Although WiFi 7 is just around the corner, and new routers are appearing in support of this latest standard, for most users it’s not necessarily an essential upgrade. The ASUS ROG Rapture GT6 isn’t even a WiFi 6E router, supporting only WiFi 6, however it’s still an impressive device in many ways that you should consider picking up.

ASUS ROG RAPTURE GT6 WiFi 6 router

4.5 /5

Editor’s Rating

How We Review

Specifications

Wireless standard: WiFi 6
Band Frequencies: 2.4GHz, 5GHz (x2)
Max Speed: 10Gbps
LAN Ports: 3x 1Gbps
WAN: 1x 2.5Gbps
CPU: 1.7GHz tri-core

Memory: 256MB Flash, 512MB DDR4 RAM
USB: 1x 3.2Gen A-type
Dimensions: 172.3 x 78.1 x 176.75mm
Weight: 0.88kg

What We Think

A compact mesh router with various gaming-centric features, ASUS AiMesh technology, impressive signal strength, and good speeds. If you don’t mind being limited to the older WiFi 6 standard, or by the 1Gbps LAN ports, then this is a great buy.

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Pros

Great signal strength
Good download/upload speeds
Has a USB-A port for storage
Nice and compact in size
Included security software, VPN, and gaming features
AiMesh means flexibility in which routers you pair it with to setup mesh network

Cons

WiFi 6 standard
Somewhat expensive considering the older standard
Only 1Gbps LAN connections (though link aggregation mitigates this)

Pricing

With an MSRP at the time of writing of $249.99 for a single router, the ROG Rapture GT6 isn’t particularly cheap for a WiFi 6 router. It costs less than you’d typically see a WiFi 6E and certainly a WiFi 7 router go for, but this is what you’d expect for tech supporting this older standard. Given it’s a mesh router there’s a good chance you’ll want to pick up more than one, in which case you can typically find a pair on sale for around $480, though given it has ASUS AiMesh you don’t need it to be paired with the exact same router: any other AiMesh model should work.

Overall Design

Compared to some of the crazier, almost-arachnid looking ASUS gaming routers we’ve seen, the ROG Rapture GT6 is quite a sensible looking device, with its interior antennas giving it a much more compact profile. It still has that ‘gamer aesthetic’ look, with the RGB lighting up the ROG logo and various stylized diagonal cutouts, but it’s done in quite a tasteful way and we’d actually say this is a nice looking router.

In terms of size, measuring 172.3 x 78.1 x 176.75mm it doesn’t take up much space on your desk, nor in the vertical sense. Cooling is assisted by ventilation grills on the top, bottom, and sides and there’s a status light on the front of the device.

The router is powered by a 1.7GHz tri-core processor, complemented by 256MB of flash storage and 512MB of DDR4 RAM, ensuring it can handle extensive network processing and tasks efficiently.

Regarding its wireless capability, the obvious big drawback of this router is that it’s WiFi 6 standard, meaning it doesn’t have access to 6GHz frequency bands whatsoever, although it does still offer dual 5GHz bands and a 2.4GHz band. Whether this is a problem for you really depends on your specific needs and your wider setup; 6GHz channels have lower latency and enjoy faster speeds on average, which is better for video conferencing and online gaming, plus an additional frequency band just means greater capacity to add more devices. You can still definitely get sufficiently high speeds and low latencies on 5GHz however to enjoy gaming and other online streaming services.

In terms of the wired connectivity, the GT6 offers a decent selection of ports. The primary WAN port supports up to 2.5Gbps, provided your ISP can deliver such speeds. However, the three LAN ports are limited to Gigabit speeds, which means that the high-speed 2.5Gbps WAN connection doesn’t fully extend to wired devices if you use these individually. However, you can get around this through link aggregation, meaning you can combine the bandwidths of the LAN ports to increase the bandwidth to a single device.

Additionally, there is a USB 3.2 Type-A port available for storage needs, which is nice as often even larger, newer-gen routers sometimes do not include this.

Other features

Setting up the router is fairly straightforward, in part thanks to the user-friendly nature of the ASUS app. The application gives you extensive controls over the network/mesh, plus some nice QoS options for gaming (allowing you to prioritize bandwidth to gaming traffic), parental controls for additional security in multi-person households with children, allows you to setup a VPN for additional protection, port forwarding features, and more. A Game Radar diagnostic utility also helps you identify the connection quality of servers for specific games.

You can monitor each connected device and manage their data traffic, giving you the ability to set controls on a per-device basis. This comprehensive management capability ensures you have full oversight and control of your network’s performance and security.

Included with the router is free lifetime anti-malware and parental control software powered by Trend Micro, plus Asus’ Instant Guard software (for VPN setup and other security).

As mentioned AiMesh means you can pair the router with a different ASUS model that also has this when setting up your mesh, which is always a really welcome feature with the ASUS routers that have it.

Performance

When evaluating the performance of the Rapture GT6, we conducted our standard tests, though it’s important to mention that our testing environment has one main limitation: our office internet connection is capped at approximately 300Mbps.

Still, we assessed the wireless performance between the router and our testing device (a Samsung Galaxy S21 FE smartphone) at the following distances using both SpeedTest and WiFiMan apps:

10ft/3m (no obstructions)
30ft/9m (no obstructions)
60ft/18m (with one wall in between)
90ft/27m (with two walls in between)

We tested for signal strength, latency, network download and speeds and physical download and upload speeds.

Lastly, we performed a file transfer test by connecting an SSD to the router’s USB port and transferring a file to and from a PC connected to the router’s Ethernet port.

Signal strength (measured in decibel milliwatts aka dBm) is a way to determine how consistent and reliable the connection with the router will be. At one end of the scale -30 dBm is the ideal result, with around the -90 dBm mark typically signifying disconnection at the bottom end: anything around the -50 dBm to -67 dBm range is typically considered a respectable result.

Using the WiFiman app we found that the GT6 maintained signal strengths between -36dBm and -68dBm on the 2.4GHz frequency band, and -48dBm to -89dBm on the 5GHz band, depending on the distance. As you can see from the graph, it was one of a select through routers that managed to maintain a signal at our maximum testing distance (with two obstructing walls). Despite lacking external antennas, the router’s nine internal antennas effectively covered the advertised 5,800 square feet.

Latency results (measured in milliseconds aka ms, with lower being better) were solid across the distances as you can see from the below graph, with latency increasing from 14ms to 32ms as the distance increased on the 2.4GHz band and from 7ms to 17ms on the 5GHz band, the latter of these being the clear preference for wireless connection if you’re online gaming.

We tested the WiFi download and upload speeds using a couple of different methods, as well as the speeds using a wired ethernet connection from the LAN port. Overall, the GT6 router demonstrates strong performance across various distances, particularly given its price point compared to the more expensive routers we’ve tested, with significant speed reductions only at the farthest points, particularly on the 2.4GHz band. The 5GHz band maintained better performance at greater distances, and latency remained relatively low, ensuring responsive connections.

Network download & upload speed was measured by the Oopla speed test app in Megabits per second (Mbps).

2.4GHz WiFi band: Download speeds started at 59.4Mbps but dropped to 0Mbps at the farthest distance. Upload speeds ranged from around 40Mbps to 0Mbps at the farthest point.
5GHz WiFi band: Download speeds began at 213Mbps and decreased to 51.8Mbps at the farthest distance. Upload speeds started at 290Mbps and dropped to 12.9Mbps at the farthest point.
LAN connection: the ethernet connection achieved a maximum download speed of 260Mbps, with upload speeds reaching around 280Mbps. This is substantially below the 1Gbps LAN more capacity, but once again reflects the limitations of our testing environment, rather than the routers itself, so remains a solid result.

Physical download & upload speed is measured via the WiFiman app, also in Mbps.

2.4GHz WiFi band: Download speeds ranged from 172Mbps close to the router to just 8Mbps at the farthest distance. Upload speeds varied from 286Mbps near the router to 51Mbps at the farthest point.
5GHz WiFi band: Download speeds were impressive close to the router at 1080Mbps, but dropped to 17Mbps at the farthest distance. Upload speeds started at 1020Mbps near the router and decreased to 48Mbps further away.

File transfer test

The file transfer test was the final one we conducted. For this we used CrystalDiskMark to record the speeds of transferring a file from a computer attached to the router via the LAN port to an external SSD plugged-into the router’s USB port, and then back again. Unfortunately, the GT6 underperformed in this area, even with a wired connection.

Sequential Read Speeds: Averaged around 66MB/s.
Sequential Write Speeds: Averaged around 55MB/s.
Random Read/Write Speeds: Dropped significantly, sometimes to single digits.

These results indicate that the GT6 struggles to fully utilize the potential of connected storage devices, making it less ideal for users who need high-speed network access to their external drives.

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