A big leap in home Wi-Fi performance

On the 2.4GHz band, the router sports a dual-core 1GHz Broadcom BCM4709 chip that delivers up to 600Mbps. This chip is also used for the router’s other functions, including the USB, NAT, system operation and so on.

The Asus also has 128MB of flash memory and 256MB of DDR 3 system memory. In all, it has enough power as a small server and is currently the one with most powerful specs among home routers.

Not-so-practical design

As a router, the RT-AC87U has four Gigabit LAN ports and one Gigabit WAN (Internet) port on its back. This is a normal number of network ports for a home router. However, the RT-AC87U is very large and therefore has enough space for a few more LAN ports. The more ports you have the more wired devices you can plug in before having to resort to a switch.

The router does comes with two USB ports. The USB 2.0 port, as usual, is on its back, but for some reason the USB 3.0 port is placed on the front. Generally, the USB 3.0 port would be used to host a permanent storage device, and having this port on the front means you’ll have a messy setup should you choose to use the router as a NAS server.

I understand the lack of extra network ports and the placement of the USB 3.0 port depends on the design of the router’s main circuit board, but it’s something Asus should keep in mind for its future routers.

On the front, the router comes with an array of fancy LED status lights. I found these lights very helpful but unfortunately they all face downward. This means no matter how the router is placed (either on the floor or mounted on wall), chances are you won’t be able to see these lights at all, without bending down. Since you can turn these lights on or off via a button on the router’s front, the fact that they are hidden away serves no purpose at all.

In my trial, by the way, the on/off button didn’t work consistently; I needed to press it a few times to turn the lights on or off.

Easy setup

Similar to recent previous 802.11ac router from Asus, including the RT-AC66U and the RT-AC68U, the new RT-AC87U is very easy to set up. All you have to do is plug the router in and from a connected client point a browser to the router’s default IP address (192.168.1.1).The first time you go there, the interface will greet you with a Web-based wizard, which walks you through a few steps.

After that, you can always go back to this interface to manage the router, as well as to customize other settings and features. It’s interesting to note that the RT-AC87U shares the same settings structure as previous routers. I tried restoring it with the settings file of the older RT-AC68U model, and it worked. This makes it very convenient for owners of Asus’ older routers to upgrade to the RT-AC87U since they won’t need to re-program the new router from scratch.

Great feature set, robust Web interface

The RT-AC87U shares the same robust and easy-to-use interface as previous RT routers. It also has all the features that the RT-AC68U has and more. A few common major features include:

Six guest Wi-Fi networks: The router has three guest networks for each band. By default, these are turned off but you can easy turn one on with a click. After that you can customize this network’s name, as well as it security. A guest network allows connected clients to access the Internet but not other local resources, such as files or printers.

Interactive Network Map: This is a great feature for viewing currently connected devices, including those connected to the router via the USB ports. You can click on one of the connected devices to interact with it or view more information about it. Clients connected to the router are also sorted by the connection method, including wired, and by which wireless network they are connected to.