Asus ROG Rapture GT-AXE16000

A lot of router for a lot of cash

- IAN EVENDEN

HERE AT MAXIMUM PC,

we like devices of a large stature. We like them fast as well, and Asus’s enormous router fulfills all our needs. This is a Wi-Fi 6E router with six Ethernet ports and a startling array of leg-like antennas sprouting from the edges of its casing.

It’s so large that it’s like a PC in its own right, and is certainly an eye-catching sight. There’s a translucent panel on top of the casing that’s highly reflective when it’s dormant, but once the router comes alive, it lights up in a flurry of logos and LEDs. Finding a home for this unit that keeps it close enough to the source of a fast data connection, and yet doesn’t keep the family awake all night, is going to be a quest, though even if you do find somewhere, it’s so large that it might not fit on a shelf like most routers will.

You can turn the RGB off, but doing this doesn’t turn it into a sensible member of your home network ecosystem. The GTAXE16000 is designed to ingest a lot of data and move it around quickly, and to this end sports a 2.5Gbps WAN socket. Alongside one of the antennas sits a pair of 10Gbps Ethernet ports, suitable for creating a network backbone across your house (which had better be enormous to deserve a router like this), over which you can transfer data quickly.

There are four of the more usual gigabit ports too, which is usually enough for most people, though you may start to consider them a bottleneck as broadband access speeds rise. Luckily, you can aggregate two of them together for a 2Gbps link to your gaming PC if that helps.