ASUS RT-AC51U Dual-Band Wireless AC750 Cloud Router, USB for Media Server, 3G/4G Sharing, Superfast 802.11ac Wi-Fi Router with Multifunctional USB for 3G/4G sharing, AiCloud, Black

I'm yet another victim of the notorious Virgin Media Superhub, which is mentioned a few times in the reviews of this product. Like the other victims, I too struggled with inconsistent download and browsing speeds and poor WiFi coverage from the Superhub and also struggled with Virgin Media themselves over the phone; "Yes, I've rebooted it and yes, I've checked the cables and no - it's definitely not a problem with two laptops, two smartphones, a tablet and a Chromecast in my house", but they refused to accept that it was down to a problem with the Superhub. I recently received a Synology DS216J NAS box as a birthday present and received a further kick in the teeth from the Superhub when I discovered that the transfer speeds between my laptop over WiFi to the NAS were trickling along at a pathetically slow 1.7Mb/s; this wasn't a great prospect when I was looking to transfer several gigabytes worth of files to it, so turned my efforts towards finding ways to resolve my networking woes. After a bit of googling, I discovered to my surprise that the Superhub can be wing-clipped and turned into a lowly modem through its configuration page (Something Virgin Media never thought of mentioning to me) and can subsequently have another router connected to it to take on the duties of pumping WiFi throughout the house, so it was with that thought that I decided to look for a sufficiently zippy router to connect to it. The problem when searching for things like routers is that there are simply thousands of ones available to buy and it can feel like wading through treacle trying to find a good one. Having gone through several of the things in my lifetime, I looked at reviews and settled on getting this Asus one after finding to my delight that it was nearly half-price on Amazon Prime. One of the buying factors was its dual 2.4 and 5GHz SSID's as I'd been having problems with only being able to choose one or the other with the (not so) Superhub, which was a problem as my wireless printer only supports 2.4GHz and was therefore causing everything else in the house to be dragged down to the lower throughput rate because of this, which wasn't much fun as it really seemed to adversely affect my laptop's AC-7260 WiFi card which is much happier when running on the 5GHz band. When the router arrived I relished the challenge of connecting it to the Superhub, the Synology NAS box and my various other bits of kit. I've often found routers in the past to be unhelpful, vague things which used acronyms for everything and be just about as clear as mud when it came to setting them up, but this is thankfully not the case with the Asus RT-AC51U. Once I'd stripped the superhub of its WiFi abilities and set it into it's modem-only mode, I connected everything up and fired my Asus router up. From there it was a simple case of opening the WiFi manager in Windows 10 on my laptop and opening a web browser, which promply brought me straight to the configuration page for the router and was displaying a set up wizard. Nice! Setting the Asus RT-AC51U up couldn't be any easier. Once you've set the admin username and password up it takes you straight to a page where you can set the names and passwords for the 2.5GHz and 5GHz SSID's. I decided to name them in a method which makes it clear which one is which and once I'd done that it took me straight to the main config page for the router - so no faffing around with IP addresses, which made for a pleasant change. When it comes to the configuration page for this router, this makes other routers ones look positively pathetic; it's well laid out, easy to read and absolutely packed with all sorts of features - many of which I wasn't expecting to find. I didn't even have to look at any instructions on how to change the default gateway IP or set a static IP for my Synology NAS as the user interface is wonderfully intuitive and simple to use. The only bit that caused me to scratch my head was when it came to setting up my wireless printer as I couldn't get my laptop to see it because it was connected to the 5GHz SSID. Having noticed that the router can act as a print server however, I connected the printer to the USB port on the router and checked the 'USB devices' section on the config page where lo and behold it had detected the printer make and model! Impressive. It still didn't explain how I was going to get my laptop to talk to the printer however, so it was with a squeak of delight that I discovered that the router has links to applications where I found a printer driver app that downloaded and correctly set up the printer on my laptop! By this point I was already singing the router's praises - never before have a seen such a well-featured, smart and intelligently designed bit of networking kit. Even more impressive is that fact that the transfer speeds to my NAS are now reaching 12mb/s (that's a 100% increase over the Superhub!) over WiFi and after conducting a broadband speed test I'm now getting the maximum download and upload speeds via my 75-meg connection. The signal is stronger throughout the house too and there's not been a single drop-out or problem with the connection speeds. This is without doubt the best router I've ever used and would absolutely recommend it without a second thought. Well done, Asus! >>> Update 13/03/2017 I've been using the router for nearly a month now and have not experienced any problems with it whatsoever. The WiFi connection from it has been steady, fast and 100% reliable for the whole time. I would have had to reset the Virgin Superhub at least twice by this point in order to keep it running properly. I remain really impressed with this router and would give it six stars if I could!

I had read reviews that said this router worked well with Sky Broadband (FTTP), but needed a little tinkering to get it to work. Imagine my surprise when I plugged the router in and it started to work instantly, no tinkering or complicated set up required. Once turned on and connected to the ONT, the router set itself up with no problems using the Asus app. One great feature is that you set up the name and password for the network as part of the set up process, really handy if you're replacing an existing router. All our devices connected immediately and we're yet to see any drop outs. The speed on the Wi-Fi is dramatically improved, and the range is so much better that we don't need any mesh extenders anymore.

Comes neatly packed with both eu and U.K. plug attachments which is nice. The antennas aren’t removable from the back which couldve been a nice feature. The device feels solid and well built, small and compact the materials doesn’t feel cheap which is nice for a £200 product. Compared to the Virgin super hub 3, the signal quality is much better with significant improvement to connection integrity without dropping out within a reasonable range. With The super hub 3 I often have buffer screen and sometimes freezes in connection, even dropping out within a reasonable range. Compared to super hub 3, the range improves by about 20% but connection is flaky on the outer edges as expected, but I would’ve expected more for £200. Data carried across connection improved as well, though I’d say can be better. Setting it up was alittle bothersome without very clear instructions. Basically you have to set Virgin super hub to modem mode, then attach WAN to WAN on super hub and the ASUS router. Turn ASUS router on and set it up via app or Ethernet (the app didn’t work for me). Turn both super hub and router off, then turn router on and wait for 3 minutes for initialisation then Virgin super hub back on. Then it should work. It’s a hassle if you don’t know the particular order and had me scratching my head for about an hour frustrated as any different order would result in failure to setup. Overall it’s a nice device, but I expected more from it due to the hefty price tag; the range can be better and maybe a larger data transfer rate, also better setup procedure. I would recommend getting this only on a decent discount or if you have money to throw

Works with the Virgin Hub 3 in modem mode. A big thank you to the previous reviewer who mentioned rebooting the Virgin hub after connecting it to this router - this was the step I was missing on my first attempt, and had no internet until I did this. Otherwise, setup very straight forward. Using WPA3 so all the Apple devices in the house stop moaning about our old insecure WiFi which is a plus. No dropouts at all with this, and is working well with some TP Link powerline adapters (using for older devices, not due to WiFi issues). I set it to our original SSIDs/passwords from the previous router, however this had some unexpected side effects so I would recommend taking the time to just go round every WiFi device, forgetting the old network and then rejoining this new one. The only device that threw a strop was a Nokia 6 Android phone - it took a full factory reset to get it to connect to the new WiFi for the first time (it would save the connection but not connect, no error message either) but now it's fine. Get really good download/upload speeds, and only a slight difference in latency between the WiFi and LAN. The interface in the browser is much better than our old router, lots more info and settings if you like to dabble. Not using the advanced security software as the privacy statement didn't sit well with me, so can't rate that. Hopefully this has future-proofed our network for some time to come! I bought this used and apart from it needing a factory reset, it was a bargain - looks brand new. Haven't thought about it since it was setup, surely a good sign.

This router works great and provides better coverage to the whole house. I have a virgin super hub 3 and had consistent drops outs in certain areas of the house. We have multiple devices running simultaneous and knew it was a bandwidth issue and the poor signal coverage from the hub as our speed (200mb) is sufficient for our needs. Installation of the device is relatively straightforward, even for non-techies. Put the virgin hub in modem mode and connect the WAN from the hub to the router (use the top 1 of the 4 wan ports on the hub). Set up the wifi (easier via desktop) and you're pretty much good to go. Has load of features on the router interface, which is quite useful. I now get 200mb in the attic via Wifi (up from 50mb) and no drop outs in the conservatory. The AI protection features are nice but through a third party. Not keen on that at all, native features are fine but transmission of data to other parties to utilise certain features is the only drawback. Really happy with the router and would have been reluctant to purchase at the RRP price so good value in the cyber deals.

This is a perfectly okay router. It's interface is fine, it's nothing to get excited about. The signal seemed fine, interestingly not notably different to my Apple Airport Extreme in reach. The USP of an Asus router over it's rivals is that it's more configurable and supports features that others don't out of the box (I'm not a fan of re-flashing my devices with third-party firmware). Mine went back as: 1) the VPN support is for the whole connection and can't be assigned by device (I only wanted one device, not my whole network routed, and don't want a separate network *just* for putting a single device through a VPN). 2) Asus advertise that their devices support fail over (where the if one internet connection fails, it automatically routes to the other one.) However, it's not supported on this device it seems, as the appropriate tab doesn't appear on the current version of the firmware. Sadly, I couldn't see on the Asus website which functions are supported by which router.

I bought this to replace an ageing router, and upgrade my home Wi-Fi as so many things now need Wi-Fi. Personally I always opt for ethernet where possible, but still decent Wi-Fi is becoming essential. I bought this, set it up easily as it had basically the same interface as it's predecessor, and all worked well. A few weeks later I decided to buy another to set up an AIMesh system, with ethernet backhaul, and the WI-Fi signal was further improved. If this router lasts a few years I will be well happy. As much due to familiarity with the interface I will likely always buy ASUS routers.

This is probably the easiest piece of tech I have ever installed. I downloaded the Asus app, plugged in the WAN cable, turned it on, and used the app to set it up in about 2 minutes (it would have been quicker if I didn't had to wait for a firmware update). Now the wifi has improved throughout the house. Where we were struggling to hit 100mbs we are now getting 400+mbs and the 2 rooms that struggled to get any wifi now have good coverage and still hit 200mbs. I'm gobsmacked really. It is probably the first broadband/wifi bit of kit I have ever bought that is not only easy to use but ACTUALLY WORKS. Brilliant!