Review: ASUS AiMesh AX6100 Wi-Fi system
Mesh WiFi has been a thing for a while now. And to be frank, ASUS is kind of late to the market. But that’s not a bad thing. That’s a very good thing based on my experience with their AiMesh AX6100 Wi-Fi system which I have been testing over the last few days.
I got two of these nodes from ASUS which kind of have the vibe of their gaming routers. Except that they don’t look as over the top as those. That’s a good as this opens this WiFi mesh router to more people, and they’ll look good in more places. The AiMesh AX6100 Wi-Fi system has a lot going for it that frankly puts other mesh WiFi products to shame. Let’s start with this:
It comes with four gigabit ports. Plus a gigabit WAN port for your router.
You also get a USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 port as well. All of that allows you to connect storage devices, printers, wired computers, etc. That gives you a number of use cases for this mesh WiFi system. And what’s cool is that both nodes are identical so you can connect either unit to the modem supplied by your Internet service provider via an Ethernet cable.
The real star of the show from a specifications perspective is that it is a Wi-Fi 6 mesh WiFi system. And rather than simply offering Wi-Fi 6 for the people who have iPhone 11’s and Galaxy S10’s, Wi-Fi 6 can be used for wireless backhaul functions between the two nodes. And that works incredibly well. I’ll give you details on that in a second. But let me get to the setup process first.
Set-up was insanely easy using the ASUS Router app (available for iOS and Android). The app recommends placing the two units within a few meters of each other during the initial pairing process, after which you can place them farther apart. In my case, I put one in the living room of my roughly sub 1000 sq foot condo and the other in the bedroom. For what it’s worth, ASUS says a pair of these routers provides wireless coverage of up to 5,500 sq feet.
Once I set things up, I went about my testing and found that this setup produces some of the fastest speeds that I have seen from a mesh WiFi setup. I clocked an average download speed of 550 Mbps to 600Mbps on my MacBook Pro running 802.11ac placed in the bedroom in my condo. By comparison, other brands of mesh routers I had previously tested weren’t even in the same star system when it came to speed in the same scenario. I was blown away by this result. And for what it’s worth, it is possible to connect these two nodes by gigabit Ethernet. So in a bigger house it is possible to use that for backhaul functions which may be better in that use case as a wired connection would be more stable than a wireless one. Having said that, I had no issues with the wireless setup that I tested.
The AX6100 comes also bundled with a couple of extras:
- AiProtection Pro which a suite of home network security tools powered by Trend Micro that defends your connected home devices from cyber threats, and has parental controls to restrict Internet access or block inappropriate content from children.
- WTFast which promises lower latency and less lag while gaming by funneling gaming traffic through optimized network routes
In terms of price, expect to pay $550 CDN or so for the two pack that I tested. Each additional node is about $270 CDN. If you need a mesh WiFi system, this is the one to get at present.
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