Product ReviewsASUS AC3100 1000 Mbps 8 Port 2167 Mbps Wireless Router (RTAC88U)

Very good router, excellent software.

Powerful WiFi router and 8 ethernet ports. Setup was easy and fairly quick, connecting to internet a little harder to setup, and once done works fine. Security is good and easy to setup as well.
Bought this because software on other routers was not very good. Most routers today have good hardware, so it's the software interface that makes or breaks it for the home user. The Asus router software is easier than the competitors for connectivity with all devices. With the competitors software, I couldn't get my phone online. Really?
I needed this router because nothing beats the security of a hard wired home network. And we have a fairly large home network, so 6 ports were needed. Extras never hurt. Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: pre-owned | Sold by: playusa

Great upgrade from Belkin router

As of May 23 2016, this is 1 of 2 products that has the longest ranges from a ASUS router. This dual band router has a lot of awesome features and its' interface is very fancy and slick. It matches my ASUS laptop cosmetics perfectly. I haven't had a single drop in signal and it is almost always 3 bars throughout my entire house. All our devices (19 wifi devices) connect perfectly, but this is not including my PSP and DS Lite. So be prepared to keep your old router for those devices. Price is about 50 to 100 dollars too much though, but this is currently the top of the line wifi router. It is very high end so it was worth the price.

You can turn off LED and WIFI from the front with buttons. On the back there is a power button you have to hit. Later on you can also buy your own HDD/SSD/USB 3.0/2.0 to connect to the back or left front of the device through USB. Now keep in mind you are going to need a little bit of room for this, it is not large, but it is not small either.

Comes with a awesome 2 year warranty, but I will be honest and let you know I don't know how good or bad ASUS tech support is. Will definitely leave a update if something goes wrong. Also "WTFast Game Accelerator Inside" is not free and you actually have to pay for a monthly subscription to use it. The 1st month is free.

This product is VPN compatible and there are no internal antennas, but only 4 external antennas that do the job though. I wouldn't even recommend the ASUS RT-AC5300 because it is overkill, the price is way to high, and the AC3100 router wifi reach is just as good. You would only get the ASUS RT-AC5300 if you want tri-band. Tri-band routers are useful, but if your internet download and upload speeds are too low. You won't even benefit from it.

***UPDATE about 5ghz not working***
Your 5ghz will disappear if you use the smart connect setting. Basically the router will decide from then on out and you are pretty much not allowed to object. The only problem I have with this is I like to know which one it is switching to, to make sure it is working correctly. So there is no way of fact checking to make sure the smart connect is working perfectly. Hopefully they change this in a firmware update. Btw, if you then switch off the smart connect, the only way to get the 5ghz back for independent selecting is to hard reset the entire router. Which is a pain! Negative 1 star because of this feature setback.Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: new | Sold by: newegg

Great at first...

My router pushed great speed. I’m on a 20 up and 400 down plan and I got constantly 24-25 up and 380-440 down but after a few weeks with no issues what so ever we lost the 2.4 channel. I have had previous Asus routers that they were tanks! So I ignored the bad reviews that said that this had happened to others... well i returned it and decided to go another direction. I am now running a Netgear Nighthawk X6S tri band. It’s cheaper and a tri band router with the same speeds and no issues. I will probably try Asus again in the future but for a router that costs over $200 it needs to be more then fast it needs to be reliable. Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: pre-owned | Sold by: hitexstore

Very Bad Choice

I’ve done a great deal of research on multiple routers and decided to purchase the ASUS. I was excited when the router arrived but that excitement went away after seeing the performance of the router. I tried all settings, did more research online, call tech support & the router was still lagging.

I’ve a 75 MBps pipe coming into my home & I’m sitting in front of the machine & I’m getting 15 to 35 MBps...very very disappointed.

When I come home from work in the evenings I’m getting 3 MBps, then I’ve to reboot for the speed to go back up.

Not sure what’s the hype about, maybe it’s the design...it’s a beautiful design that’s about it.

I had to return it. I now purchase & waiting for my NETGEAR, I’m hoping the results will be better. Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: new | Sold by: euphoric_operat...

The RT-AC88U is a fine router, but is overkill for the average household.

The short version:
The main reason for this purchase was to get longer wireless range. It did extend the range, but not really enough to be sufficient for my needs/intentions. There are cheaper and more effective solutions to weak 5GHz WiFi range than just buying a "long-range" router.

The long version:
For years, I've been relying on the built-in WiFi 2.4/5GHz wireless solution that's built into my cable modem. It worked for many years for emails, browsing websites, and streaming Netflix.

However as I added more and more wireless devices (smart thermostat, Ring/security cameras, streaming boxes like Apple TV, etc), it seems to have gotten overwhelmed. Many of the IoT devices intermittently couldn't connect and the PCs weren't able to utilize all the Internet bandwidth that was available. Speed tests showed 100+MB/sec throughput, and doing things like downloading large files or watching movies that could be buffered worked fine. But communications that required real-time low-latency communications was inconsistent.

In March 2019 when my wife and I both started working from home, this solution proved incapable of the demands. Internet audio (Teams & Zoom) was completely unusable for either of us. VPN connections frequently dropped and had to reconnect. And when I relocated my make-shift kitchen-table office to my basement, I couldn't get a 5GHz WiFi connection. 2.4GHz was possible, but throughput wasn't nearly good enough for my needs. So I installed a 5GHz WiFi repeater. For those not familiar, a WiFi repeater is just a poor-man's mesh network extension that bridges the communications between my existing SSID and a new one that the repeater hosts. That got me 5GHz connection to my office and was OK for general Internet access, but only made the existing latency issues worse.

As an experiment, I disabled the built-in WiFi in my cable modem and added a cheap Asus router (AC1300 RT-ARCH13) setup as an access point. This improved my wireless performance DRAMATICALLY! It sped up my top speed to the Internet to ~230MB/sec as well as got rid of the latency issues making internet audio possible and VPN connections perfectly stable. However the router couldn't extend the signal all the way to my office. The repeater's lag still made Internet audio not reliable enough to rely on, but it was at least possible and intermittently usable.

That's where I got the idea to try a long-range router like the RT-AC88U. Since I was already familiar with Asus' user interface from using the cheap router I already had, I decided to stay with Asus. So I bought one (used). And as expected, it was a drop-in replacement for the cheap router (after being configured exactly like the cheap router). It was able to get its 5GHz signal to my office, but the signal was so weak that going through the repeater still gave me better throughput and performance. So the experiment was a fail.

The real answer for my dilemma is to relocate my WiFi router (acting as an access point) to a more-central location in my house. If I did that, I'm absolutely confident the cheap little Asus router would work just fine AND would let me get rid of the repeater. The only thing holding me back from this is getting an Ethernet cable run between the Cable Modem and where I'd locate the WiFi router. At some point, I will do that. And since I have it, I'll keep the RT-AC88U, but it is WAY overkill for my intentions.

If I were going to host a gaming server where each device on the network would benefit from high-speed ultra-low latency access to each other, this router would make a lot more sense over a cheaper one. Low-latency (LAN-party) gaming really is the intention of this tier of router. But I cannot recommend this router over cheaper alternatives for it's 5GHz range-improvement alone. Spend the extra money relocating the router OR on a true mesh-network architecture.Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: pre-owned | Sold by: adriennica

Avoid the 8-port ASUS RT-AC88U/AC3100

I'm a big fan of ASUS routers, but this model in particular has a long history of radio failures. When the radio fails, the normally green wireless icon on the configuration page will show as half-gray or all-gray, and the MAC address will be blank. At that point, that band is toast. The 8-port switch is actually 2 x 4 port switches internally connected, so aggregated bandwidth isn't available to all ports. This is a hack. Avoid this router. The AC3200 on the other hand, works a treat.Read full review...

ASUS AC3100 RT-AC88U Router, Highly Recommended!

When I first received my ASUS AC3100 RT-AC88U Router. I immediately straight out of the box installed (Asuswrt-Merlin Firmware) on it. Which is free open source software, a third party alternative firmware for Asus routers, so I can't compare factory Asus firmware to Merlin firmware. But I can confirm all is running great & I couldn't be happier. This Asus Router has given my house hold much better WiFi rang/coverage as well as Four Extra ethernet ports, which I'm a huge fan of ethernet ports over WiFi any day. Nonetheless, I have nothing to say bad about the Asus AC88U Router. I recommend to anyone looking to upgrade their home network to a better Router. Well worth the extra cash. Like the old saying goods, (you get what you payed for).Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: new | Sold by: FSvMa1BTQAG@Del...

Worked badly for a week, then died...

I ordered this router because I have an older model that worked fine. They are nicely built and packed and they have lots of professional features that other brands lack.
ASUS Customer Service used to be first quality as well.
The router worked quite badly for around a week, with slacky connections and sometimes very low speeds.
Then one day it decided to stop transmitting WiFi completely and even the Ethernet ports stopped working.
No more connection to the Internet neither, even if the power light staid on. It had the latest firmware and the product was registered.
I tried everything possible to resuscitate it, including resetting to factory standards and using the recovery mode for a few times. Nothing worked.
I contacted Customer Service in Canada over the phone, which seems to work just office hours Eastern Time and not during the week ends.
I had to send an email to Support because they were not answering, then after several days they sent me an answer with a Case number and instructions to send the router to a Service Center.
ASUS guys (Hello!). I use the router for work and I can't wait weeks or may be months to get a brand new device which I paid a lot of money for, to get repaired.
I decided to return the router to the seller and I bought D-Link locally instead.
ASUS never again.Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: pre-owned | Sold by: morty1978

Top of the line router with all the bells and whistles

Range is excellent compared to previous routers. Seems somewhat more immune to microwave interference. The 8 gigabit LAN ports allowed me to simplify my setup by removing the need for a separate 8 port switch. Speed on the wireless links is about the same as the Arris router that the cable company supplied, but the range of the Asus router is better. Overall, I have been using it for more than a week now and I am very happy with it.Read full review...

Verified purchase:  Yes | Condition: pre-owned | Sold by: valuebuys101

Speed issues

I upped my internet speed from 75mbs to 150. When I did the change over I even changed out my modem. Unfortunately my speed did not increase. I the changed a setting in the Asus. I wish I could remember so I can share it here but is was a year ago. Immediately my dl speed went through the roof and I was maxing out and about 180 Mbs. I ran that way until I changed it to an AP only. As a wifi router, it performed beautifully and through the wired connections I got great dl speeds.

If you have a speed issue with this wifi router, check the settings. It will be either your cable modem or a setting in the router. Do this and you'll get the max speed of your connections, within reason.Read full review...

Verified purchase: No