The RT-AX82U Gundam edition was developed by ASUS & Bandai, Gundam (Japanese: ガンダム) The Mobile Suit Gundam anime was release in 1972 and RX-78 Gundam mobile suit was pilot by Amuro Ray. Amuro Ray is the newtype human and he is the strongest Gundam pilot. 

The RT-AX82U has the familiar look of a older flagship RT-AC87U Asus router and offers all the features you’d expect. The big news is 802.11ax, which delivers faster, stronger connections to compatible devices and RGB light to bright up surrounding area.

Specifications

 

The router maximum throughput is quite a bit lower than the flagship ASUS RT-AX88U 5400Mbps/6000Mbps. This is less of a concern than it was with 802.11ax: the new standard uses a technical trick called orthogonal frequency-division multiple access to achieve better performance when multiple devices are connected, so there’s less to be gained by spreading the load across.

The four vertical antennas, and then moves on to the RX78-2 theme finish, with an angular body. The dimensions are 10.8 x 7.3 x 6.5 inches (275.5 x 184.4 x 165 mm) with antenna.

 

Left view

Right view

There are four status LEDs that provide connectivity information at a glance. These designate power, a WAN connection, and each of the two Wi-Fi frequencies.

The yellow button at the middle is a switch to change RGB mode.

Wirelessly, the big news is that this router supports the latest generation of wireless connectivity, Wi-Fi 6, previously designated as 802.11ax, and has 160 Mbps channels. This translates into speeds up to 5400 Mbps, if you combine both the 2.4 GHz frequency that has a max speed of 574 Mbps, and the 5 GHz frequency that tops out at 4804 Mbps (dual-band). Modern wireless standards are supported, including OFDA, MU-MIMO, beamforming, and the latest security standard of WPA3-personal. The router is also fully backward compatible to 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) and 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) devices.

As usual, the rear of the router connection ports. This includes a single WAN port and four LAN ports, one of which is designated as a dedicated Gaming Port. Each Ethernet port supports 10/100/1000 transfer rates, though hopefully no one is still using anything less than a gigabit device. The USB port is 3.2 Gen 1×1, and there is also a power switch that’s useful for router reboots.

My opinion of the material and feel: The router layout look like a toy and make of plastic. Since Gundam is a anime and toy modeling that make a perfect match.

The router has built-in  RGB LED lighting. For those that seek out this feature, and want every accessory to have RGB lighting, the RT-AX82U delivers the goods with a choice of “Lighting vibe.” This includes several multi-color modes that have different lighting effects, which can be matched to different moods or applications.

Main Menu UI

Once the initial setup is complete, we can get into router Menu for more advance configuration. The router’s features are easily navigated via the left-hand panel.

We installed latest beta version to ensures that all the latest security updates are applied, along with bug fixes. For our testing, the RT-AX82U was running firmware version 9.0.0.4.386.41994.

On the right-hand panel will give you more information of the processor load, ram and ethernet ports usage. You also can find a Aura RGB settings.

Let’s us show you the RGB lighting on the router.

Security

The Asus RT-AX82U includes a number of security features. Network Protection with Trend Micro can provide antivirus on a network level, for no additional charge. Also, malicious sites are blocked at the router to keep the entire network secure.
[We have been placing this router as our main use to test the Ai Protection for 1 month and see the result below]

Performance/ Benchmark Testing

We tested the Router directly using Speedtest on WAN to Internet directly.

When it comes to wireless bandwidth, the Asus RT-AX82U performed quite well. We test routers in three location a “Living room” location, “Computer room” and also at a “Bedroom” location. The bandwidth test uses Speedtest, Netflix, cloudflare and internal file transfer to benchmark the performance, with a Wi-Fi 6 client. For the latter, we have a laptop ASUS Zenbook UX435EGL with an Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 160MHz wireless adapter on latest driver, set to use the widest 160 MHz channel width on the 5 GHz frequency.

House layout & testing details

We will test three difference location using ASUS Zenbook UX435EGL and out internet service provider is M1 – 1Gbps.

• Location “A” Living room
• Location “B” Computer room
• Location “C” Master room

 

Location A: Living room

Cloudflare speed test

 

Netflix Speed test

Ookia Speedtest

Internal Transfer speed of 3GB files

Location B: Computer room

Cloudflare speed test

Netflix Speed test

Ookia Speedtest

Internal Transfer speed of 3GB files

Location C: Master room

Cloudflare speed test

Netflix Speed test

Ookia Speedtest

Internal Transfer speed of 3GB files

 

Benchmark overall result:

Cloudflare Speed test
Location	Download	Upload	Latency	Jitter
Living Room	511Mbps	483Mbps	5.70ms	2.94ms
Computer Room	524Mbps	550Mbps	6.62ms	4.44ms
Master Room	364Mpbs	283Mbps	5.69ms	2.31ms

 

Netflix Speed test
Location	Download	Upload
Living Room	480Mbps	730Mbps
Computer Room	510Mbps	530Mbps
Master Room	390Mpbs	350Mbps

 

Ookia Speed test
Location	Download	Upload	Ping
Living Room	398.55Mbps	539.22Mbps	4ms
Computer Room	513.73Mbps	521.69Mbps	4ms
Master Room	341.38Mpbs	253.77Mbps	4ms