If you have been waiting for the cost to come down on the Asus RT-AX88U (AX6000), the best gaming router (opens in new tab) with a premium price to match its high-end makeup, now is a great time to click the 'buy' button. It's still not cheap, but it's deeply discounted, selling for $261.13 at Amazon right now.
That's just shy of an $89 savings, without any coupon codes or mail-in-rebates to bother with on this deal. The only time we've seen it sell for less was during last year's Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales events. According to price tracking data provided by CamelCamelCamel, this normally sells for $300 and up (the average price is listed at $331.28).
(opens in new tab)This is a Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), and if you're wondering why gamers should care about Wi-Fi 6 (opens in new tab), it boils down to more bandwidth and less latency, and a better handling of simultaneously connected devices. Those devices also need to adhere to the Wi-Fi 6 protocol to take full advantage of the benefits, but even if they're not, they'll still connect and work just fine.
As we noted in our RT-AX88U review (opens in new tab), this router offers ridiculously fast throughput. That translates to speeds of up to 1,148Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and 4,804Mbps on the 5GHz band, hence the AX6000 designation. And importantly, it works really well when gaming on a congested network (opens in new tab), courtesy of its Adaptive QoS, which prioritizes gaming traffic.
We also like that it serves up eight wired LAN ports on the rear, rather than the more commonly found four-port arrangement. It boasts a pair of USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports for sharing a storage device and/or a printer over your network, too.
