What you need to know
- ASUS announced the ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 router.
- The router is among the first to support Wi-Fi 6E.
- The router will be available this month starting at $550.
ASUS announced the availability of the ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000 router today. According to ASUS, it's the world's first router to use the Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) networking standard. Wi-Fi 6E is an extension of Wi-Fi 6 and is based on Wi-Fi 6 technology, which is backward-compatible with previous Wi-Fi standards. The new router will be available in North America in January starting at $550.
The router's Wi-Fi 6E technology takes advantage of the 6 GHz radio band. As a result, it has three times more bandwidth than the 5 GHz band. The technology also adds up to seven 160 MHz frequency bands to the already existing Wi-Fi 6 standards.
To take advantage of the router's tech, you'll have to have a device that supports Wi-Fi 6E, but ASUS points out that several of those are on the way.
The tri-band router supports combined concurrent Wi-Fi speeds of up to almost 11,000 Mbps. That combination consists of 1,148 on the 2.4 GHz band, 4,804 Mbps on the 5 GHz band, and 4,804 Mbps on the 6 GHz band. The router also supports WAN aggregation for connection speeds of up to 2 Gbps. This can be combined with 4x4 Wi-Fi 6 and its 2.5 Gbps WAN/LAN port to provide multi-gigabit networking speeds.
To help make sure that its signal is strong and stable, the GT-AXE11000 has a 6 GHz power amplifier. It runs on a 1.8 GHz 64-bit quad-core CPU with 1GB of RAM.
As the ROG branding suggests, this router is built with gamers in mind. The router has a dedicated gaming port that prioritizes a connected wired device. It also supports Game Boost, which lets people prioritize gaming packets within a network.
If you have a larger home or want to extend your connection, the GT-AXE11000 supports ASUS AiMesh.
