Review Asus ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro Wi-Fi 7 router review: Class-leading performance and expandability

[Admin]

The Asus ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro continues the trend of expensive flagship Wi-Fi 7 routers, but it has the performance to back up its price tag.

Asus ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro Wi-Fi 7 router review: Class-leading performance and expandability : Read more

 

[richardvday]

These seem very nice but the prices keep skyrocketing. Are we going to pay 1500.00 for a router soon ? Its like gpus all over again. Does the BOM really warrant such a high price?

 

[PlutoDelic]

Enterprise and "Prosumer" Access Points are immensively better at "WiFi" at the same price range.

It might not be a router and have switching ports, but in my opinion are a way better solution.

By Enterprise and Prosumer, i enthusiastically leave Ubiquiti out of the list.

 

[bigdragon]

$800 for a router from a company that likes to mislead its customers when they need support and does not recall known defective products? I just about spit out my coffee. Asus has gone full corporate menace.

 

[dimar]

Intel BE200NGW m.2 card has been available for some time from amazon. It's mentioned
"Compatible with any Laptop or Desktop with standard NGFF M.2 Key E slot. All the Laptops with AX200, AX210, AC9260, AC8265, AC7265 Wifi module can be replaced with this BE200 module."
"Not Compatible with CNVIO or CNVIO2"
"Not Compatible With AMD CPU"
On Intel site it shows M.2: PCIe*, USB.
So why wouldn't it work on AMD?

 

[svan71]

Class-leading performance and expandability​

and ugly as hell.

 

[gg83]

How can anyone justify buying this? Gamers and audiophiles love overpaying for everything is the thought?

 

[Geef]

All this router needs is a Deep Evil Robot Voice. "Connection Established" As it speaks the red lights on the top dim slightly.

 

[RitiFamily]

Enterprise and "Prosumer" Access Points are immensively better at "WiFi" at the same price range.

It might not be a router and have switching ports, but in my opinion are a way better solution.

By Enterprise and Prosumer, i enthusiastically leave Ubiquiti out of the list.

Hey PlutoDelic, have a mfg recommendation for the access-points? Thanks

 

[RitiFamily]

Brandon (or anyone else who might know). Like Pluto, I usually setup my Wifi via access-points, but only because (in the past) traditional Wifi routers couldn't handle my requirements. I have at least 75+ devices on my network (between all smart devices commuters, tablets, etc) and for security reasons, every device is assigned a static IP based upon MAC filtering. Does anyone know if there is a limit to the number of devices that can be MAC filtered? My TP-Link router has a 90 device limit. Any information could be appreciated. Thanks

 

[milleron]

I'd love to see information on what can be added to enable the mesh capability — i.e., connection types, brands, costs. I'd guess that employing this router in a mesh network will be terribly expensive because the main reason for adding mesh units would be to extend Wi-Fi 7, and apparently that is never going to come at a reasonable price.

 

[DrWankel]

My main question has nothing to do with Wi-Fi whatsoever. This is a consumer 10Gb router. 10Gb WAN and 10GB LAN. Can this thing actually route at 10Gb speeds? I'd love to see some wired network testing on it.

Back in the day, there was a ton of 1Gb consumer routers that despite being advertised as a 1Gb router, and having 1Gb ports, were completely incapable of routing at 1Gb speeds.

 

[PlutoDelic]

Hey PlutoDelic, have a mfg recommendation for the access-points? Thanks

Netgear and Zyxel have relatively good priced WiFi 6E/7 APs. I've setup a few of Netgear WiFi 6E ones in large homes and they're amazing.

You can even afford an 8port MultiGig PoE++ Switch together with the price of the articles star. And one AP can act as a controller for the rest, avoiding the "mesh" headache.

The creme de la creme will always be Cisco and Ruckus, but they're a different subject money wise, yet above everything else.

As i said before, avoid Ubiquiti like your life depends on it. They tease with features, but reliability and support is horrible.

 

[parkerthon]

Enterprise and "Prosumer" Access Points are immensively better at "WiFi" at the same price range.

It might not be a router and have switching ports, but in my opinion are a way better solution.

By Enterprise and Prosumer, i enthusiastically leave Ubiquiti out of the list.

What’s your beef with uniquiti? I have their stuff and it’s great. Something better these days?

 

[parkerthon]

Netgear and Zyxel have relatively good priced WiFi 6E/7 APs. I've setup a few of Netgear WiFi 6E ones in large homes and they're amazing.

You can even afford an 8port MultiGig PoE++ Switch together with the price of the articles star. And one AP can act as a controller for the rest, avoiding the "mesh" headache.

The creme de la creme will always be Cisco and Ruckus, but they're a different subject money wise, yet above everything else.

As i said before, avoid Ubiquiti like your life depends on it. They tease with features, but reliability and support is horrible.

I am really curious what you ran into? I have 4 Ubiquiti AC APs, about 6 switches(2 poe, bunch of small ones with some in HOT places), their usg firewall, and they have all been rock solid. Literally have never had a reason to reboot them except when updating firmware. That said, I don’t use the advanced firewall stuff and I’m not a network engineer(I stopped messing around with CLI on my fortinet 60B a long time ago) so perhaps your standards are higher. I really just love the central console. It gives me so much info on device connections and history with minimal effort. Been considering refreshing everything to make the leap to a 2gbps internet connection.

 

[thestryker]

Enterprise and "Prosumer" Access Points are immensively better at "WiFi" at the same price range.

It might not be a router and have switching ports, but in my opinion are a way better solution.

By Enterprise and Prosumer, i enthusiastically leave Ubiquiti out of the list.

Can you point out a single AP with anywhere near the bandwidth capacity and WiFi features that actually costs less, or enough less to make up for the loss of bandwidth?

 

[Sleepy_Hollowed]

This is a good device if you have disposable income.

Considering my wireless routers/access points have lasted me, and have been kept for close to a decade, I am apprehensive as to their firmware support/security updates.

I've been buying devices I can install open source firmware on so I can keep patching it after the vendor stops supporting the device.

That being all said, I am impressed with this one though.

 

[Erazor24]

For that money you'd be able to get 4 Unifi Dream Routers with excellent performance sans the Asus crap.

 

[PlutoDelic]

What’s your beef with uniquiti? I have their stuff and it’s great. Something better these days?

Not beef. I have 15 years of experience in networking overall, and 10 of them i have been designing and planning RF deployments for WiFi, many times with large locations such as Stadiums, Shopping Malls, etc.

Every time i've designed from ground up, and it was accepted, the only problem the customer ever faced was "upgrading" to the latest technology. Every time the customer bought my design but went for another (usually through idiotic ISP's that use the cheap way of Ubiquiti and Mikrotik), the design would implode due to lack of performance. And every time they chose to follow my design afterwards, the issues never arose.

Ubiquiti has terrible hardware. Their switches would hang, and when i would report the bug, even reproducible, they would counter it, sometimes they even banned my accounts. Their passive PoE system (which they changed now) would fry devices, Their AP's would just unassign themselves from control management, where the only solution to the issue was to upgrade the controller firmware, which in hand did not support the APs in question (you see the pattern?).

Can you point out a single AP with anywhere near the bandwidth capacity and WiFi features that actually costs less, or enough less to make up for the loss of bandwidth?

With pleasure.

I will use the GT BE98 Pro 800$ as a basis while retaining the features. The forte this device implies is gaming performance, which is just QoS (i know, "just" does not justify it, no pun intended). Also, please be advised that in WiFi, the problem is Capacity vs Coverage, unless you dig in to understanding MU-MIMO and Spatial Streams, the problem with WiFi is and always will be AIRTIME, the furthest device with the least bandwidth will impact all the clients attached to it in the same band.

Let's go with a few Access Points that deliver a lot more than the star of the topic.

Zyxel WBE660S BE22000 - app. 599$ MSRP.
Zyxel NWA130BE BE11000 - app. 200$ MSRP
Netgear Wi-Fi 7 WBE750 - app. 700$ MSRP

Noteable WiFi6E Mention:
Netgear WAP630E currently 199$ a piece. Superb device. Deployed a big bunch in a hospital and they've been solid.

Unmanaged Switches with either 10Gig or MultiGig and at least 30W PoE+:
Netgear MS108UP app. 250$ MSRP
Zyxel XMG-108HP app. 130$ MSRP
QNAP QSW-2104-2S

There are various managed Switches by all 3 brands here, which of course raise the cost. 8 Ports of MultiGig/10Gig PoE++, and two SFP+ ports.

My point, i'd rather have 2-3 AP's like "Zyxel NWA130BE" hooked to a PoE switch for sharing the load of coverage. At the end of the day, the bottleneck wont be the AP's uplink, but your ISP. I'd rather have 5 people have good bandwidth with planned coverage through 3 access locations than have a weird looking Wireless Router. Usually the ISP device acting ONLY as a router for all this segmentation is more than enough.

 

[dalek1234]

That price is bonkers. And if you are thinking that you could get the next lower model to save some cash, think again. That model doesn't have the 6 Ghz band, so it's more like last-gen wrapped up in current-gen shininess, and it' s not that much cheaper anyway.

What is ASUS smoking?

 

[thestryker]

Let's go with a few Access Points that deliver a lot more than the star of the topic.

Zyxel WBE660S.BE22000 - app. 599$ MSRP.

$699, not $599 (though there is a $200 off coupon on Amazon right now, but price history shows it never sold for $599)

Zyxel NWA130BE BE11000 - app. 200$ MSRP
Netgear Wi-Fi 7 WBE750 - app. 700$ MSRP

So the two expensive ones aren't quad band (Asus split the 6ghz) and you couldn't put together one with a router/switch for less than the Asus router in question at MSRP. I've yet to see a review on the Netgear, but their wifi tends to be quite good. The Zyxel on the other hand I have and it's about half the 7 throughput, and around two-thirds the 6/6E.

My point, i'd rather have 2-3 AP's like "Zyxel NWA130BE" hooked to a PoE switch for sharing the load of coverage. At the end of the day, the bottleneck wont be the AP's uplink, but your ISP. I'd rather have 5 people have good bandwidth with planned coverage through 3 access locations than have a weird looking Wireless Router. Usually the ISP device acting ONLY as a router for all this segmentation is more than enough.

I wouldn't disagree that it's a better solution if you have enough users and/or cover a lot of space. That doesn't automatically make it a better solution however as the performance potential is significantly lower. A lot also depends on how you use your wireless network which if you use for just internet related things coverage and availability are literally all that matter with regards to performance. While I wouldn't spend this much money on any wireless networking period it isn't a terrible product or bad price (I think it does look dumb, but that's subjective of course).

 

[PlutoDelic]

I wouldn't disagree that it's a better solution if you have enough users and/or cover a lot of space.

I've actually left one thing out. Walls. Immense difference between US and Europe in this matter.

Wooden or Dry walls don't have as much an impact as Cement and Bricks do. I can see the appeal in this comparison.