opportunity, like routers passing in the night. :)

I still have a pair of WRT54GS with 8 MB of flash and 32 MB of RAM. That model was created specifically for tinkerers, after they shrank the resources of the original WRT54G (newer versions had less RAM and storage).

This intro is the best thing I've seen in months....

I power cycle routers that are confused sometimes. Bought the "pro" version of this some time ago and will install in as a Mesh #1 next time I trip over it.

Fun fact: Asus has been putting USB dongle-based WWAN support for a while now, nearly 2 decdes. I recall buying a router with this feature from them back in the late naughts. The tricky thing was getting a 2-3G dongle that would be supported from your ISP (usually the only place you could get one, because everything was SIMLocked then), as sometimes they wouldn't really play well with the protocol that would configure the SIM card and whatnot

Okay I’ve watched a few of your videos in the past and liked your stuff but wow that intro really did it for me.🤣🤣🤣🤣 absolutely amazing!

Asus is kinda notorious for not supporting their devices, or only offering short lived support, they still sell routers new on Amazon right now which are end of life day 1 of ownership. It's not really just them either, many companies are like this, should be a crime. I get not ever device can be supported till the end of time but mandatory software support 1 year after last model sold should be required by law. At this point routers seem to be more disposable by design than a $100 smartphone, I refuse to replace my equipment biyearly, I mean I still have some GL iNet routers which are Chinese but 3 years old and still getting regular security updates. I don't like trusting Chinese equipment but they get updates, are supported by OpenWrt and reasonable priced for the specs.

My RT-AC68U that I had for ages now is still going strong. I was considering an upgrade, but seeing how fugly the ASUS router range became in last few years I might pass for another couple years. Or just look elsewhere. And yeah, if you want 4 2.5Gbps ports you got to upgrade to RT-BE98U. Which is even fuglier iteration of this.

Dude! Is that a router or Sauron crown? You keep that up I'm gonna have to phone some hobbits...

I love my RT-BE98U PRO. 4 x 2.5 ports instead of gigabit ports.

I'm loving the Star Trek inspired intro!

Hi Wendell 😀! I'm really looking forward to the Asus be88u. It hasn't been announced for the usa yet, but that is closer to the ports I want. I'd lean towards it as a wired router/switch and use my Aruba AP for wifi.

Great insight Wendell and nice to see you looking into routers. I'm moving to a new place that can get Google Fiber, and am looking at purchasing the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-BE98 PRO First Quad-Band router if you could possible look at reviewing that one and maybe comparing any pros/cons between the two? And if not totally understand, I currently have the ASUS GT-AXE 11000 and looking to upgrade to GT-BE90 Pro and use my old one as a Mesh Router.

I LOVE being able to connect my phone to my PfSense and my old OpenWRT routers for cell phone backup, that was just a HUGE thing for me (and with Spectrum you can use your Spectrum Mobile connection which is your neighbors WiFi then bridge it through your phone to the router and suddenly YOUR wifi is courtesy your neighbor and they dont even realize it :) :) :))

Best Review I have seen for SOHO routers, what i would have loved is some coverage of IPv6 differences. E.g. the state table size, NAT is no longer relevant, but firewall states are likely bulkier. Client address assignment, does it reliably send the RAs for clients to SLAAC or does it need to use dhcp anyway like some ubiquiti products

Perfect! I am so sick of my OpenMesh WiFi 5/AC AP and want something fast to replace it

I use the router power switch when the kids don't listen. They cry, I laugh, and then they listen.

@level1techs, Do you know of a good way to test NAT states? I have some WFH users that consistently have call quality issues that we can't isolate and the section on NAT States sounds a lot like what I'm running into.

that intro was redonkulous and i love it

Reminds me of the Replicator robots from Stargate.

Yeah NAT translation counts can impact CPU usage. BIt torrent is a "great way" to get large translation tables.

Honestly, I'm on Team Power switch. I've been on enough support calls where I've had to talk users through unplugging their router and plugging it back in that a power switch would have been WONDERFUL. Plus it saves wear and tear on the barrel connector for the power brick. Maybe place that one somewhere less accident prone, but leave it there, ASUS. Everything needs a power switch that's easy to get to. Just in case.

Asus RT-axe7800 experience is absolutely trash tier status. Random drops then will not provide speeds past 80Mbps(wired or wireless) on a Gigabit Fiber network. Reboot corrects issue for about half a day. Have never had this terrible experience with other routers. Asus tech support solution was to hard reset router and setup the wifi network again. Did not resolve the issue. Router is updated with the latest firmware. Unfortunately won't be using Asus routers anymore when there are much better solutions available. That being said. Your channel and reviews are absolutely top notch!

3:00 Btw the power switch in the router is mandatory in some regions that’s why they always tend to have one

11:33 Good to see that the router is well protected against STDs.

Anything concerning bufferbloat?

But can it run Wing Commander though?

You said “If you don’t use this as a router, you effectively get dual 10Gb ports.” Does this mean that if you do use it as a router, you only have one WAN port? I’d like to use it in Dual WAN Load Balancing mode with my 2 ISPs (one cable, one fibre) and have a dozens of devices in my house and several family members working from home all day. Can you use it as a router with two ISPs using the Dual 10Gb WAN ports?

People need power switches on their router so they can reboot it when the malware on their malware crashes ore slows it down enough to notice. Seriously Wendell I was stunned to see you even reviewing this since consumer routers are so Sus at this point. I'm just watching to see if wifi can get close to it's BS marketing even on a consumer device.

WiFi 6E IS WiFi 6 + 6GHz - WiFi 7 is just a update to that standard. So it's confusing it took an update on any 6E device to operate on 6GHz. And basically how it works now is if it's a Broadcom device your only real useful option is Merlin (Asus-Wrt on Crack) or FreshTomato and for Qualcomm or MediaTek devices OpenWrt is still the firmware of choice. There are a few acceptations to this but for the most part where we're at. Asus-Wrt is based on the original Tomato firmware (which was based on Hyper-Wrt) and is pretty amazing for a consumer out-of-box router, though.

Honey… someone gave Wendell caffeine again! 😂

It was my understanding that the "Guest Network Pro" feature, creates multiple VLANs....no?🤔

I think it was 3 years ago I felt this unit AU90 was PhantomHardware as it was never in stock, always back ordered and reviews were posted before it was available It had great specs. If Wendell actually is hands on with this NEW MODEL I’ll consider it again. Watching to see if it’s the previous model specs, but new model name

You totally surprised me with this one. Although I was hoping it would be the "Pro" Quad band version.

The intro- "It's Wendell One, he's gone from geek to nerd!" [right there with him]

Can I use my ASUS GT-AX11000 as an extender for my ASUS RT-BE96U? And connect my PS5 to the AX11000’s 2.5ghz port? Would that give me the best possible connection without having to run Ethernet cables through the walls? (Two story home with weird layout)

Thx for testing 👍🏻 I'm really thinking to buy either RT-BE96U or GT-BE98. But... i wonder how much it can handle WAN LAN throughput. If it could at least come close to those 10Gbps that those 2 Ports support 🤔 I'm looking for an Asus Router to finally upgrade my FTTH from 1Gbps to 10Gbps 😅

Wendel , how does this do with dual ISP WAN load balancing? Still lose a bunch of features?

I hope I haven't overseen it but would you expect the router to be capable for 10 Gbit symmetric WAN over the SFP+? I mean going through a nat is always demanding

In regards to the physical power switch. My ISP is a cable company which shall remain nameless because I wouldn't recommend their services. Often times, due to issues with firmware/configuration updates that get pushed to the cable modem, I have to power cycle both the cable modem and the router for Internet connection to work correctly. The physical power switch on the router comes in really handy in that situation. In a perfect world I would have a reliable and fast fiber internet connection, but we all don't have that as an option. This is something that I have to typically deal with around once a month.

Does OpenWRT work on it?

The lack of VLANs bothers me. I’m still using a RT-AC88U. I want to upgrade but ASUS does not offer anything w/ comparable number of LAN ports let alone multiple 2.5gb connections and VLANs. Would be nice if I could do everything in one box but they always cut corners somewhere.

Im still using WIndows 7 even though I have Windows 10 & 11 but I still enjoy my Windows 7 system more. Should this router be fine for a Windows 7 computer? Currently I have a Linksys ea-9500 router which is still great but is the Asus RT BE96u much better or way better? Thanks

I'm not sure how pie hole works. But can't you change the DHCP settings to a different DNS appliance?

The prices on these were so high that I just bought a ubiquiti UDM SE and an AP. Now I have PoE and a much more configurable network.

I got the asus rt-be88u, for some reason nobody talks about it. Did I miss something? 2 10gig, one fiber, 4 2.5gig and 4 1gig wifi 7. Why is nobody acknowledging this router. It's a lot cheaper. But I'm getting worried

I get actual 6ghz band on my Netgear RAXE500 , best router ive owned to date.

Would you be willing to review the firewalla routers? They're pricey and no web UI (mainly have to use a smartphone app) but they do enable a lot of functionality (deep packet inspection, rules, etc.) without having to setup separate box.

2.5gbe missing is bit silly for its price point (2x10gbe is nice but it's just 2, one is for WAN port I assume unless you can use one of the 5 ports as WAN)

The NAT address table (at 3,000) isn't really all that big. A $60 MikroTik HeX 5 (256MB RAM) can hold up to 225,280 entries, which is significantly more than the +- 65,536 max entries you can have on a public IP anyway. It's fine for most consumers I suppose, but at $700 with 2GB of RAM I think it should not be an issue to increase it.

I wanna buy a GT-BE98 Pro, why couldn't you do a review on that model 😭

Bro the intro was amazing

re: wired speeds, i think ethernet is being pitched as an open approach to uhhhhh NPU interlinks. Like instead of NVLink or whatever the modern one is. So they must be cooking something

Wendell any substantial differences between having a Quad band Asus router over the more common Tri-Band that's been around for some years now

how does it handle bufferbloat? like my wife n kids watching youtube in 3 different rooms while I'm trying to play a game that uses UDP can be a PITA with alot of routers

Did you try speed with wpa3 and protected management frames disabled on wifi 7? From my experience protected management frames have big impact

I'm waiting for mediatek filogic based routers that support 6e or 7. They should be well supported by openwrt and other third party firmwares. I don't believe any current 6e/7 routers will support openwrt. With routers costing so much (if you want at least 3 streams on the 5/6ghz channels) I'd much rather have other options if the oem firmware isn't stable or capable enough. Filogic 860 devices are coming this year I believe (the banana rp4 is available but no wifi 7 radios exist for it yet). My internet is sub gig but my use case is for wireless VR which benefits from the advances in latency and bandwidth offered by devices. Just my thoughts, nice review and testing

Class leading introduction to accompany this amazing hardware 🎉

What wifi7 access point you guys would advise ... that has something like AiMesh ? Or have you guys actually seen an open source wifi mesh that I could contenerise ?

My biggest problem is my phone, laptop, entertainment devices, Don't even support wifi 6, let alone 7, Currently running a Asus Wifi 5 device, and agree the software is solid, but hard to justify replacing my current router. I'd love to upgrade to WPA 3, but right now its all going to be mixed. Been going wired for most and a segmented WPA wifi vlan.

Great review! Please take the protective tape off your big screens.

Does it have a setting that disables WiFi and Ethernet configuration?

Better off going with a PFSense/OPNSense router. Solutions like the Netgate 6100 ( 2 x 10G, 4 x 2.5G , 2 x 1G) only cost a little more than this, and have 8 gb of ram onboard for applications. (Yes, you'd also have to attach a wifi solution to this)

Can we please get some reviews of some openwrt/dd-wrt capable newer routers? I love my linksys wrt3200acm with it's custom firmware support right out of the box I was running openwrt in 5 mins from unbox to power on to stock firmware update page and dropping an image in it. But it's gotten long in the tooth and support for it has shifted to newer products to where newer images for it seem to be just auto built/spit out half broken an nobody cares.

Hi guys, i am getting this router delivered tomorrow. I am currently with Yayzi who use Cityfibre network. My question is does anyone use this router and is it capable of using VLAN ID as that's what i need for the cityfibre ONT box to connect to this. Thanks😄

For $600+ I'd rather go with something like the Ubiquiti Dream Machine pro (DMP $380) and a Ubiquiti U7 Pro for an AP ($190) over an ASUS product. DMP is a quad core CPU @ 1.7ghz w/4GB of DDR4 RAM and It seems like it'd just be a better purchase over all. Total is still sub $600 and a better, likely more flexible system. The DMP is also more powerful, and has seemingly better protection packages (I haven't compared them side by side obviously) but it'd be interesting. Id like to see this ASUS router vs a small form factor PC running PFSense or something.

Is cat6e and wifi6e the same standard? Or do they just coincidentally use the same number letter combo?

The only tech channel worth watching. Appreciated man gained a lot of important knowledge from this. Just a comment my family wants to kove aeay from ethernet for aesthetics and wifi routers are important to us. Keep up the good work youre a true legend love.

Don't shame the power switch. The number of times I've had to talk someone trough power cycling a router and they had to unplug the power cord and they say "which wire?" is way to many.

ASUS: Put physical power switches on everything. Especially WIFI routers. Thanks.

sorry but if you dont restart asus routers nightly they do accrue problems and the last routers used a little button that you could never tell if it was properly pushed or not.

So what sort of CPU is this running? Have Asus adopted RISC V or this ARM based?

since WiFi7 is that expensive I thing I get a 6E router instead. Any suggestions?

Personally, I feel the best consumer router is the Gl-iNet Flint 2. Works great for everything I need.

You should review the BE98 Pro that I have next!

my current router, AC3200 is starting to show some weird behavior, just restarting itself for no reason I can find, so kinda in the market for something new

Mechanical power switches are to deal with off/idle/standby requirements. Rather than the EE having to be mindful of using low quiescent current converters in some of the power stages, and poor sods writing the firmware having to make a standby state that never gets used. "Off/standby power" is now 0.00W because its off with a physical switch. (To be more specific it will be whatever the power brick draws when off, but the PSU companies are good at meeting those requirements, and a bad firmware still wont ruin their energy star requirements)

I have the RT-AX86U. WiFi 6. Every time you do a slightest change in the settings it need to reboot itself. And the reboot isn't really fast. It has 1 GB memory and 50% of that is eaten up by the OS. If you plug in a drive to the USB and share it, the rest of the RAM is eaten up and the transfer get really slow. I decided to turn off the router function and only use it as a access point for my phones and tablets and use pfSense for the routing and stuff. $300 down the drain, kind of.

Power switch: because ASUS firmware updates often request a manual power cycle (and they don't want to encourage people to unplug).

dude you can find wifi 6 with 6Ghz and you can find wifi 7 just with 5Ghz so you need to double check the specific specs and not to assume automatically that the marketing of wifi 6 / 6E / 7 etc... are any indication of specific specs also you can find wifi 7 160MHz channel or wifi 7 320MHz channel

@7:46 mega-bits not mega-bytes!!! There is a difference! The throughput speed coming from your ISP doesn't know how big a word is in the computer you are running!

Why can’t they make these work with poe ....so I don’t have to have it near an outlet..

For that kind of money, I'd expect more RAM/ROM (or they could just make it upgradeable), but the basics look pretty good.

The power switch thing might be a regulatory requirement in some regions. Dunno.

Would it really have been that difficult to get more memory and storage in this? I feel like Asus could have been much more ambitious given the price.

Power Switch? Because the firmware issues on Asus devices for networking has been problematic, so you end up forced rebooting their network devices from time to time unfortunately. I'm very distrustful based on my experience of the XT8 devices, which promised tri-band and their meshing system has been very spotty with that edition of their solution. I'm very much convined based on your reviews of Engenius, that they are a more reliable solution than the Asus networking equipment :(

This router drops signal like crazy, hasnt been a firmware update for this new product in months.

Could I build something like this or better for cheaper?