Asus Blue Cave AC2600 router – a hole lot of work

Wi-Fi routers are generally not the prettiest of things. However, Asus has just made their new Blue Cave router available. No ungainly aerials on display but it is packing top security tech.

The Asus Blue Cave AC2600 router launched this week and is now available to purchase priced at around $180.

I must admit, it does look more décor-friendly than most of the routers I’ve had sat in my living room. However, the pain that the engineers and designers went through seems to have been more than that hole is worth.

Asus Blue Cave AC2600 router

The 160 x 160 x 80mm (WxDxH), 800g Blue Cave router boasts commercial grade security thanks to inclusion of Asus’s AiProtection technology.

Furthermore, it features Internet of Things integration right out of the box. You get support for Amazon Alexa as well as the extremely flexible IFTTT service.

So, you can just tell Alexa to suspend wireless connectivity. Why not set up IFTTT to notify you when family members arrive home and log on? There is obviously much more you could do too.

Additionally, Asus explained that the new router is capable of delivering “ultrafast AC2600-class concurrent” dual-band wireless speeds. Moreover, the Blue Cave can stream smooth 4K Ultra HD video whilst packing enough capacity to satisfy a whole family of gamers.

Tech

Internally, the Blue Cave is equipped with four antennas. These have been specially positioned relative to each other to achieve the best possible signal in all directions. This should reduce dead wireless spots around your home.

This, as well as the hole, seeems to have been the trickiest part for Asus.

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Alsa Lo, networking product manager at Asus, described the various hurdles engineers had to overcome just to put a purely aesthetic hole this router:

Most high-performance routers use external antennas to get the best Wi-Fi performance. To achieve Blue Cave’s unique shape we needed to use internal antennas, but the challenge was to do this without affecting the performance. Internal antennas can make the router more bulky and prevent users from changing the antenna orientation. But if we try to make the router smaller, the Wi-Fi performance can suffer due to interference between the circuit boards and the antennas.

So, there’s no real reason for that vortex styling, other than aesthetics. I was really hoping that the portal would amplify signals or summink. Ah well.

As well as the four aerials pushing out 2.4 GHz and 5GHz frequencies at the same time, you get four Gigabit LAN ports and an Intel Dual Core CPU. Asus also states that you get 28% faster 5G downlink throughput. It also has a USB 3.0 port.

Words

Tenlong Deng, General Manager, ASUS Networking and Wireless Devices Business Unit explains a little more about what you can expect from the new ASUS Blue Cave AC2600 Router :

Combining years of ASUS experience in wireless innovation and Intel’s connected home technology, Blue Cave delivers ultrafast WiFi speeds throughout your home. Not only is it powerful with easy to use control features, its eye-catching design without external antennas blends perfectly with any décor”.

Price and availability

There does not appear to be any UK pricing as yet. You can buy over in the USA for $180, though.

For more information and full specifications head on over to the Asus website.