ASUS ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro (Quad-Band Wi-Fi 7)

Our analysis

Four bands against three is the gap with the TP-Link Archer BE550: the ASUS adds a second 6 GHz band, is rated BE30000 against BE9300, and brings two 10 Gbps ports. On an internet plan under 2.5 Gbps in a house that is not crowded, those extra numbers have little to carry.

What stands out

• Four bands, two of them at 6 GHz. More bands give the router more room to split up a busy house, so your gaming PC is not fighting the TVs and phones for the same channel.
• Two 10 Gbps and four 2.5 Gbps ports. A multi-gig fiber plan and your fastest wired machines can run at full speed without the router being the bottleneck.
• Game acceleration in three levels, plus a gaming port. Game traffic gets priority when everyone else in the house is online.
• ASUS Open NAT. It opens each game's ports for you, so you do not have to dig into port forwarding settings.

Where it falls short

Without multi-gig fiber and a big, crowded home, most of its capacity sits unused while you play. Its spec sheet also lists no coverage figure to compare against the mesh option below.

Look elsewhere if

For most homes, the ASUS TUF Gaming BE6500 brings game prioritization and a gaming port on two bands, rated BE6500. If your real issue is dead zones rather than bandwidth, the TP-Link Deco BE5000 mesh spreads three nodes across up to 613 square meters, with 2.5 Gbps ports on each node.

We weigh it against cheaper routers and a plain cable in our Wi-Fi 7 vs Ethernet cable guide, and every model sits in gaming routers.