Thanks for the comprehensive review as always. Not many people go to the extent of disassembling these routers and in this case it leads me to a few questions for you, specifically regarding antennas.

I broke one of those non-removable antennae and I was thinking to try and replace them all with new IPX (or I.FL) to RP-SMA cables and 4 replacement antennae. My questions are

1. Do you have any details as to the IPX clip on the Route PCB is it M or F and what size are they please?
2. I can order ASUS Antennae off AliExpress but would it be worth getting 10 or 12 dbi ones?

Thanks!

Thank you for letting us know that Asus has acknowledged some incompatibilities with the Intel adapters. But, I did have some issues with the Asus PCIe adapters as well, the PCE-AC88 and the PCE-AC68, so, hopefully they will address these as well.

Apparently whatever issue Asus is having with some PCIe wifi adapters is something they are asking the suppliers of the adapters to fix, and not themselves.

Hi. I think I can check it out in the next couple of weeks and see if there are some major changes.

There have been 3 FW updates since your last checkup.

We’re you planning on revisiting ?

Thank you.

One of the quarrels that I have with the WiFi 6 routers manufacturers is that they don’t properly differentiate their devices. Both the RT-AX58U and the RT-AX56U are supported by Merlin, have decent performance on the 80MHz channel bandwidth, both have USB ports, a 1.5GHz CPU (some difference in cores, but shouldn’t be noticeable in most cases – both routers will work fine with VPNs). The conclusion is that the 160MHz support is pretty much the main differentiating factor between these two routers. The issues that I had on the 160MHz are mostly noticeable with certain types of WiFi adapters, so the price tag may (or may not) be justified. It’s up to you to decide that 🙂

What are a couple of things that make one lean towards one or the other? (I know subjective question). They just seem so similar, minus the price difference and the 160mhz support.

I imagine the price increase for the AX58U isn’t much worth if 160mhz is not that usable. Unless there is something I am missing.

The RT-AX58U should have a better WiFi performance, but only by a very small margin. Also, the 160MHz channel bandwidth was not really that stable, as you mentioned. Other than that, these two routers aren’t that different from the components pov, so, depending on your particular needs, the RT-AX56U can be the better choice.

Been reading how the 160mhz isn’t really as good in real world setting. But I wonder if there is anything else that stands out between AX58U and the AX56U

I am debating which one to really get.