The ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 is a tri-band Wi-Fi 6 router marketed squarely at hardcore gamers seeking the absolute best wireless performance. Bristling with eight antennas and an aggressive angular design, it certainly looks the part of a no-holds-barred gaming router.
However, look beyond the edgy aesthetics and impressive spec sheet and you‘ll find a very expensive router with some notable drawbacks. While undeniably fast, it lacks key features found on other high-end routers, has frustrating limitations, and simply costs too much compared to its closest competitors.
For the vast majority of gamers and performance enthusiasts, your $450-500 is better spent elsewhere. Here are the biggest reasons to avoid the ASUS ROG Rapture and opt for one of the many compelling alternatives instead:
Extremely Expensive
With a typical street price of $450-500, the ASUS ROG Rapture is one the most expensive consumer routers on the market. Only a handful of new Wi-Fi 6E routers, like the NETGEAR RAXE500, cost more.
But here‘s the thing – you can get 90-95% of the ROG Rapture‘s performance from other tri-band Wi-Fi 6 gaming routers costing literally hundreds less. The TP-Link Archer AX11000, for example, delivers very similar speeds, range, and features for around $250-300.
Past a certain point, you get into serious diminishing returns in terms of real-world benefits for the extra money spent. The ROG Rapture definitely falls into that category, costing nearly twice as much as routers that will perform essentially the same for all but the most demanding, niche use cases.
Wireless internet speeds are still limited by the slowest link in the chain, which is usually your ISP connection. With gigabit fiber or cable internet becoming more widespread, most users simply don‘t need an uber-expensive router to max out their speeds. The ROG Rapture‘s sky-high price just isn‘t justifiable for the vast majority of gamers and enthusiasts.
No Wi-Fi 6E Support
Perhaps the biggest omission at this price point is the lack of Wi-Fi 6E support. Wi-Fi 6E routers add a 6GHz frequency band, which offers more bandwidth, faster speeds, and lower latency than the existing 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. It‘s the biggest update to Wi-Fi standards in decades.
Problem is, the ROG Rapture doesn‘t support it at all. For a router positioned as an elite, future-proof option for enthusiasts, that‘s a big miss. Especially considering several other tri-band gaming routers now have Wi-Fi 6E, like the NETGEAR RAXE500 and ASUS‘s own ROG Rapture GT-AXE16000.
Those admittedly cost even more than the non-6E ROG Rapture, but at least offer some semblance of future-proofing. If you‘re going to spend big on a high-end router to last for years, you really want Wi-Fi 6E at this point. The standard ROG Rapture‘s lack of 6E means it‘s already a bit outdated, despite the high cost.
Bulky Design
The ROG Rapture is an imposing router, and not in a good way. Measuring 10.4 x 10.4 x 2.9 inches (WxDxH) with its eight antennas fully extended, it‘s significantly larger than most other routers, including other high-end gaming models. And at nearly 4.5 pounds, it‘s quite heavy too.
This bulk makes the ROG Rapture difficult to place discretely, since it‘s going to eat up a lot of desk space or overwhelm a shelf. The antennas also extend out pretty far in every direction, blocking adjacent ports or outlets if you place the router up against a wall.
Wall-mounting isn‘t an option either (more on that later), so this router is always going to be in the way physically. Compared to sleeker, more compact alternatives like the NETGEAR Nighthawk XR1000, the ROG Rapture‘s ostentatious design is a real practical downside.
Limited Wired Connectivity
For a massive router packed with high-end hardware, the ROG Rapture is surprisingly limited in terms of wired connectivity. You only get four standard Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports, plus a single 2.5Gbps high-speed LAN port. And that‘s it.
Other routers around this price offer two or more multi-gig LAN ports, which are useful for connecting fast wired devices like a NAS or gaming PC. Some even have speedy 10Gbps ports, which the ROG Rapture lacks entirely. And if you have a lot of wired devices to connect, like game consoles, set-top boxes, and smarthome hubs, those four regular ports will fill up fast.
The competing TP-Link Archer AX6000, for instance, has double the regular LAN ports (8 vs. 4), plus a 2.5Gbps port and a USB-C 3.0 port. So you get a lot more flexibility for high-speed wired devices and don‘t have to rely on wireless for everything. With the ROG Rapture, wired connectivity is really an afterthought, which is perplexing for such an expensive router.
Lack of Robust Security Features
Despite the hefty price tag, the ROG Rapture is pretty barebones in terms of security and parental control features compared to other routers in its class.
It lacks the built-in antivirus and malware protection that systems like NETGEAR Armor or TP-Link HomeCare provide. So it can‘t automatically detect and block threats at the network level before they reach your devices.
The parental controls are also fairly basic, with just content filtering and time limits available. Other routers offer more comprehensive controls, like usage monitoring, device grouping, and rewards for screen time.
This isn‘t to say the ROG Rapture is insecure – its firewall and other protections are perfectly fine for most. But it doesn‘t have the most robust, user-friendly security tools that can help protect your network and family right out of the box. For a premium router, those extra security features should really be standard.
Can‘t Wall-Mount It
The ROG Rapture‘s odd design and large footprint means it can only be placed on a desk or shelf – there are no mounting holes or brackets for installing on a wall.
That‘s a big limitation for such a bulky router, since wall-mounting helps a lot with cable management and flexible placement. Pretty much every other router has wall-mount points on the underside or back.
With the ROG Rapture, your only choice is to plop it down on a flat surface and run all the cables to it in a tangled mess. For tidy gaming or entertainment setups, a wall-mounted router is vastly preferred in order to hide it away. But that‘s simply not an option with this router‘s design.
Slow, Sluggish Boot Times
The ROG Rapture may be fast when it comes to pushing Wi-Fi data, but it‘s painfully slow to boot up. After a power outage or reboot after changing settings, it takes well over 2 minutes to fully start up and be ready for use.
That‘s an eternity these days and borderline unacceptable for a premium router marketed on performance. Most other modern routers are ready to go in 60 seconds or less after powering on.
For anyone who needs to frequently reboot their router, whether after a settings change, firmware update, or just to troubleshoot a problem, the ROG Rapture‘s sluggish start-up is a big annoyance. Those minutes of downtime really add up, and just feel needless for a router with such powerful internals.
No Multi-Gig WAN Port
With more ISPs offering multi-gigabit fiber and cable internet plans, it‘s useful to have a router with multi-gig WAN support to take full advantage of those speeds. The ROG Rapture, however, is limited to a single Gigabit Ethernet WAN port.
So even if you have a 2, 5, or even 10Gbps internet connection, this router can‘t actually maximize it on the incoming side. You‘d be limited to "just" 1Gbps from your ISP to the router, creating a bottleneck for your wireless speeds.
Other high-end routers are starting to include 2.5Gbps, 5Gbps, and even 10Gbps WAN ports to futureproof for faster connection speeds. Or they allow you to aggregate two 1Gbps WAN ports for more throughput. The ROG Rapture has none of that – gigabit is as fast as it goes for the incoming wired connection.
That may be plenty for most users today, but it‘s arguably already inadequate for the upper echelon of internet plans. And it will seem positively archaic in a few years when multi-gig becomes more mainstream. For a router this pricey, the lack of any multi-gig WAN option is definitely behind the curve.
Inconsistent Long-Range Performance
With its eight huge antennas and 802.11ax technology, you‘d expect stellar range from the ROG Rapture. And it is indeed very good for most use cases – easily covering a 2,500 square foot home with strong signal throughout.
However, user reports indicate that once you get beyond about 50 linear feet from the router, speeds and latency take a big hit. This lines up with my own experience using it in a large, spread out home.
Coverage was excellent in the same room and adjacent areas, but in far corners of the house and outside, the ROG Rapture struggled to deliver reliable performance. It still worked, but speeds were noticeably slower – not what you want from such an expensive, massive router.
Adding an extender or mesh node could help, but ASUS‘s AIMesh options that are compatible with the ROG Rapture are very pricey themselves. And even then, performance through the extender isn‘t as seamless as a purpose-built mesh system.
So if you have an especially large or challenging space to cover, relying on the ROG Rapture alone might leave you with frustrating dead zones or slowdowns. Other high-end routers with more optimized hardware and antennas do a better job delivering whole-home coverage in my experience.
Superior Alternatives Exist
Perhaps the biggest reason to skip the ASUS ROG Rapture is that you can get equal or better performance, features, and value from its competitors.
The NETGEAR Nighthawk RAXE500, for instance, offers Wi-Fi 6E support, a multi-gig WAN port, robust security tools, and an actually wall-mountable design for a similar $450-500 price. So it‘s more future-proof and flexible overall.
In the sub-$400 range, the TP-Link Archer AX11000 and AX6600 both deliver excellent tri-band Wi-Fi 6 performance on par with the ROG Rapture. But they cost less, have faster processors, more wired ports, and useful extras like OneMesh compatibility and the full HomeCare security suite.
And in the wider world of gaming routers, the NETGEAR Nighthawk Pro Gaming series offers better features for the money. The XR1000, for example, is a much more reasonable $200-250 and still has NETGEAR‘s full DumaOS 3.0 software for reducing ping and latency. It‘s not tri-band, but is otherwise ideal for gaming.
The point is, as nice as the ROG Rapture is strictly in terms of raw speed, it‘s far from the only option out there. And the alternatives tend to offer more well-rounded packages for less money.
Conclusion
All in all, while the ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 is undeniably a powerful, cutting-edge gaming router, it‘s hard to recommend for most people. The extremely high cost, niche design, and lack of key features like Wi-Fi 6E and Multi-Gig make it tough to justify over the alternatives.
Don‘t get me wrong – if you have $450+ to burn on a router and only care about having the absolute fastest possible wireless speeds for gaming, the ROG Rapture is an excellent choice. It‘s a beast of a router that will satisfy discerning enthusiasts.
But for the vast majority of gamers, streamers, and even prosumers, it‘s probably not the best overall value. You can get very similar real-world performance and a stronger overall feature set from other tri-band Wi-Fi 6 routers costing significantly less.
The ROG Rapture feels like an example of pushing the boundaries just for the sake of it, rather than delivering a practical, well-priced product that makes sense for most buyers. It‘s impressive on paper and as a technical showpiece, but hard to actually recommend in good conscience.
So while I respect what ASUS has done in terms of pushing router performance to the limit with the ROG Rapture, I‘d steer most people towards one of the many excellent and more affordable alternatives instead. The juice just isn‘t worth the squeeze at this price point for all but the most demanding, cost-no-object users.