Main features of this gaming router
This wireless router is aimed at a gamer audience, it has all the necessary technologies to make the most of online games, ideal for having the best possible user experience. Currently this GS-AX5400 model is the high-end router of the new ROG STRIX family, because there are other routers from the manufacturer ASUS that are superior to this, such as the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 or the ASUS RT-AX89X, both analyzed in RedesZone. This new model is ideal for those players who need a very good router, but do not want to spend more than 250 euros on a high-performance router.
Wireless features
The wireless features of this router belong to the high-end of routers, we have simultaneous dual band with Wi-Fi 6 and AX5400 class. This new ASUS ROG STRIX GS-AX5400 router is capable of providing a speed of up to 574Mbps in the 2.4GHz band, thanks to its two external antennas in MU-MIMO 2T2R configuration and WiFi 6, in addition, it is also capable of providing a speed of up to 4804Mbps in the 5GHz band, thanks to its four external antennas in MU-MIMO 4T4R configuration and the Wi-Fi 6 standard. This new wireless router has 160MHz channel width, ideal to achieve double the speed ( theoretical) when we connect wireless devices that do support this feature. For example, cards like the ASUS PCE-AX58BT, the Intel AX200 that most laptops have or the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 mobile processor have support for 160MHz of WiFi channel width.
Of course, this router has all the technologies of the WiFi 6 standard, such as the following:
- Beamforming explicit and implicit: allows you to focus the wireless signal on the wireless clients, to provide them with a little more coverage and more real speed. This technology is noticeable when we are in places far from the WiFi router, in close places it is not noticeable as there are no obstacles.
- MU-MIMO: the firmware supports MU-MIMO both in upload and download, that is, bidirectional. This allows information to be transmitted to several WiFi clients simultaneously, as long as they support this technology. It also allows you to receive information from several WiFi clients simultaneously. MU-MIMO allows us to greatly optimize the wireless network, especially when we have dozens of wireless clients connected.
- OFDMA: allows us to divide the channel into different subchannels, assigning each client a different subchannel to be able to transfer data simultaneously in several WiFi clients. This allows optimizing the network globally, a great improvement will be noticed when we connect devices that support this technology and we have dozens of connected clients. This feature also lowers the latency of the wireless connection.
- TWT (Target Wake time): This feature allows wireless clients to save energy by putting devices to sleep for a specified time. It is ideal for smartphones, tablets or IoT devices that run on batteries.
Other very important wireless features that this router has, are the incorporation of a WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) button to synchronize devices easily, and we even have the security of the WPA3-Personal protocol, a protocol that allows us to have the best possible wireless security. The Asuswrt firmware will allow us to configure WPA3-Personal with protected administration frames, to have the best possible protection against external attacks.
This wireless router is also compatible with ASUS AiMesh, we can configure it as an AiMesh router or as an AiMesh node, with the aim of expanding the wireless coverage in our home. A very important feature is that, by having AiMesh, we will have WiFi roaming with the main 802.11k / v standards, in addition, we also have band-steering to have a single wireless network and that the router places us in a frequency band or in another.
Wired and USB Features
This router has a Gigabit Ethernet port for the Internet WAN, as is usual in this type of routers. Its Asuswrt firmware has support for VLANs on the Internet WAN, it also supports VLANs per port, and we even have the Movistar FTTH Triple VLAN profile at our disposal. A very interesting option that we also have in this router is that we can use the LAN1 port as Ethernet WAN, in this way, we can use a second WAN as load balancing or connection failover, in addition, we could also do a WAN Aggregation thanks to the firmware.
Regarding the local network, we have a total of four Gigabit Ethernet ports for the LAN, the firmware supports Link Aggregation in the LAN1 and LAN2 ports, another very interesting option is that the LAN1 port is the «Gaming port», therefore, it will have the highest priority over the rest of the devices that we connect via cable or WiFi. Thanks to this functionality, we can put our console or gaming PC here and optimize performance to the maximum.
Finally, we have one high-performance USB 3.0 port, Asuswrt firmware has Samba server, FTP, FTPES, DLNA media server and many other services. Thanks to the powerful 1.5GHz Tri-Core processor we can achieve great performance in USB reading and writing.
Asuswrt Firmware
In this ASUS ROG STRIX GS-AX5400 router we have the same Asuswrt firmware as always, but we have it “tuned” with gaming colors, however, we will have all the usual configurations such as AiMesh configuration, guest WiFi network, AiProtection, adaptive QoS , traffic analyzer, Open NAT technology to open ports easily and quickly, we will also have all the usual USB services including AiCloud 2.0.
Of course, we will also have all the configuration options for wireless, WAN, LAN, Amazon Alexa, IPv6 and the rest of the configuration options and services, including VPN servers with OpenVPN, IPsec and Instant Guard, the new ASUS VPN that greatly facilitates remote and secure connection to our home.
Regarding gaming features, this router has the same options as always:
- Adaptive QoS: allows you to adapt the operation of the QoS according to the type of traffic, we can create a list of priorities to prioritize packets of a certain type.
- Traditional QoS: allows you to configure a traditional QoS where the computers do not monopolize all the bandwidth, we must define the real speed of our Internet connection, and internally the router will be in charge of prioritizing all the packets so that everything flows correctly.
- Bandwidth limiter: allows you to limit the download and upload bandwidth of the different devices.
- Gaming Port: if we activate the functionality, the device connected to this gaming port will have priority over the rest of packages and devices, it is the easiest way to prioritize gaming devices
- Open NAT: allows to open ports in three easy steps, in addition, we will have a small database with the most popular games.
Once we have seen the main features of this router, we go with the unboxing and first impressions.
Unboxing and first impressions
In RedesZone we have had the opportunity to test the real performance of this new high-performance router with WiFi 6. The design of this router has pleasantly impressed us, in addition, it has Aura RGB so we can select the color and also the type of lighting the main light of this router, and not only this, but we can synchronize the rest of ASUS devices compatible with Aura RGB so that they work together. This is something ideal to give our room a gaming touch, where all the devices have the same type of lighting and also the same color. The most striking thing about this router is the following:
- Medium-high-end hardware, with a 1.5GHz Tri-Core processor.
- Top-of-the-range WiFi with dual-band WiFi 6 class AX5400.
- It supports 160MHz channel width at 5GHz.
- Gigabit ports with Gaming Port on LAN 1.
- Multi-function USB 3.0 port thanks to Asuswrt firmware.
- The Asuswrt firmware has modified the background to suit the ROG STRIX family.
- Aura RGB for the best lighting, and supports syncing with other ASUS components such as motherboards.
In the video that we offer below, you will be able to see the unboxing and first impressions of this gaming router that belongs to the new family of ASUS ROG STRIX routers, in addition, you will also be able to see the main technical specifications, the ports available on this equipment, the vents and other aspects.
In the coming weeks in RedesZone we will offer you a complete analysis where you can see the technical characteristics in detail, you can also see the real performance via LAN-LAN, LAN-WAN, via WiFi and even USB 3.0 performance tests, using SMB, FTP and FTPES as file exchange protocols. Of course, you can also see a detailed explanation of all the Asuswrt firmware configuration options, including the gaming options.
