Asus is getting ready to revamp its entire router product range and it seems like the company got really fond of its
"Black Diamond" series design as we're looking at no less than five new models based on the same overall design.
The best news of it all is that Asus is finally ready to launch the
RT-N66U dual band router, but the design has changed
quite a bit since it was first shown way back at CES in January.
Asus' first router in the Black Diamond series was the
RT-N56U, although it has very recently been joined by the
RT-N53
which is Asus' second dual band router, although it's a much more basic model with only 2x2 MIMO, no simultaneous dual
band and no USB connectivity, although it's about half the price of the
RT-N56U and it keeps the Gigabit switch.
Starting at the bottom of the new models we have the
RT-N10 LX which is a basic 802.11n single antenna
150Mbps router with a standard 10/100Mbps switch and a mere 4MB of flash and 16MB of RAM.
Moving up a step we have the
RT-N12 LX which gains 2x2 MIMO support which offers 300Mbps connectivity
speeds, but is otherwise near identical in terms of functionality to the
RT-N10 LX.
Both of these models sit flat and have fixed external antennas unlike the other Black Diamond series routers.
Next up we have the
RT-N15U and this model has a pair of PCB antennas and support for 300Mbps MIMO connectivity.
It also has a Gigabit switch, a Gigabit WAN port and a single USB port (although some specs we've seen is suggesting
it might have two) that supports storage devices and printers. It also sports a built in FTP server and supports UPnP AV.
The
RT-N15U will likely replace the current
RT-N16 over time.
Finally the top of the line model is the highly anticipated
RT-N66U which initially was thought to be an Asus R.O.G. branded
router, but now that's expected to be the rumoured
RT-N76U. The
RT-N66U is a simultaneous dual band router with Gigabit
speed for the WAN and LAN ports, three detachable antennas that are used for both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands and Wi-Fi
speeds of up to 450Mbps on both bands. It also sports two USB 2.0 ports which can be used with storage devices and printers.