Many things have changed since then; dial-up times are long gone. We are currently living in the era of gigabit line speeds to the home, therefore if you are not already using at least a 20Mb Fibre connection, you are lagging behind. The hardware that enables us to access the internet has advanced at the same rapid rate as the internet. Routers are now much more complex technological devices that are almost as complex as a computer itself. They are no longer just a small box with lights on it that allows us to access the internet. When compared to the enormous TP-Link Archer GX90, the TUF-AX5400 isn’t the ugliest thing we’ve ever seen, but it’s still not something you’d want on display. It is a rather little router, measuring only 280 x 180 x 60 mm, all black, with six antennae on the side and back, and altogether quite threatening in appearance. Additionally, it has ASUS Aura RGB lighting, which allows you to change the big LED light on top of the router to any color you like. We’re not sure why you would want to do this, but if it has to be close to your PC at least the colors will match.
Design
The Asus TUF Gaming AX5400 clearly looks like a gaming router, with a bulky, angular appearance and an array of six independent antennae that helps to offer a fast, dependable wi-fi connection. It might not have the extravagant lighting of Asus’ Rapture routers, though. The Asus TUF Gaming AX5400 has four additional Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports to offer a lag-free wired connection for PCs or gaming consoles, as well as one Gigabit Ethernet WAN port for connecting to your existing broadband modem or router, similar to most conventional routers. To support broadband speeds of up to 2Gbps, it is also feasible to combine, or “aggregate,” the WAN port with one of the LAN ports. To guarantee that your gaming rig always receives the greatest speed, one of the Ethernet LAN ports is designated as the “gaming port” and has priority over the other Ethernet ports. If necessary, you can even combine the gaming port with a second LAN port to offer 2Gbps speed over Ethernet. Additionally, a USB 3.2 connector is offered, allowing you to connect a USB storage device and share it with other network users. The Asus Router app makes it simple to get started by allowing you to connect to the TUF router’s wireless network by just scanning a QR code. Weirdly, unlike previous Asus routers we’ve used in the past, this new network does not come pre-protected by a password. As a result, you must rapidly create your own password to keep the network secure.
Asus TUF Gaming AX5400 review: Connectivity
The TUF AX5400 offers 44 MIMO at 5GHz and up to 4804 Mbps for wireless connectivity, however you must configure the channel to 160 MHz. Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA), which is a feature of Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) that enables access points to serve many clients at once, is a great feature that it also supports. If you are concerned about interference with older WiFi 2.4 GHz, you should know that there are separate 22 2.4 GHz antennas to lessen interference, in addition to other improvements like beamforming, which concentrates the signal towards each device. The routers now provide the finest option for sending data to your devices.
Features
The majority of routers included with Internet server providers are typically too slow to support numerous devices. It gets increasingly congested as more devices are connected to it, especially when utilising high data apps. Online gaming, streaming, and even work-from-home activities are impacted by this in terms of speed. Due to its innovative technology and increased speed, the Asus TUF AX5400’s WiFi 6 can manage this kind of scenario and maintain the connected devices’ performance at an ideal level. It matches some of the priciest gaming routers on the market with a connection speed of 5.4Gbits/sec, as promised. Compared to WiFi 5, which can only support one device at a time when it comes to sending and receiving data packets. Any WiFi generation device can connect with the router simultaneously for upload and download thanks to the new WiFi 6 technology known as MU-MIMO (Multiple-user, Multiple-input, Multiple outputs). It translates to connections that are far better, lower latency, and a quicker, more streamlined online experience. It’s comparable to having a separate router for each device. also you will learn our article on Asus TUF Gaming AX5400 review.
Asus TUF Gaming AX5400 review: Performance
Over a Wi-Fi 6 connection, the TUF Gaming AX5400 advertises transfer speeds of up to 4,800Mbits/sec. That’s precisely the same as the ROG Rapture GT-AX6000, so we were curious to see how the two routers’ performance would differ in real-world usage. We ran our usual battery of tests to find out. First, we configured the AX5400 router in our research and linked an Asus Drivestor 4 Pro NAS device to one of its gigabit LAN ports. After that, we used Wi-Fi 6 to connect a laptop to the router, moved it around our house, and assessed the average transfer speeds while copying a typical set of 100MB files to and from the Drivestor unit. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the TUF Gaming AX5400 cannot match the ROG Rapture GT-peak AX6000’s speeds. The more expensive router benefited from a potent CPU and the most recent radio gear from Asus, which allowed it to easily outperform the AX5400 at close range. The AX5400’s download speeds, however, held up impressively until we went two rooms away from the router, outperforming the GT-AX6000 in the kitchen and bedroom and coming in close behind the Asus RT-AX82U. The TUF Gaming AX5400 maintained an average speed of 11.4MB/sec even in the bathroom at the other end of the house, which is a challenging test for standalone routers. Even while that performance is far from exceptional, it is still close to a 100Mbits/sec internet connection’s maximum speed.
Asus TUF Gaming AX5400 review: Speed Test
iPerf 3.1.3 will be used as part of our methodology to measure the network bandwidth. We configured a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B computer server with a client-side for testing in order to make this practicable. We utilize a Wi-Fi 6-compatible MacBook Pro 13 M1 2020 Model and an iPhone 11 Max Pro. As for the comparison, we contrast the speed of the Asus TUF AX5400 with that of the Huawei HG8245U, the current router provided by our Internet Service Provider (PLDT). To provide the best performance for the benchmark, the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B is directly attached to the router. With a maximum speed of 4.48 Gbits/s in our iPerf test (non-network), the system has little trouble falling below this benchmark. We use iperf3 -c IP ADDRESS -P 8 -i 1 -t 12 -O 2 to run our approach and the iPerf command. For all high- and mid-range devices, this will send 8 streams per second and max out the amount of data it delivers to the server. The test will last 12 seconds, with the first 2 seconds being skipped in order to exclude the slow-start time from the average computation.
Price and availability
With a price of $199 (£170, AU$369), the TUF AX5400 is reasonably priced for a high-speed Wi-Fi 6 router. The Linksys Hydra Pro 6 ($249 / £169), a similar Wi-Fi 6 router that also offers link aggregation and other gaming features, is a good comparison. Additionally, the Asus TUF Gaming AX3000 variant, which costs $189 (£127, AU$214) and boasts 3.0Gbps speed, is available for more recreational gaming. you can read our article on Asus TUF Gaming AX5400 review.
Conclusion
A brand-new ASUS router has not been released in a very long time. That shouldn’t come as a surprise given that the epidemic delayed the launching of several modern devices and led to a global shortage of chipsets. It’s a good thing that ASUS just released their new TUF-AX5400 WiFi 6 Gaming Router. The TUF-AX5400 router’s gaming features will steal the show. According to ASUS, the router’s technology and software have been tailored for gamers. During prolonged gaming sessions, this will increase gaming stability and lower ping latency.
