Synology RT6600AX Tri-band Wi-Fi 6 Router

Product Information

Generally, SRM is for advanced users. And if you have used a Synology router or a Synology NAS server before, you'll feel right at home with SRM 1.3. At first glance, the RT6600ax is a simple, straightforward router that gets the job done without drawing much attention to itself. It has pretty much all the options you could want from a consumer/small office wireless router, and its claimed performance is quite convincing. The RT6600ax router also performs beautifully in a gaming environment. We can liken it to TP-Link’s high-end routers.

Without going too much into the weeds here, the 5.9GHz band allows the RT6600ax to deliver 80MHz and 160MHz channels that are devoid of any interference, so you should see much better bandwidth that outmatches what's possible with Wi-Fi 6e. The Drobo is by far the absolute worst storage device you can get, Y. Other than that, it’ll likely work with this router — chances are you might have to reformat it though there’s a chance it will work right away. Note, though, that you might want to wait for a firmware update. Any new router will likely be buggy with the initial firmware. I’ As you’d expect from a newer WiFi router with WiFi 6 and two more antennas, the Synology RT6600ax enjoys an almost comprehensive win over the XR700. Latency differences are negligible, but there were only two instances of speed decreases in the speed tests for the RT6600ax, with a bunch of results offering beyond-100% speed boosts.I apologize that I can’t provide more specific information about using the RT6600ax alone, other than that it definitely did better than the RT2600ac, but I mainly just wanted to emphasize that mesh in general can definitely provide noticeable benefit to a 1000 square feet of home. Up close it managed a blistering 791.5Mbps, which is in the top five scores we’ve seen. Two rooms away, it managed 375Mbps which is the fastest standalone (non-mesh) score we’ve seen from a non-pimped-out gaming router. Meanwhile, down in the garden, it scored an amazing 216.7Mbps, which rivals top triple-node mesh systems! The Synology RT6600ax is a very speedy performer, as you’d expect from a WiFi 6 router with six antennas. For my comparison tests, I used my ageing but faithful Netgear Nighthawk Pro Gaming XR700, which is a WiFi 5 router. In fairness, the only reason I’m using the XR700 instead of the newer, speedier Nighthawk XR1000 is the XR700 has six Ethernet ports compared to the XR1000’s four (the RT6600ax also has four Ethernet ports for devices). Fast-forward to now, the new router does come with an exciting novelty. It's the first that supports the last 5.9GHz portion of the 5GHz spectrum -- more below. (The Asus GT-AX11000 Pro will soon follow suit.) Since a) normal routers have a firewall and b) advanced systems have an IPS, or potentially send information to a third party (see AIProection, or Sophos etc.)

I’m currently using a Netgear Orbi RBR50 with 3 satellites (2 in the home [RBS20, RBS50] where router is [1 upstairs/15ft away], the other that is appx. 15ft away on the same floor as the router and 1 in a hobby shop (RBS50] appx. 60-70 ft from the room where the router is located). I’ve spent the last three weeks deeply troubleshooting the RT6600ax, and several weeks before that I was trying to do the same thing with my RT2600ac and even MR2200ac. It appears that the ASUS ZenWiFi AX6600 Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System (XT8 3PK) might be a tad cheaper for a 3-unit setup. One reason I've waited to publish this review is that mesh routing wasn't fully supported until recently. With SRM 1.3.1, you can use your RT2600ac and MT2200ac devices as Wi-Fi connection points. The interface is very similar to that of the older model, and lets you add Wi-Fi access points either wired or over Wi-Fi. I got confused at first because the help file says to reset the access points before you add them, but it also says they need to be upgraded to the latest OS version. Given my assumption that a reset would reset the OS, I went around in circles a bit until Synology support helped me out by saying I could upgrade and then reset without losing the new OS. Synology makes it easy to create a mesh Wi-Fi network using its routers. My current MR2200ac devices worked well, with good performance. Surprisingly, my old RT2200ac didn't perform well as a mesh access point.It’ main rival is its big brother, the business-designated RT6600ax. They support the same features but, for the RT6600ax's slightly higher price you get an extra, configurable 2.5Gb Ethernet port, a faster processor and more RAM, plus an extra 5GHz channel. We might not have seen these translate to real-world performance gains under general usage, but they should make a difference across a crowded network. So, if you’re managing multiple employees and multiple IoT devices across multiple networks, it’s likely worth paying more for the RT6600ax.