Reviewing ASUS RT-AC58U - Is it a top-notch AC1300 wireless router?

ASUS RT-AC58U AC1300 is a new router that aims to compete in the crowded space of wireless routers that cost somewhere between 100 and 150 USD. It stands out because it includes a new quad-core processor that is included in very few routers. This processor is industry's first single-chip Wi-Fi system-on-chip to bring Wave-2 802.11ac features that were standardized in 2016. In theory, we should get amazing performance at an affordable price. But does this router deliver on this promise? Let's find out from this review:

Unboxing the ASUS RT-AC58U AC1300 dual-band wireless router

The ASUS RT-AC58U AC1300 dual-band router comes in a simple box with a picture of the device on the top and a list with some of its most important features: the total maximum theoretical bandwidth, its support for 3G/4G dongles and so on. On the back side of the box you will find a description of its main features, including its quad-core processor, improved wireless range and so on. When you open the box, inside you will find the following: the router, the power adapter, a support disc, the warranty, a quick start guide and a network cable. The unboxing experience offered by the ASUS RT-AC58U AC1300 wireless router is quick and pleasant. Inside the box you will find all the elements you would expect from a WiFi router.

Hardware specifications and design

ASUS RT-AC58U is a wireless router with four external antennas. As you can see in the picture below, they are very tall and they cannot be unscrewed from the router, which may be a downside for some users. The antennas are used for delivering MU-MIMO wireless connections which means fast and stable connections for devices that support this technology. Two of them are used for the 2.4 GHz wireless frequency and the other two for the 5 GHz frequency. ASUS RT-AC58U is one of the first wireless routers to feature a quad-core Qualcomm IPQ4018 processor, running at 717 MHz. This processor is the industry's first single-chip Wi-Fi system-on-chip (SoC) to bring Wave-2 802.11ac features. The processor is complemented by 128 MB of RAM memory and 128 MB of storage space for the firmware and the software features of this router. Obviously, this router offers support for all the modern networking standards, including 802.11ac and 802.11n. On the back side of the router, we have the WAN port alongside four Gigabit Ethernet ports, the WPS button, the power jack, a button for turning the router On and Off, and a jack for resetting the settings of the ASUS RT-AC58U. On the front side of the router we can find the usual LED lights that indicate the status of the router's functioning and a USB 3.0 port. The size of this router is quite small, at 8.1 x 5.8 x 1x4 inches or 207 x 148.8 x 35.5 mm in Length, Width and Height. ASUS RT-AC58U weighs only 395 grams or 13.93 ounces. If you want to learn more about the characteristics of this wireless router, read its official web page: ASUS RT-AC58U Specifications.

Setting up and using the ASUS RT-AC58U AC1300 dual-band wireless router

One of the first things we noticed is that the ASUS RT-AC58U cannot be easily mounted on walls and other surfaces, since it doesn't have a VESA mount on the bottom. To ensure the best wireless signal, you should place it on a flat surface and orient the four antennas as shown in the drawing below. The firmware setup is easy and quick, just like on any other ASUS wireless router. First, you need to change the default username and password for administering the device, which is a great security precaution. Then, the router detects the type of your internet connection and it requests the appropriate connection details. After you provide them, you are asked to set up the two wireless networks that are broadcast by the router. At the end of the initial setup, you are shown a summary of your settings. You can access the administration user interface and get into more advanced settings, which we recommend you do. One new feature that we observed on the Network Map for this router, is the Status tab, where you can see how much of your router's processor cores and RAM memory are used. It's a neat little feature that can be useful when troubleshooting problems. Also, you can quickly tell when you have enabled too many features and they end up using too much of its hardware resources. The user interface is neatly organized and easy to navigate. As always, ASUS provides great multilingual support. Below you can see the 18 languages in which you can use the administration interface. All the settings are very well organized and you can easily find what you are looking for. One neat little feature is that help is easily available: if you don't understand what a setting does, move the mouse cursor on top of its name and, if you see a question mark displayed, click the left mouse button. Then, a tooltip is shown with more information about that setting. As always with ASUS routers, advanced users will be pleased by the level of control they get. All the features of this router can be customized in detail and, by default, only the basic services are turned on, so that they don't consume precious resources. When you are done setting everything, you should connect all your computers and devices to the network. This process is quick and easy. We were able to immediately share files and folders over the network, do media streaming, install a wireless printer and other activities. One aspect that irritated us a bit are the LEDs on the top side of the router. In small rooms, they can get quite annoying during the night. Luckily, you can fiddle with the settings of this router and set the WPS button to act as a button for turning them On and Off, which is great. In the week that we tested this router, we were generally pleased with its performance. However we did notice a few issues:

• Applying changes to wireless settings can take a long time and require a restart of your router.
• During one night, the two wireless networks stopped broadcasting, even if we did not set any schedule for their operation. We had to restart the router and then everything was back to normal.
• We noticed performance drops for brief periods of time. During most of our testing, ASUS RT-AC58U performed well, as you will see in our sections with benchmarks. However, for brief periods of time, the speed of the wireless network would drop without any explanation and then get back to normal a couple of minutes later. This issue was encountered mostly on the 2.4 GHz wireless frequency and less on the 5GHz frequency.

These issues seem to be firmware related. The hardware on the ASUS RT-AC58U is quite able to deliver fast and stable wireless network connections and future firmware updates should fix these problems. Setting up the ASUS RT-AC58U wireless router is quick and painless. The multi-lingual support is excellent, help documentation is easily available and advanced users will get a lot of control. However, there are a few downsides to consider: you cannot mount this router on walls and its firmware does have some stability issues that affect the wireless network (which should be fixed in future updates). Other than that, the hardware on this router is very capable of delivering very fast wireless networks, as you will see later in this review. To learn more about the real-world performance offered by this router, as well as our final verdict, read the next page in this review.

Wireless network performance

Before sharing the details of our measurements, let's take a look at the apartment that was used in our testing and how it is set up. You can see that the router is placed in the living room. With most wireless routers, the signal strength is not that great in rooms like the Kitchen and the Medium balcony. Our testing was done using a fast 1 Gigabit Internet connection that's capable of uploads on the internet of up to 500 Mbps. We used a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for all our measurements and several software tools. To get a better perspective of the performance offered by ASUS RT-AC58U, we compared it to its slightly more affordable brother - ASUS RT-AC1200G+ and with another competing router with a similar total maximum bandwidth: Edimax BR-6478AC V2. We started by evaluating the 2.4 GHz wireless network and measured the signal strength offered in each room, using a tool named inSSIDer. As you can see in the graph below, the signal strength offered by ASUS RT-AC58U is not that great. However, this doesn't mean that it is a slow wireless router. Then, we used SpeedTest to measure how fast the Internet connection offered by this router is. In the download test, ASUS RT-AC58U has had mixed performance. In some rooms it was faster than the other routers we compared it to, while in other rooms it wasn't. In the upload test, again, the performance offered by ASUS RT-AC58U was mixed. Continuing our measurements on the 2.4 GHz wireless network, we used LAN Speed Test Lite to measure downloads and uploads when transferring a 350MB file between two computers connected to the network. When measuring the download speed, ASUS RT-AC58U performed best in the rooms that were further away from the router and worse in the rooms closest to it. In the upload test, ASUS RT-AC58U performed worse in the room where it was placed (which we found very odd), as well as in the furthest room from its position. In all the other rooms, it offered very good performance, beating other routers. The 2.4 GHz wireless network offered by ASUS RT-AC58U can be unstable, suffering from variability and performance drops. The hardware inside this router is quite powerful and able to offer fast and stable wireless connections but its firmware has some bugs which negatively impact your experience. Next, we analyzed the performance offered by the 5GHz wireless network. First, we looked at the evolution of the signal strength, from room to room. As you can see below, the signal strength offered by ASUS RT-AC58U is not that great. However, this doesn't mean that it is a slow wireless router. We moved to SpeedTest, to measure the speed of the Internet connection on the 5GHz wireless network. The download speed offered by ASUS RT-AC58U was excellent in all rooms, except one. The same story was true when we looked at the upload speed. Lastly, we used LAN Speed Test Lite to measure downloads and uploads when transferring a 350MB file between two computers connected to the network. Again, ASUS RT-AC58U was an excellent performer, when we measured the download speed. When we measured the upload speed, ASUS RT-AC58U performed very well but it was beaten by its more affordable brother, ASUS RT-AC1200G+. ASUS RT-AC58U is a great performer when it comes to the 5GHz wireless network. It managed to offer very fast downloads and uploads. Its new quad-core processor has definitely shown its strength in our measurements.

Wired network performance

In order to test the quality of the wired Ethernet connection, we used a desktop PC, equipped with an Intel Core i5 4460 processor, running at 3.20GHz, 16GB of RAM and a very fast Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD and a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 with an Intel Core i5-4300U processor, running at 1.9 GHz, 8 GB of RAM and a fast 256 GB SSD drive from Samsung. We started by measuring the download and upload speeds using SpeedTest. As you can see below, ASUS RT-AC58U managed to offer downloads which are very close to 1 Gbps. Also, it achieved the maximum upload speed possible on our internet connection. For the last measurement, we transferred an 883 MB file between the same two computers connected to the network, both of which were using an Ethernet cable. Again, ASUS RT-AC58U was a very good performer, with transfers close to 900 Mbps. ASUS RT-AC58U delivers solid 1 Gbps Ethernet connections, as promised in its specifications.

Extra features

ASUS RT-AC58U offers a few interesting extra features:

• Guest Network - you can set up to six guest wireless networks that provide internet access but restrict access to your network. You can enable up to three 2.4GHz guest networks and up to three 5GHz guest networks.
• Traffic Manager Quality of Service (QoS) - a basic QoS service that you can use to set speed limits for individual devices on your network.
• Parental Controls - A basic parental controls module that you can use to set a schedule for the devices that are used by your children. You cannot use it to filter adult content or any other type of content that is inappropriate for children.
• USB Applications - designed to work with all kinds of devices that you can connect to the router using USB: external hard disks, printers and 3G or 4G dongles or modems.
• VPN Server - you can set the router to work as a VPN server and you can also use it to turn your network-connected devices into VPN-enabled clients via the OpenVPN and PPTP protocols, without additional VPN software.

• Network Tools - for analyzing the network and identifying what's wrong. They are useful when you need to troubleshoot problems.
• ASUS AiCloud 2.0 - a mobile app that keeps you connected to your data wherever and whenever you have an internet connection. With it, you can access the folders shared in your home network from your Android or iOS smartphone or via a personalized URL.
• ASUS Router - a mobile app for iOS and Android, which allows you to monitor and manage your wireless router from your smartphone.

ASUS RT-AC58U offers quite a few extra tools, for a router in its price-range. Some of them are really useful, like the possibility of turning it into a VPN server, while others, like the basic QoS service that's included, not so much.

Pros and cons

There are quite a few pros for the ASUS RT-AC58U wireless router:

• It features the new quad-core Qualcomm IPQ4018 processor, that's used in very few routers so far
• It offers very good speeds on the 5 GHz wireless frequency
• The firmware is very configurable and easy to use
• ASUS offers great multi-lingual support
• The Help documentation is well made and easily accessible
• ASUS RT-AC58U has many useful extra features, including the possibility to make it run as a VPN server

There are also a few downsides to consider:

• The firmware, in its initial version, has some bugs that negatively affect the stability of the wireless network. They should be fixed in future firmware versions
• Applying changes to wireless settings can take a long time and require a restart of your router
• The signal strength is not that great, making it unsuitable for large apartments or houses
• This router cannot be mounted on walls

Verdict

The ASUS RT-AC58U AC1300 dual-band router has a lot of potential. It features a modern quad-core Qualcomm IPQ4018 processor - the industry's first single-chip Wi-Fi system-on-chip (SoC) to bring Wave-2 802.11ac features. This chip shows its strength when using the 5GHz wireless network, where you see excellent download and upload speeds. Unfortunately, the firmware has a few bugs which lower the quality of the experience you get. They manifest themselves mainly on the 2.4 GHz wireless network and, hopefully, they will be fixed in future firmware updates.