Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2014
I love Amazon but even they give me pet peeves, one is when they group multiple products and their respective reviews together. At the time I am writing this the AC66U, AC68U and AC87U are all grouped together. Read the small grey print under the reviewers name and date to verify the actual product their review is about.
This is a review of the ASUS RT-AC87U Wireless AC2400 Dual Band Gigabit Router sold by Amazon and bought through Amazon Prime. And other than being ASUS has little in common with the other routers and reviews it is thrown in with or likely to be thrown in with in the future. It becomes especially frustrating when Amazon throws reviews together from multiple merchants suppossedly about the same product which end up being knockoffs. Hopefully they won't do that with the ASUS router line though. But I digress...
There are plenty of bad reviews on the other two routers but I have yet to find one credible bad review on the AC87U or AC87R. The difference is the R is sold at Best Buy. The units are identical. The only issue I have seen complaints on are VPN doesn't work for some folks that had it working with the AC66U. And ASUS has been quick to ask for details so they can fix it.
Now I have seen reviews where people are PO'd at ASUS and I can understand that and even relate being a EE. Manuals that have shoddy English and no explanations of the settings, their impacts to other settings and pros and cons, seemingly wonderful apps that have inherent security flaws which may or may not eventually get fixed, and hardware that lasts at best 2 years (Warranty period for the AC87U) or in worse cases a few months. The last concern IMHO is the most troublesome and ultimately only time will tell for the AC87U.
Yes it is new, anounced just a couple weeks ago (18/19 Aug 2014) and yes new devices can be buggy. From other reviews on expert sites the firmware can be buggy if you make a lot of changes without rebooting. Recommendation is to make few changes at one time and reboot. Remember, ASUS will release bug fixes in the future and possibly hardware changes with subsequent revs based on fixes or component availability and cost. But the hardware in these first models appears rock solid. Time will be the judge.
I purchased the Dark Knight RT-N66U after reading many reviews from trusted sources and tenuouly sifting through other consumer reviews as always and was not disappointed. It has been in service for over a year now and still going strong. But, based on the reviews I read on it, it was evident it had a heat problem. And when I got mine and put it in service I noticed how hot the case was. Heat is the number one enemy to electronics. And it appears to me across many diferent product manufacturers and types of electronics that proper heat dissipation is being ignored in preference to looks in consumer electronics designs today. But again I digress...suffice it to say I knew the Dark Knight needed fans and I bought dual usb powered fans here on Amazon and made my own plenum for the fans to blow air through it keeping it cool. Not a single problem with it ever! Now as far as the AC87U is concerned, so far it's case is far cooler than the N66U was out of the box. It has a couple spots over the processors that get warm but no where near the Dark Knight. Which also leads me to believe the AC87U will fair better. With that said, I will adopt fans to it as well and only time will tell on its longevity.
Normally I wait several months to write a product review but given the lack of reviews, I wanted to get this information out here for others who may be interested. If this AC87U ever gives me any problems I'll edit my review here. But I honestly believe from what I have read on expert review sites and my own limited hands on experience with it, the AC87U is a good risk. It really is fast and powerful. If the N66U was the Dark Knight then the AC87U needs to be called Man of Steel.
I recently moved to a remote location in the countyside where the only internet options available are satellite and iffy cellular. Which means without cable or FIOS, limited WAN speeds and GB limits. I scoured the internet and found the best bang for the buck was a Sprint deal through wirelessnwifi using a Sierra 803S Trifi. I erected a 40ft free standing tower and placed the external antenna from a Wilson AG Pro Quint SmarTech III celluar amplifier system on top and get a 100% Sprint 4G LTE link on the Trifi through the inside antenna where typically we would get 1 bar or 10%. Not to mention 5 bars for our Verizon phones as well and for other guests and their providers of choice. That had me cooking with gas for internet. Not as good as what I was used to with Comcast cable in the city, but no problems streaming online movies and TV shows and playing CoD out here in the sticks. The initial challenge to overcome was the relative weak 2.4G signal from the TriFi. I tried the wireless through Wifi route with the cradlepoint router you have to buy with the Trifi to get the package deal to no avail. Then I tried the Dark Knight and voila, it worked. The TriFi connected through the Dark Knight via USB which suppossedly was not possible. Albeit, a NAT within a NAT but it worked. No problems surfing, with email or watching streamed movies and tv shows or playing CoD. But multiple NATs does invoke limitations on certain applications. Still, if you live in the sticks like we do, there is hope, you can get decent internet.
For those interested in the configuration of the N66U or AC87U to work with the TriFi, the initial setup wizard (from factory default) will provide you with a USB page if you let the WAN ethernet port disconnected. On the USB page leave Auto Auto and #777. I had only found one other reference on the internet to connecting a TriFi to the dark knight and it said to use your Sprint PIN and admin for user and the password for a WiFi client to the TriFi, not your TriFi admin password. While I did use the admin and client password I don't think they were necessary and I did not put in a PIN. I configured the TriFi to disable wireless when USB tethered, enabled TRU install and enabled USB tethering prior to connecting to the router. I don't think enabling TRU helps or hurts. It is true, the Sierra 803S is not in the ASUS list of compatible cellular devices. And you will see many have said the TriFi USB is disabled for connecting to a router. This is not true, it works like a champ regardless. Leave the TriFi on default 192.168.0.1. The ASUS connection wizard changed the routers IP and subnet to 192.168.2.1 for me. Im not sure why but it works like a champ. Basically, it sets up the TriFi as a secondary WAN for failover. In my case I have no hard wired WAN so it always shows primary WAN disconnected.
Given the construction of this old country house and the addition we added on to it, the signal from the Dark Knight was decent and worked to all four corners of a 100ft long ranch style 3300 sq ft home for wireless security cameras, printers, PCs, laptops, AV receivers, bluray players, TVs etc. But then I read about the AC87U. Hardware NAT, 4x4 MIMO, downstream QOS, dual core and WiFi dedicated processors...I just had to have one. And I'm glad I did. I love the N66U but the AC87U is a dream for signal coverage. Even better than the venerable Dark Knight.
Yes I've tried the tomato and merlin and the dd-wrt on other routers and had fun with that. But this thing right out of the box literally 15 minutes to connect the TriFi via USB, connect wirelessly through a PC, run the first time web driven steup wizard including downloading a firmware update and the AC87U was up and running. Before reading the manual which of course said connect via wire for the first time setup...oops! LOL. I actually knew that but from my experience with the rock solid performance from the Dark Knight I knew I could do the setup via WiFi.
Yes there are odd quirks with the design like putting the LEDs under the front lip and a USB port, THE 3.0 USB port on the front and a massive case with four large antennas. Speaking of antennas, one should never power a radio device without the proper load IE antenna attached. And that is a little quirk with the AC87U, the antenna connectors can come loose so make sure they are tight. Instinctively I spread the antennas out in a fan, turns out the manual actually tells you to do that. Middle antennas straight up outside antennas at a 45. And the default password is admin same as the username. There is a paper manual in the box and a pdf on the included CD, the pdf is more comprehensive but still imperfect english and no explanations. There are a few useful utilities on the CD; ASUS router discovery, printer and firmware rescue.
And that is what I am after, good solid 2.4 and 5GHz signal coverage for all my WiFi enabled gear. Note, not necessarily AC2400 link rates, as N150 is more than enough given a 4G LTE source. But a good strong coverage free of CRC errors and low retrans. Get that ping time down for CoD while the wife is on the internet streaming a tv show or browsing and printing to WiFi printers at the same time supporting multiple 2.4GHz 24/7 security cameras all at the same time. If you are looking for the fastest link rate review, this ain't it. Look to the expert review sites that have already covered that topic in detail. This is about a retired geek that has lots of WiFi gear and the desire to use it...at the same time. And the AC87U does not dissappoint. Lowest CoD ping time yet for any router I have ever tried from Asus, Linksys, Engenius, and Netgear.
My main PC is a Vista64 water cooled quad SLI RAID 0 digital storm firebreather which makes a good platform for testing various WiFi adapters. I am currently running a Startech USB300WN2X2D. I was using a Netgear WN3500RP with the TriFi. Then I decided to try using the TriFi connected to the Dark Knight and now the Man of Steel. At 100 feet through multiple walls with the AC87U connected to the Tri-Fi the link quality is 80-100% at -75dBm on 5GHz and 90-100% at -71dBm on 2.4GHz. The overall link rate in speedtest is limited to the 4G LTE connection of course. One minute ping tests to the trifi show 7ms and zero packet loss with the Dark Knight. With the AC87U, the ping drops to 3ms average. 7ms is great but 3ms is fantastic. Now that 4ms gain may not sound like a lot but to me it shows just how much more powerful the processors and hardware NAT on the AC87U are. And the Ralink utility on the PC shows a much more stable connection with the AC87U showing fewer CRC error packets.
Right now from central Alabama to Atlanta, speedtest shows a 37ms ping (58 is typical) with ~9mbps down and ~.7mbps up with the TriFi showing a CINR\RSRQ of -10 and an RSSI\RSRP of -78dBm and the Ralink showing 87-100% Link quality with 300mbps Tx and 162mbps Rx through 2.4GHz and 48-90% Link Quality with 162mbps Tx and 90mbps Rx on 5GHz. And this is about as benign an RF environment as you can get out here in the sticks. These numbers surpass the Dark Knight by a few dBm in my setup.
So using an AC87U with a cellular WAN (the weakest link) sounds like overkill, and with the hefty price tag even more so, but if you want great WiFi coverage on both 2.4 and 5GHz, short ping times and performance with decent device density, regardless of what WAN you can get, then let me suggest the AC87U.
Edit (14 Sep 2014):
Noticed an issue with dropped packets verified through ping tests to the AC87U and TriFi where anywhere from 20 to 90 seconds, ping tests would fail, even sometimes to the point of destination address could not be found. Overall a 10% packet loss rate. I tried lots of different things. Disabling apps, PnP, firewall, rebooting both devices, different computers and adapters even set the Dark Knight up as a media bridge and turned everything off but one computer connected to that. flushed the ARP cache on the one PC, contacted ASUS tech support still waiting on answer from them, but I finally stumbled on the fix myself. I set the WAN primary to USB. Still had the issue. Then I turned off Dual Wan. Then I switched computer to link up on 2.4 instead of 5g and that fixed it. Ran ping test for 15 minutes straight with 0% packet loss average was <1ms longest was 25ms. Speedtest result shows 11.42mbps down and 1.35mbps up.
If you have a TriFi let the wizard set up dual WAN then make USB primary and then disable dual WAN.
Also noticed sporadic ( kernel: br0: received packet on vlan1 with own address as source address ) in the system log. I had read reviews on other websites to ignore those.
Edit (19 Sep 2014)
I had time to troubleshoot the 5G dropped packet issue with ASUS tech support help and found the issue to be my environment. At half the distance ~50ft and 3 walls the signal on 5G is 5 bars at 100ft and through 4 walls the signal varies between 2-3 bars. With 5 bars no issues, but at 2-3 bars is where the packet loss occurs. Given I live in the country with nearest neighbor a mile a way and no other local 5g interference sources, I can only assume it is just a matter of RF reflections within the home environment - walls, refrigerator, ceiling fans, etc.
Edit (15 Mar 2018)
This thing is still in service! That makes it the longest lasting router I have ever owned and it is still going strong. Serving a shop(~100ft), storm shelter and remote mounted IP cameras (~75ft) using TP-Link CPE210s. It has had a few firmware updates and nothing has changed from my original review. I have had few routers that have lasted more than a year and none that have performed this well for any period of time. It hosts 2.4 and 5.8 devices very well (22 devices currently including printer (MFC-J485DW) tablets, phones, security cameras (10-various but all 2.4), laptops, computers, weather station (WS-2902), and several devices on wired ports TV server (HDHomeRun), computer and 8 port switch). Currently I have it in AP mode and the WAN port is connected to a Pepwave Surf SOHO MK3 that hosts a Netgear 340U. The AC87 would not host the 340U directly, however it's ability and agility with many wireless and wired devices has been wonderful. To be clear I have had other routers and range extenders that I inserted in my network either in the shop, storm shelter etc that have all died, notable among them a SecuriFi Almond, didn't even last a year. I have good luck as well with the TP-Link CPE-210 and 510. Although line of site indoor long haul only with the 510 for 5.8 band (5.8 limitations described in original review above). I see now this is an Amazon's Choice and now only costs $179. I paid a lot more back in 14. It has been well worth it for me.
