By day I’m a software developer. We play games at night. I’m no network engineer, but I knew my setup was way past the time for an upgrade. With impressive technology, the promise of sustained power, and a smooth toolset, we knew ASUS’ new ROG STRIX GS-BE18000 was just the ticket to bringing your home network into the modern era.

First, let’s draw a picture to give you an idea of ​​what we’re working on. I live in a house with about 2800 square feet of livable and usable space, including a basement and bedrooms on both floors. Due to the age of the house, there was only one coaxial cable running into the house, so cable modem options were limited. So my Motorola Surfboard and Nighthawk X4S AC2600 were installed on the top floor, roughly in the middle of the house. I then ran 100 feet of CAT-5 cable into the basement, over the drop ceiling, and into another router that I was using as a repeater downstairs. This is important. That’s because, apart from the upstairs home office, all serious network traffic happens in the downstairs game room, as far away from Nighthawk as possible.

The setup I mentioned above worked, but most of it was just trying to make the most of what I had without having to run new lines or run cables into each room. Again, I’m a programmer and gamer, not a network engineer, so I don’t care about the details as long as everything works as expected.

As you can imagine, my Nighthawk X4S AC2600 (which hit stores in 2016) is a workhorse, but it’s starting to show signs of aging. In my basement and some parts of the exterior walls of my house, the signal strength became quite unstable and my download speeds would come to a near halt. Device access with any meaningful speed or reliability was not possible over Wi-Fi. Well, thanks to the GS-BE18000, my entire home network has been significantly upgraded.

What’s inside the box?

When I opened the GS-BE18000 for the first time, I had mixed feelings. I’m used to gaming routers that look like someone ripped them off the side. Nebuchadnezzar from matrix movie. The GS-BE18000 looked like an angry box with some sharp edges. It had ROG’s signature menacing eyes, but other than that it was a modest rectangular parallelepiped. It was also light as a feather. My brain doesn’t usually associate hardware with quality. Thankfully, that mental premise was completely wrong here. GS-BE18000 is a stargate to the future.

Setup was easy. Download the ASUS Router app using the included QR code. Once you set up the app and connect your router to your modem as shown, you should be up and running in no time. I also like ASUS’ attention to quality of life. I had to use this router to set up a new network using WiFi 7, but anyone who’s been using older devices for a while will benefit from the ability to easily create subnetworks with backwards compatibility. I set the subdomain to match the primary network of my old router, so I didn’t have to make any changes to my old device to take advantage of the GS-BE18000.

It was very easy to get up and running, but ASUS went above and beyond. This router comes with eight 2.5G ports, two of which are dedicated gaming LAN ports to prioritize network traffic and ensure that latency isn’t an issue. This router can also utilize ASUS’s ‘Smart AiMesh’ to stay wirelessly clear even from locations that a single access point can’t reach.

Before we get into the numbers, we’d like to take a look at ASUS’ excellent app for accessing your router. of ASUS router This app offers an impressive set of options to give you the best possible experience. You can prioritize traffic based on gaming, streaming, and more. Get a complete picture of what devices are logging on to your network. The app also lets you create and assign profiles for family members and enable intelligent AiProtection to enhance network security. As any gamer will tell you, RGB makes whatever you’re trying to do 10x better. STRIX allows you to adjust the lighting and lighting patterns on the router itself, so you know it’s legitimate gaming hardware (as if the raw power of this beast didn’t do that for you).

One of the main selling points of STRIX is that it is a tri-band WiFi 7 gaming router. My Nighthawk used 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, but STRIX also adds a 6 GHz band. These three bands add up to approximately 18000 Mbps. This is where the router gets its name. Combining this with ROG’s multi-link operation, the GS-BE18000 ensures that devices are always at the highest available speed per device. The new 4K-QAM (data packet packaging method) improves efficiency by up to 20% compared to WiFi 6’s 1024-QAM. Simply put, everything is bigger, faster, and more powerful.

Before and after

To get a baseline, I downloaded a few apps and tried to map the quality of my home network. I started it within a few feet of my router and had no issues. However, as I moved further away, I noticed that the signal strength dropped significantly in most areas around my house. As I was lying in bed, the signal became weak. From my home office, it was surprisingly weak. garage? Yes, there will be higher latency. When we moved to the basement, in the game room, we noticed, to our surprise, that the mirrors in the layout upstairs were weaker and uneven.

Happily, after the upgrade, the signal strength map became much more favorable for my home. The router is still in the same location. This is newer, better equipment and I like it better. It’s still a little weak in the garage and laundry room, but the rest of the upstairs – home office, bedroom, and living room (where the GS-BE18000 is waiting) receive a strong and stable signal. Moving downstairs, the situation at the end of the house is still a little weak, but much of the coverage shows a considerable improvement from its predecessor.

use speedtest.netI ran a series of wireless tests from different parts of my house before and after the upgrade. I laughed out loud at the change. I was standing right next to the Nighthawk and it was giving me 62.5 Mbps download. After replacement, the same device 10 times An increase of 652.18 Mbps download (in fact, my wife’s phone once recorded 900 Mbps download from the same location!) From my upstairs bedroom, the Nighthawk gave me 61.9 Mbps download, while the STRIX gave me an impressive 445.2 Mbps download speed. Even in my latency-challenged garage, I was getting 401.06 Mbps download speeds with ROG STRIX, compared to 31.5 Mbps download speeds with older hardware.

The basement, which previously struggled with WiFi signal, also showed a noticeable improvement. My gaming PC achieved a ridiculous 4.8 Mbps download speed using Nighthawk. I haven’t mentioned improvements elsewhere in the house, but the same hardware was hitting 62 Mbps on ROG STRIX. This is the speed you used to get by standing next to the Nighthawk. My basement may also be a candidate for a Smart AiMesh upgrade in the near future.

While wireless advancements are at the forefront of the GS-BE18000, it would be remiss not to discuss wired traffic. As I mentioned in a previous setup, I run a CAT-5 cable from my router to a repeater in the basement for my gaming PC. For Nighthawk, I downloaded Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS and it completed quickly. 3:38. Running STRIX cut that number in half. 1:18. I also downloaded some Lords of the Fall Check out what speeds you’re getting on Steam. As the screenshot below shows, Nighthawk helped us get up to 340 Mbps. That’s not much, but ROG STRIX pushed the same speeds up to just over 800 Mbps. This is a very welcome upgrade.

To be honest, I thought the internet was connected fine. Thankfully, the ASUS ROG STRIX GS-BE18000 knew better. Literally everything about my internet experience has improved thanks to this amazing piece of hardware. At approximately 2,800 square feet, the two-story home now offers better coverage from all directions. Wireless speeds have increased significantly, in some cases by an order of magnitude. The speed of our existing wired internet has also more than doubled. It’s easy to set up, and the mobile app gives you full control with added flavor. Although it’s a bit pricey, if you’re looking for a high-end gaming router, you should definitely consider the ASUS ROG STRIX GS-BE1800. This is the kind of product that turns enthusiasts into lifelong fans.