amazon Asus RT-N18U reviews
Although the N-Series Wi-Fi Router has a top speed of 600Mbps, the Asus RT-N18U impresses with the Test Lab by applying state-of-the-art technologies, More than 50 meters.
In terms of looks, the RT-N18U has been redesigned with the exception of the solid black plastic cover, combined with Asus features, signal LEDs, Provides elegance, eye-catching when fixed on the desk or can be used as decor in the living room, …
Meanwhile, the sides and back of the RT-N18U are angularly designed, the ridge of the layout is reasonable, giving this router feel strong, masculine and modern.
On the interface side, except for the USB 3.0 ports on the front, all the necessary ports are backward-facing, including three detachable and rotatable 360-degree antennas, five Gigabit Ethernet ports. (4 Lan ports and 1 Wan port), USB 2.0 port, RST and WPS.
Not only is the eye-catching look, the special feature of the RT-N18U compared to the Asus router or even other Wi-Fi routers have been tested by Test Lab is that this product is manufactured by equipment manufacturers. Some ultra-powerful technologies, promising to deliver high performance in providing home or small office Wi-Fi networks.
Specifically, this model also equipped with 800 MHz ARM Cortex A9 processor, 128MB Flash memory and 256MB DDR3 RAM to increase the ability to handle multi-tasking Internet access for multiple users.
Asus said, RT-N18U can “pull” up to 300,000 simultaneous data hits without bottlenecks, including the heaviest data transfer sessions, promising to enable users to enjoy standard video HD, smooth online games, no fear of jolting, lag.
According to official specifications, with TurboQAM and MIMO technology, the RT-N18U is boosting Wi-Fi speeds up to 600Mbps over the 2.4GHz band. Meanwhile, AiRadar technology with beamforming will help this router maximize signal strength and increase the coverage of Wi-Fi coverage to every corner of the home or office.
And to test, Test Lab has tested by connecting the RT-N18U with the higher-level modem under the 30Mb / s theory package. In parallel, we also connect many devices (laptops, smartphones, PC, ..) and surf the net at the same time. Note, Test Lab has ignored all the router configuration but just connected the network cable directly to the WAN port to route the Internet.
As a result, Test Lab found that most of the devices connected to the router at the time of testing were capable of performing heavy tasks on the Internet, such as watching netflix, YouTube standard HD – 4K, and playing online games on a PC. Smoothly, rarely encountered the phenomenon of jerk, lag.
In addition, Test Lab also measures the signal strength and coverage of Wi-Fi in the router installation environment as a closed room with an incremental 5 meter increments (wall obstructions) by work. Measure Wi-Fi Analyzer wave (lowest is -40dbm minimum) with Speedtest tool to speed the wave at the above position.
With the results of these two tools, the RT-N18U was able to create a fairly wide coverage of up to 50 meters with strong wave quality and stable speed.
More specifically, in the range of 5 to 40 meters, the wave quality and speed are almost equal and do not change much. Even up to a distance of 45 meters, the router still offers quite stable wave quality, although the speed is not as fast as before, but Test Lab can still surf Facebook, chat online and watch videos on YouTube.
This proves that RT-N18U can completely cover Wi-Fi to areas that other routers can not reach.
In addition to the newly introduced technologies, the Asus RT-N18U is also fully integrated with advanced security standards such as 64/128-bit WEP, WPA / WPA2 and WPAPSK / WPA2PSK. Trust in the highest level avoids unauthorized access from outside to steal user’s information remotely over a wireless connection.
Feature-rich, easy-to-use
Through the experience, Test Lab found that the configuration, using the RT-N18U is very simple and has many similarities with the two models of the same router has been evaluated as RT-AC55UHP and RT-N12HP.
In addition to the ability to act as a normal wireless router (Wireless router mode), the RT-N18U can also operate in three other modes: Repeater mode (Access / Repeat), Access Point ( AP) mode (This mode is similar to the default mode of the device, but FireWall, IP Sharing and Nat feature will be disabled.) And Media Bridge (bridged connection between two RT-N18Us). ), Making it easy for users to customize the way they use the equipment to suit their installation environment.
To change the operating mode, just go to Administrator in the Home interface, then check the mode you want and follow the instructions provided by the router. For example, for Repeater mode, Test Lab also sequentially performs the steps provided by the Asus RT-N18U and finds the installation process quite simple, intuitive.
About configuring the RT-N18U, the Test Lab is pleased to see that it only takes a few minutes to quickly configure this router via the Asus Router application, which is available for free on Google Play and the Apple Store. Once downloaded and installed, the user simply follows the instructions provided by the application and waits for the RT-N18U to complete the changes.
Meanwhile, if you want to configure using a browser on your computer, you can directly access the router.asus.com path instead of remembering the default IP address of this router. Note, for the first time, the RT-N18U will allow you to quickly configure this device through the Setup Wizard.
In addition, this router also only requires users to provide login and password device administrator, the rest will be fully automated.
Once completed, Test Lab is basically satisfied with its fairly intuitive RT-N18U management interface, with all the relevant information, such as connection status, Wi-Fi network security standards. Currently, the list of devices connected to the router …. Through this, users just need to click on the icon to be able to know exactly what information you need.
However, through the experience, Test Lab found that RT-N18U has two disadvantages.
First, for guest access Wi-Fi networks, according to official information on the manufacturer’s Web site, the RT-N18U supports Facebook Wi-Fi on all three SSIDs of the guest access. But when Test Lab tried to activate it did not provide any of the options related to the feature, even when it was updated to the latest version.
Second, for the AiCloud 2.0 feature, Test Lab found this feature really difficult to use and requires users to have knowledge of the network.
Speaking a little bit about AiCloud 2.0, this feature basically allows the user to turn an external storage device connected to the router (via USB) into an online storage service. Through it, users can access, store data from any device at any time they want, provided that the Internet connection.
Technically, to be able to use AiCloud 2.0, in addition to activating the Cloud Disk option, users also need to set up DDNS in the WAN> DDNS option.
Rather, the RT-N18U does not allow users to set up DDNS if the router’s WAN port receives a Private IP, which means that the IP address is provided by any network device of any superior level. Instead, the user is forced to set up Bridge mode for the network’s home modem, and the WAN port of the RT-N18U will operate in PPoE mode.
So, it sounds pretty useful, but this feature is not for users who do not have much knowledge of the network.
Ideally, if AiCloud 2.0 has the ability to sync data to an online service, such as WD’s My Cloud, for example, the Test Lab is confident that this feature will receive a lot of love from users.
where can you get a Asus RT-N18U online
Asus RT-N18U 2.4 GHz 600 Mbps High Power Router: Buy it now
Asus WL-Router RT-N18U N600 WLAN Ro uter Gigabit, 90IG00L0-BM3G20 (uter Gigabit): Buy it now
In addition to the above two features, Test Lab recognizes that most of the features integrated on the RT-N18U are efficient, allowing users to easily manage their routers and devices connected to the Wi-Fi network in a way most effective.
One of them is the Traffic Manager – QoS (Quality of Service) router. This feature allows users to easily manage the maximum bandwidth traffic for every Internet connection through the router.
Unlike the RT-AC55UHP, Test Lab found that Traffic Manager – QoS on the RT-N18U also allows users to limit the bandwidth of a particular device that is connected to the router. Through this, users can more easily manage Internet output on each device you want instead of limiting the entire network.
Last but not least, the Traffic Manager – QoS on the RT-N18U also supports some advanced settings for administrators, giving them more options to limit bandwidth when building a network.
In addition, the RT-N18U also supports Parent Control feature, which makes it easy for users to manage the fixed Internet access time for each device connected to the router.
More specifically, after activating the Parent Control bar, you only need to select the device that needs time management, then drag and drop or select each time slot corresponding to the time allowed or not allowed. This device is connected to the Internet. Finally click Save to save.
And a host of other advanced features for administrators like IPTV, Port Forwarding, Dual Wan, Firewall, VPN, etc.
Test Lab is confident that the RT-N18U enough ability to meet the whole operation From surfing the web, simply having a simple 4K live stream, online gaming without having to worry about network congestion, jerky, lag.