Question Which Router do you recommend: ASUS RT-AX5400 or RT-AX3000 ?

[NotEvil]

Just wondering which router is better, because as of right now the RT-AX3000 is on sale on Amazon and it looks like a good deal. But I don't want to waste my time and money if it's not a very good router.

 

[bill001g]

So most important is your end devices must support the wifi feature the router does or you are wasting your money. For example if your end device does only runs 802.11ac(wifi5) then buying a wifi6 router will give you nothing.

The distance the signal goes and the coverage in your house is the same since this is based on radio transmit power and that has not changed.

Next wifi6 is pretty much a waste of money you really should look at wifi6e. Remember though if your devices do not run wifi6e then you might be better off waiting until you have more wifi6e devices.

So the huge problem with these routers with big numbers is most end devices will never run that fast. For example the main differebce between 5400 and 3000 routers you list is one uses 4 antenna ie mimo 4x4 and the other uses 2 antenna for 2x2. Almost no end device has 4 antenna almost all use only 2.

The next huge issue with wifi6 is the only way it gets those fast speeds is to use 160mhz radio channels. The problem is there is no block of channels that large. They use frequencies that overlap things like weather radar. Because of this there are all kinds of rules about the router detecting this and avoid it. Since these rules vary a lot by country most end devices choose to not support it. This means most end device, cell phone in particular, only support 80mhz. This means it is the same as the older wifi5.

The third feature that makes wifi6 faster is the use on a more dense data encoding called qam1024. Problem is this only work close to the router...like in the same room where you could use ethernet in most cases.

So in the end wifi6 was a huge disappointment for most people. Wifi6e is much better because it can run on the 6ghz radio channel where there are lots of 160mhz radio bands with no strange restictions.