Verdict: The ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 is one of the priciest routers in the market, but its performance and features make up for its price tag. WiFi 6 (802.11AX) capabilities, 2.5Gbps wired connector as well as gaming-focused features make it a solid choice if you’re getting a higher-tier PLDT Fibr plan.
The ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 is available via PLDT at Php 1349 a month for 24 months.
Pros
- WiFi 6 capable
- A lot of gaming-specific features
- Great coverage
Cons
- Only 4 Ethernet ports
- Very expensive
The ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 is a perfect illustration of the Taiwanese company not being afraid of going all-in with gaming. This gargantuan home router is an exercise in excess when it comes to design, performance, and price. But it’s also one of the most future-proofed routers in the market today and has plenty of great features that gamers will appreciate.
Design
The ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 is as massive and as weird-looking as you’d expect from its promo photos. The design truly is something else, with the design’s gaming pedigree shining through as clear as day.
The weird AF design is very polarizing: you’ll either love how insane looking it is or hate how obscenely obnoxious it is – there’s really no middle ground here.
As crazy-looking as the router looks, those eight antennas aren’t just for looks as you’ll see later in the performance section.
Like any good ROG product, the ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 has RGB lighting in the form of the ROG logo on the top. And just like any ROG product that has RGB, you can customize the color of the logo via software.
There are multiple LED status lights on the front just like any router. The ports on the rear are composed of two USB 3.0 ports for added network storage, four gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, a 2.5Gbps LAN port for high-speed fiber connections (if offered in the future) as well as the Internet port where it connects to your modem.
We’re a little put off by the limited number of wired connections for the ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 since most serious PC gamers usually utilize wired connections if possible for maximum reliability and speed.
Setup
Setup can be done in one of two ways – either manually through a browser or via the ASUS Router app. It’s the same router app that you use with ASUS’ other products like the ZenWiFi XD4 Mini that we reviewed a few weeks back, though the app quickly switches to a more ROG-appropriate red color scheme when it completes the setup.
Most old-school and hardcore PC gamers will prefer to go through the web-based configuration for the router, which is where you can access all of the relevant features for it.
There’s a dizzying array of configuration and advanced setup options available for the ROG Rapture GT-AX1100, including game acceleration, game-based network optimization as well as traffic analysis, and traffic routing depending on your defined priorities for network traffic. You can also set Quality of Service (QOS) parameters to prioritize certain traffic, and cut out non-essential non-gaming traffic as well in a bid to improve latency in online games during certain hours of the day.
In short, there’s plenty of stuff you can customize and mess with depending on your usage patterns and if you have little gamers running around your house as well, you can set strict playing times for your kids based on the MAC address of their devices as well.
WiFi 6 benefits
One of the main draws of the ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 is its WiFi 6 capability. While the next generation of WiFi is obviously faster than WiFi 5 (you’re looking at 9.6 Gbps VS 3.5 Gbps) speed is just part of the equation.
The main reason why you’d want a WiFi 6 capable router in your home is that it’s able to handle a lot more devices connected to it than say, a WiFi 5 router.
While higher speeds are nice, what’s increasingly becoming more important here is the overall capacity of routers to accommodate even more devices on the network. To put it in very simple terms, think of WiFi 5 as a highway with a 140 KM/h limit on it that only has 2 lanes. While you can go incredibly fast on that highway, there isn’t much room in it to accommodate a lot of cars going at that speed.
Going by that simplistic analogy, WiFi 6 is basically a highway that not only has a 385 KM/h limit, it also has 6 more lanes available for cars to use.
WiFi 6 is faster but the main point here is that a WiFi 6 network can accommodate more devices connected to it without degrading the quality of the network. Any family that suddenly found themselves working and studying from home using wireless connections on an older router has probably seen their network quality degrade during the pandemic – that’s not happening with WiFi 6.
Performance
With that WiFi 6 primer out of the way, how does the ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 perform? Pretty well actually – those ridiculously large antennas are able to pump their signal through most of the areas of my home, which previously was only able to get full WiFi coverage by the use of WiFi mesh systems.
My home, for reference, is a typical large 4-bedroom concrete bungalow that most Pinoys reside in. If you’re living in a say, 2 bedroom condo or similar, the ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 is overkill as far as routers go.
But for people who have bigger homes or have a lot of connected devices, then the ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 is worth it – especially if you have higher tier PLDT Fibr plans.
The ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 also worked like a charm for wireless VR using the Oculus Quest 2 and is worth looking at if you have similar devices that require large chunks of bandwidth to be sent wirelessly on your local network.
Wrap-up and verdict
The ROG Rapture GT-AX1100 is one of the best gaming routers in the market, and there’s plenty of reasons to get one. If you reside in a big home and took advantage of PLDT’s higher-tier Fibr plans or have a lot of wireless devices utilizing your home network, then this router is for you.
Take note though that it’s an expensive router for what it is, and your Php 1349 monthly payments to PLDT for two years come out at around Php 32,376 – quite pricey for a piece of home networking equipment.
