Best Affordable Router Under $44 – ASUS RT-AC53 Dual Band Router
Routers are getting faster than ever, and that’s progress for you. In fact, they are getting insanely fast but in the meantime for a faster and more advance routers you have to pay a hefty price, and that’s exactly why today I am going to show you a very affordable wireless router called ASUS RT-AC53 which is a dual band router and it offers some really useful features like a VPN server, Parental Controls, MIMO wireless transfer technology and more, all at a very reasonable price of 44 USD.
So let’s check out that this dual band router is worth buying or not?
Best Affordable Router Under
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Now before starting lets quickly unbox it and see what we are getting inside. The box is very similar to that of other ASUS routers, featuring a picture of the device on the top and a list with its most important features.
Inside the packaging you will find the router, the power adapter, a network cable, the quick setup guide, the warranty and other leaflets.
- Build & Design
In terms of design the ASUS RT-AC53 is seems to be very well designed, the router is made from a matte coloured plastic which looks really great.
In terms of size, the router is not very large. The overall dimension is 12.59 x 7.48 x 1.37 inches. The antennas are very tall though but even so, the overall weight is quite small at 285 grams. Users will appreciate the fact that this Wi-Fi router has mounting screw slots on the bottom so that it can be mounted on a wall.
On the back side of the router you will find the power jack, the Power button, the WPS button and the jack for resetting the device. This router offers 1 Gbps wired Ethernet connections but it has only two Ethernet ports alongside the one for connecting it to the internet.
- Hardware
Moving forward to its Hardware, the hardware specifications of the ASUS RT-AC53 wireless router are modest: it features a single-core Mediatek MT7620A processor, running at the 580 MHz frequency, 64 MB of RAM memory and 8 MB of storage space for the firmware. The three external antennas are very tall and they cannot be detached from the router. Two of them take care of the 2.4 GHz wireless frequency and one of them of the 5 GHz wireless frequency. I found this a bit strange since most modern routers focus on the 5GHz frequency, because it can offer faster Wi-Fi connections.
This router offers support for all the modern networking standards, including 802.11ac and 802.11n. The theoretical bandwidth is of 300 Mbps for the 2.4 GHz frequency and of 433 Mbps for the 5 GHz frequency, leading to a total of 733 Mbps.
- Setting It Up
Now let’s see how you can set this up, Setting up the ASUS RT-AC53 is not a difficult thing to do. You should place it where you want to use it, connect it to the internet, turn it on and then connect it to a computer or laptop from which to run the initial configuration. The setup wizard is easy to use and it starts by asking you to change the default username and password for administering the device. Then, it detects the type of internet connection that you have and asks for the appropriate connection details. Once that is out of the way, you can set the name and password for the wireless networks that are broadcast by the router. At the very end of the wizard, you are shown a summary of your settings.
Next, you should access the administration user interface and get into more advanced settings. The user interface looks the same as on all other ASUS routers and it is organized the same way. All settings are organized in a logical manner and you won’t have any issue in finding your way, and the best thing is that this user interface is available in 14 different languages.
When you are done setting everything, you should connect all your computers and devices to the network that is managed by the router. We were able to share files and folders over the network, do media streaming, use a wireless printer and more. However, during our testing period, we noticed temporary drops of the wireless signal that usually lasted a couple of seconds. Unfortunately they were rather frequent, especially in the rooms furthest from the router. Also, while the speed of the wireless network was satisfactory in the rooms closer to the router, in those further away from it, the signal strength was weak and the speed we obtained was very variable. Sometimes the wireless network would perform very well and a couple of minutes later it would barely work. These issues seem to be firmware related. The hardware on the ASUS RT-AC53 is able to deliver stable wireless network connections at satisfactory speeds. Hopefully, future firmware updates will fix these problems.
Now after watching this review if you are interested in buying this then I will leave a link for this router in the description down below. I imported this router from a website called gearbest.com for about 44 USD which is roughly equal to 2800 INR which I think is quite affordable.
