ASUS RT-BE96U Tri-Band WiFi 7 Router Review

Final Thoughts on the ASUS RT-BE96U

Upgrading your home network is something most people don’t do all that often. When you are considering upgrading your home network you are going to want to pick a product that is going to last and be up to standard for years to come. I think the RT-BE96U is going to be a very solid choice that is going to check all of the boxes plus more for those who are looking at upgrading their home network.

The big selling point here is of course WiFi 7, the latest and fastest WiFi standard. Pretty much every new laptop you are going to buy is going to have WiFi 7 connectivity and all of the newer motherboards will have WiFi 7 as well. This is of course extremely important if you are a desktop user and you are not directly plugging into your router. With WiFi 7 you are going to see faster speeds as well as more channel width or bandwidth. On top of that you are going to get more data density as WiFi offers 4096-QAM and multi-link operation (MLO). So in our testing with a WiFi 7-equipped laptop we saw speeds of up to 2640 Mbps over the 6GHz band, which is very impressive.

Coverage was quite good in my 2 bedroom apartment, but for those in larger homes this router should cover you for the most part. One thing I love about ASUS routers is the AiMesh feature that allows you to use an older ASUS router and use it as an access point within your new network and essentially create a mesh network. I was able to do this with my older ASUS GT-AX110000 and it not only improved coverage, but also speeds. The process of adding a device to AiMesh is quite easy too.

It is great to see 10G ports on routers these days and you are going to get two on the RT-BE96U. Now by default one is used as the WAN port, but you can change that in the settings and use one of the 1G ports for WAN. Talking about WAN settings I love that this router has the ability to use the signal from your phone to provide internet across your network. All you have to do is connect your phone to the router via USB and set that as the WAN connection. This comes in clutch in those inevitable times where your ISP goes down or has issues.

Many people (myself included) are not networking experts and while we want the fastest speeds possible we also want a product that is easy to get set up and running. The RT-BE96U is extremely easy to get set up and you can do it wired or wirelessly through either a browser or the ASUS Router app. This app is also quite useful in general for making quick changes to the router or sharing the WiFi credentials when you have friends come over. Another thing I like is the AiProtection feature, which is a simple switch you just turn on, and novices will for sure appreciate that.

Right now this router is selling at our favorite online retailer for $629.99, which is definitely expensive for a router, but you are getting all of the bells and whistles here. Overall ThinkComputers give the ASUS RT-BE96U Tri-Band WiFi 7 Router a 9 out of 10 score!