If you have a budget under two hundred bucks, you may have put Asus RT-AC87U and Asus RT-AC87U68U into your consideration. Between the two, Asus RT-AC68U is the cheaper one, but the price gap to Asus RT-AC87U is only a few tens of dollars. Now, before you make a hasty decision, you should be aware of the differences between the two models. Therefore, you can determine which is the router that holds the fullest value for your money. (Take a look: Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 vs. Asus RT-AC68U)
Performance
Both Asus RT-AC 87U and Asus RT-AC 68U are dual-band routers. Each of them comes with a single 2.4 GHz and a single 5 GHz wireless signal channels that can work independently and simultaneously. However, you should know that Asus RT-AC87U boasts a significantly better network performance than Asus RT-AC68U. To begin with, it comes with a larger bandwidth. The AC68U only has 600 Mbps for the 2.4 GHz, 1300 Mbps for the 5 GHz. On the other hand, the AC87U offers 600 Mbps and 1734 Mbps for the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channels, respectively. As you can see, the bandwidth for the lower frequency remains the same, but the bandwidth for the higher frequency is significantly increased. If you have some devices that can operate on the channel, this is a great advantage.
Furthermore, Asus RT-AC68U is equipped with three external antennas. The model has a coverage area that is equal to a large house. However, the model does not support beamforming yet. Meanwhile, Asus RT-AC87U comes with four external antennas and a wider coverage area. It is suitable for a very large house. Plus, it already supports the beamforming technology. The feature allows a router to focus the projection of wireless signal towards every connected device, ensuring a more stable and reliable connection.
Additional Features
Asus RT-AC68U and Asus RT-AC87U do come with many similar features. The two come with essential security features such as SPI firewall and DoS protection, as well as various network access and management controls. They both are already armed with Adaptive QoS, which allows the user to prioritize bandwidth for certain apps, activities, or nodes. They each also possesses one WAN, four LAN, one USB 2.0, and one USB 3.0 ports. However, only Asus RT-AC87U that supports Ethernet link aggregation. With the feature, you can connect a device to the network using two Ethernet ports simultaneously, ensuring a more reliable connection and increasing the aggregated data transfer rate as the effect.
Asus RT-AC87U vs. Asus RT-AC68U
Considering that the price difference is not very big, Asus RT-AC87U makes the best choice here. The overall network performance is better, and it comes with more features!
