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This post aims to help you make a quick decision between these two similar tri-band gaming Wi-Fi 6 routers. It's a story of the TP-Link Archer AX11000 vs. Asus GT-AX11000.
TP-Link Archer AX11000 vs. Asus GT-AX11000: Similarities
From the looks and the names, you can guess that these two routers share a lot in common. And they indeed do.
Both are massive tri-band routers with top-notch hardware specs. The two share almost the same squarish physical size with eight removable antennas. Both have a robust web interface with a ton of useful features, including free-for-life online protection.
As for performance, both routers support the 160MHz channel bandwidth and delivered speedy Wi-Fi rates when working with both Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 5 clients. They also feature LAN Link Aggregation, where you can combine two ports into a 2Gbps connection.
And finally, both routers are marketed as high-end routers for gamers.
TP-Link Archer AX11000 vs. Asus GT-AX11000: Hardware specifications
| TP-Link Archer AX1100 Tri-band Wi-Fi 6 Gaming Router | Asus ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 Tri-band Wi-Fi 6 Gaming Router | |
|---|---|---|
| Wi-Fi Technology | Tri-band 4x4 802.11ax | Tri-band 4x4 802.11ax |
| 2.4GHz Wi-Fi Specs | 802.11ax (2.4GHz): up to 1148 Mbps | 802.11ax (2.4GHz): up to 1148 Mbps |
| 5GHz Wi-Fi Specs | 2x 802.11ax (5GHz): up to 4804 Mbps | 2x 802.11ax (5GHz): up to 4804 Mbps |
| Backward Compatibility | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac |
| Mesh-Ready | No | Yes (AiMesh) |
| Gigabit Port | 8× LAN | 4x LAN, 1x WAN/LAN |
| Multi-Gig Port | 1× 2.5Gbps WAN | 1x 2.5Gbps LAN/WAN |
| LAN Link Aggregation | Yes (LAN 2 + LAN 3) | Yes (LAN ports 1 and 2) |
| WAN Link Aggregation | No | Yes |
| Dual-WAN | No | Yes |
| USB | 1× USB-C 3.0, 1× USB-A 3.0 (Storage) | 2x USB-A 3.0 (Storage, cellular dongles, and printers) |
| Processing Power | 1.8 GHz 64 bit Quad-Core CPU, 512 MB Flash, 1 GB RAM | 1.8 GHz 64 bit Quad-Core CPU, 256 MB Flash, 1 GB RAM |
| Dimensions | 9.5 x 9.5 x 2.2 in (240.6 x 240.6 x 55.4 mm) | 9.5 x 9.5 x 2.4 in (241 x 241 x 61 mm) |
| Weight | 3.5 lbs (1.6 kg) | 3.8 lbs (1.73 kg) |
TP-Link Archer AX11000 vs. Asus GT-AX11000: Differences
There are quite a few major differences between the two.
First and foremost, the GT-AX11000 is a real gaming router with game-specific features. It also comes with a 2.5Gbps LAN/WAN port, in addition to its 1Gbps WAN port and four Gigabit LAN port.
What's more, it has more features, including the support for Dual-WAN, WAN Link Aggregation, and the ability to function as part of an AiMesh system.
The Archer AX11000, on the other hand, is not a gaming router, or just a pseudo one. (That's according to my definition of what constitutes a gaming router, which you might or might not agree.) In fact, its gaming veneer can cause issues for gamers.
The TP-Link also doesn't have a multi-gig LAN port, but only a 2.5Gbps WAN port. To make up for that, it has eight (instead of four) Gigabit LAN ports. So, in real-world performance, the TP-Link generally caps at 1Gbps. But it can host more wired clients before you need to get a switch.
On the other hand, you can easily get a faster-than-Gigabit Wi-Fi rate with the Asus.
Design-wise, the Archer AX11000 is nicer-looking with a much better antenna design—you can quickly attach/detach its eight antennas with ease. But you can't change their angles. Instead, they all stay straight up.
The GT-AX11000's antennas are a pain to work with—it's relatively hard to keep them tightly attached. However, you can swivel them a quarter of a sphere around.
TP-Link Archer AX11000 vs. Asus GT-AX11000: Performance and ratings
Thanks to the 2.5Gbps LAN port, the Asus outdid the TP-Link in my testing, especially in NAS performance when hosting an external storage device (as shown here.)
However, both routers have the same wireless bandwidth, so in a crowded environment, chances are they offer very similar performance.
TP-Link Archer AX11000 vs. Asus GT-AX11000: Ratings
TP-Link Archer AX11000's Rating
Pros
Fast and reliable Wi-Fi performance
2.5 Gbps WAN port with eight Gigabit LAN ports
160 MHz channel bandwidth support
Excellent, Antivirus, QoS, and Parental Control features
Robust full web user interface, helpful mobile app
Eye-catching and convenient hardware design
USB-C ready, wall-mountable
Cons
Misleading gaming veneer, no actual gaming-specific features
No multi-gig LAN port, bulky design
Not mesh-ready (at launch)
Artificial" "Game" items make the interface unnecessarily confusing
Mobile app requires a login account
Asus GT-AX11000's Rating
Pros
Fast and reliable Wi-Fi performance with an excellent range
Lots of useful features for home users
Unique and effective settings for online gaming
Multi-Gig network port, Dual-WAN, Link Aggregation
Mesh ready
Cons
Expensive
Bulky design, loose antennas, non-wall-mountable
Fewer LAN ports than the previous model
Long boot-up time, buggy (at launch), fluctuating Wi-Fi throughputs
Which to get
As a single router, both the Asus GT-AX11000 and TP-Link Archer AX1000 will be able to take care of a large home when placed in the middle. Either will give you an excellent Wi-Fi experience.
But you can do a lot more with the Asus, including the ability to expand your network by adding more AiMesh routers. Also, if you're a gamer, definitely pick it over the TP-Link counterpart.
So, the Asus is definitely my personal pick. In fact, I used it for a long time without any issues.
However, if you just need a reliable router with a ton of bandwidth, either router will get the job done. Oh, and the TP-Link looks more like a gaming router than does the Asus. Keep that in mind if you want to impress your friends.
Looking to compare other Wi-Fi solutions? Check them all out here.
When you do your testing. Did you test on the gaming features? Did you run the gaming test on both router? For gaming which ping, latency and jitter does matter. Rather than speed test on NAS.
Read the reviews, Firdaus. Also more on gaming routers in this post.
Hello Dong,
Thanks alot for your details comparing between TP-Link AX11000 vs. Asus GT-AX11000. Now I know what I need for my router & Asus is able to give me a better connection if I need to extend my WiFi connection for further distance by using AiMesh.
Thanks again and is indeed a great help, Dong.
Stay safe & God Bless.
Sure, Paddy! 🙂
Yesterday I saw the Tp link ax11000 in the store for 300 dollars and thought it was a good deal. I didn’t know that there was more than one 11000 on the market. I now know of three. When I got home with it my genius son said Dad its not the ASUS. I knew right away that I made a mistake. I looked online and found this site. At first I thought that you were being over critical. I soon found out that you were on point with your opinion about the Tp link I would like to call it another name but I’m going to keep it civil. I figured I would unbox it and give it a try. I’m not a tech but I can work my way around most routers. At first it looked good and easy to setup I did step by step setup released IP and had it up and running quickly. The speed test built into the router said I had more speed than I pay for. That’s when it all started going bad. First it would recognize my g1100 wan to wan. Then I had no MOCA. The only way it would show the router as a device was to connect the the wan port on the G1100. From my little bit of experience working with routers, I knew that was not how it should be setup. After hours of trying to get it to work wan to wan resetting and step by step setup I thought I must be doing something wrong. So decided to walk away and hook up my Xbox and see what happens. That’s when I ran into another problem. The Xbox had great download but the upload was 1.5 Mbps yes not a typo. I couldn’t believe it, what could be wrong. I did the usual rest, redo and check again nothing helped. I keep thinking about your review and how right you are. About 3am I packed it in and setup my G1100 and went to bed. The next morning I call tech support. What an Idiot I spoke to. He asked me the same questions over and over to the point I had to hold back a lot of words. I told him to get a pencil and write the questions and answers so he didn’t have to keep asking. He said they have a zero return policy. I told him you have gaming written all over the box and why is it not working properly. I asked about firmware update, he didn’t know what I was talking about. He the tried to pass the buck and have me call my ISP provider. I told him that everything works except your router. I then told him to call my ISP and let me know what he can come up with, knowing he probably couldn’t remember the number for more than 3 secs. I thanked him kindly for all of his help and ended the call before I lost it. Needles to say I returned the POS back to the store where I bought it. My only regret is not reading your review before I bought it. So if anyone has any doubts about this review and maybe its just an opinion. It’s not, it’s a fact the Tp link AX11000 is not a gaming router for sure. In the out of box state. Maybe after a firmware update in a few months. Don.t forget that customer support is crucial. I hope this saves someone the agony of dealing with this product. Thanks for the great review.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Bill… And no, you won’t find bull-shit here, that’s my promise.
Hi Dong Ngo, actually the AX211 is coming at some point…
Maybe that has something to do with whatever your not so ready findings are. I hope is not because of the routers themselves…
I don’t know how much money we are supposed to spend in new cards to eventually get this work right…
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Intel/AX211NGWG/
Some people are saying that it might support 4×4 configurations even if Intel doesn’t market it. Which makes no sense to me at all…
Likely not the case, Intel would have named it something else like AX411. But we’ll have to wait and see.
I still have this crappy router. There’s not a single person with minimal knowledge who praises this router on the internet. The only people who like this router are the ones again, with no knowledge, or with slow internet speeds at home. Like all of these youtubers doing tests with their 100mb internet speeds, are you kidding me… This thing just can’t keep up… Mine is getting worse by the day. At first I was able to have fast downloads for few hours, now doesn’t even last 5 minutes… All the 1gb ports are terrible, super slow, and that happens to every single unit. Definitely you get what you pay for…
Also a good piece of advice, stay away from any electronics that are only found at Costco etc. There’s a reason for that, they are junk…
There’s no way amazon would sell this router and deal with the massive amount of refunds…
Thankfully Costco 90 day policy is awesome but never again…
I have been using Asus AX-11000 for about a month now, with Aimesh AX92U, a fiber-modem that acts as bridge (ISP: China Telecom), here is what I’ve observed.
1) 5GHz-1 repeatedly drops and resets. Transmission strength fluctuates. A times it takes more than a few minutes to come back up. 2.4 GHz and 5GHz-2 never had any issues. But I don’t want to use 5GHz-2 as it is the tunnel between Aimesh routers. This is frustrating.
2) This is a strange one and if Dong you can help me it’ll be great. Originally I was in double-NAT when the Fiber modem was installed. So the router has a private IP as WAN address. I’ve asked China Telecom to set the modem to bridge mode and now the Router has a public IP for WAN address (I have setup DDNS, etc. with no issues). However, the router still gives me warning that the router has a private WAN IP and would give me warnings when I tried to setup/modify DDNS, AiCloud, etc. Now, as far as I can tell all the function works, but it’s an eye sore that the warning persists and everytime I wanted to modify it pops up a warning that the WAN IP is private, when it’s public. Rebooted the router a few times didn’t help. Any ideas?
1. You proabaly live close to an airport, David. If that the case, disable the 160MHz channel width. More here.
2. You can tell if the WAN IP is private or not by looking at it. If it starts with 192.168.xxx.xxx or 10.0.xxx.xx then chances are it’s private. But if it’s 89.187.161.155 (which is the IP at the and place you posted the comment, unless you used a VPN) or something similarly random, then it’s not. If it’s not, just ignore the message. More on double-nat here.
Hey Dong,
This is a great article, very informative. I thought I’d share a bit of my experience with the Asus GT-AX11000. It started out great after I updated the drivers of all the NICs in the house. After many firmware updates, and solid use for 11 months, the device kept dropping the Wifi connection, and needed a full reboot before reconnecting.
I sent logs repeatedly to ASUS, but never got a response back. I’ve been an IT worker for 30 years, and frankly, I want a router that I can rely on to be stable for longer than 6 months.
Thankfully I was able to box it back up and send it back to Amazon. While I didn’t get a full refund I was able to get a partial refund.
This holiday break I intend to setup the TP-Link AX11000, to see if it is better at keeping a stable connection.
Thanks for sharing the XP, Fred. I used the Asus after the review until just recently and it was always fine. I still have it. But chances are the TP-Link will work out for you. It has fewer features though.
Maybe you got a lemon. The Archer is well known for having very slow 2.4ghz speeds and very slow ethernet ports, also my case. Slow like not even 80mb down over 2.4ghz, and a bit over 300mb down over ethernet. I have a gigabit plan, which I get about over 1.2 gig down…
Another problem, I have to reboot or modify the wireless settings in order to get my 5ghz/120mhz speeds back. For some reason the router at some point (minutes, used to be hours sometimes, not anymore lol) reduces the throughput by about a half…
So kind of funny, you’re looking for the Archer and I’m looking for the Asus. But I am telling you, the first two problems are endemic, and I bet the third too, and not known because most people don’t have gigabit internet.
I would love to buy the upcoming axe11000, but who knows when it’s coming.
The grass is always greener they say. :). But I can confirm that the Asus is quite great. I only stop using it due to testing reasons, I needed 10Gbps ports.
Hi Dong,
Appreciate your reviews. Looking for some advice. I have roughly a 3400’ home and currently running Linksys Velop mesh that is hard wired. Overall it’s okay, but suffer from the normal Velop complaints. I’m considering going back to a high performance router like the ones in this article or going with perhaps an Asus ZenWifi mesh. Have 3 kids always on their phones and am a cord cutter as well so have the TV’s going. Additionally have 5x Meco wireless security cameras. All the solutions are expensive and wanted your take.
Since you have wired your home, Kevin, get a dual-band AiMesh setup. I’d recommend the XD4 (or any other dual-band routers — check out their review for the performance and features you need).
How can you get over 1300mbps with the Asus over Wi-Fi, considering that doesn’t have 2.5gb wan?
No, also that’s the question of your devices, too, Piticli. A (Wi-Fi) connection takes two. More here.
I’m confused, the Asus clearly has much better speeds, yet you gave the TP-Link 8.5 and it only 8 for performance?????? What gives?
It’s the cost and the bugginess (at the review time) that weighed the Asus down, Jason. Even though I’d take the Asus personally (and I’ve been using it) I have to be fair. 🙂
Hello Dong how are you doing? Hope everybody is safe and sound at home. Us owners of AX11000 routers, are already waiting for more than 8 months for TPLINK to release the firmware upgrade to enable the router with this functionality. Since we haven’t heard from TP-Link even though we seek news in the forum every single day, have you heard when will they release such firmware upgrades to the committed lineup of products to enable OneMesh functionality? We are a little bit desperate here.
I think OneMesh is a bit of a forgotten idea, for now, Samuel. I’d go with Asus’s AiMesh instead.
Hey Dong,
You’ve been a ton of help to me. I have a new struggle however. We moved into a larger home recently and I cannot get consistent wifi to save my life. I currently have 3 AX88Us on aimesh. All running the latest merlin. Previous to this, I had 3 AX11000s on aimesh – but needed some functionality that wasn’t available without merlin.
Do you think I’d be best to run the AX88U as the main (with merlin) and then 2 AX11000s as nodes or stick with the 3 AX88Us? 2 of the units are hardwired (on the same side of the house, different floors). The 3rd unit is upstairs on the opposite side and connected wirelessly. I have 1 gig service and struggle to hit 100 mbps throughout the house.
I’m out of ideas and struggling hard. If you can offer any suggestions, I’d be very grateful. Thanks!
It’s pointless in adding any tri-band router to the mix, Jake. More here. So stick with the current setup.
Dong,
I read through that article. I apologize for missing the answer to my question. I’ve also made a change to the dbm passoff (mentioned in that article). I didn’t mention it before, by mistake. But, my internet cuts out whenever it;s under any load. I’ve tried factory resetting, amongst many many other things with no success. I notice it most if we are playing xbox and have someone streaming on Netflix. One or both people get interruptions and often get cut off completely for moments at a time. I’m pulling my hair out. Have you seen this? Suggestions?
I have no suggestions, Jake. It’s impossible to be specific unless I’m there. But my guess is you might have used some settings in a wrong way, or you assumed that it would do the way you’d like it to. I’d recommend starting from scratch and make sure you fully understand each setting you put the system into.
Hi Dong,
Any chance you could do a comparison of the ASUS ROG RAPTURE GT-AX11000 and the new ASUS ROG RAPTURE GT-AXE11000
Very likely, Joey. The latter is not out, yet. 🙂
PS: Just for the info of all readers: In an Asus mesh (which is great!) the mesh routers other than the central router CAN NOT use the link aggregation feature as the administration possibilities for each mesh router are very limited (there are basically none except for the router name).
Would love to use the link aggregation feature of mesh routers to make better use of Wifi-6 speeds within the mesh but unfortunately can’t 🙁
I think you meant the AiMesh nodes. And yes, that’s true. As a node, the router works much like an extender or access point and you have little control over its ports. More here: https://dongknows.com/asus-aimesh-overview/
Hi Dong, why are you (still) referring to “buggy firmware” with the Asus AX-11000?
It’s true – it was somewhat buggy especially in the beginning (especially the VPN features didn’t work properly, had varying Wifi speeds) but this has been fixed – my AX-11000 works like a breeze since months, now.
There are still some minor bugs here and there, Guenther. But yes, it’s much better now compared to launch time.
Hi, I love your work, congratulations! I own a TP-Link AX11000 and when I tried to do link aggregation with a Synology 918+, I discovered that the TP-Link does NOT do IEEE 802.3ad Dynamic link aggregation, only balanced XOR, which has limited compatibility with other devices. Documentation on this is very poor from TP-Link. I feel that this is somewhat misleading from TP-Link. Have you tried to use the link aggregation feature on this device? Thanks for your hard work!
You’re right, Pedro, but XOR is quite good, too. Basically, it means two devices are guaranteed to have a 1Gbps connection. And yes, the TP-Link has a lot of (unnecessary) bluff.
Hey Mr. Dong.
I would like to know if it is better to buy 2 asus gt ax11000 and connect them by mesh wirelessly as I have no wire infrastructure at home to connect the second node by wire. or its bettet to buy a mesh system like orbi rbk850. what is a better mesh between the two looking at the preformance and range considering that money is not a problem
It depends on what you mean by “better”. Figure out what you want/need and get one that fits that. I’d recommend checking out this post first.