Wi-Fi 8 routers are arriving before any Wi-Fi 8 devices exist to connect to them. Asus beat every other manufacturer to market with the ROG Rapture GT-BN98, which TechRadar calls the world’s first commercially available Wi-Fi 8 gaming router. The IEEE isn’t expected to finalize the standard until 2028, and compatible client devices aren’t expected before 2027 at the earliest. So reviewers had to test it with Wi-Fi 7 hardware. The early results are more interesting than the ‘future-proofing’ pitch suggests.
Same numbers on paper, better results in the room
On paper, the GT-BN98’s theoretical link rates are the same as those of its Wi-Fi 7 predecessor, the GT-BE98. Reviewer Blacktubi pointed out that the headline figures “are the exact same.” Real-world testing, though, told a different story. In a controlled comparison of two GT-BN98 units against two GT-BE98 units, the newer pair delivered “significantly higher” throughput at long range. A plain Wi-Fi 7 MacBook also measured “more than 10% higher average throughput” on the GT-BN98, even though none of the Wi-Fi 8 features were in play. The upgraded radio hardware alone makes the difference.
The other numbers from the reviews are hard to ignore:
- Over a wired 10G connection, the router matched a 5 Gbps ISP plan in both directions; over Wi-Fi, internet speeds reached 4.1 Gbps down and 2 Gbps up.
- On local transfers between two mesh units over wireless backhaul, it hit 4.6 Gbps down and 4.2 Gbps up. Wired backhaul came in at 4.5 Gbps down and 4.2 Gbps up.
- Range: around 4 Gbps down at 20ft, 2.7 Gbps down at 50ft outdoors and 1.92 Gbps down at 100ft, where upload fell to 718 Mbps.
YouTuber Landpet summed it up as “an absolute beast of a router.”
What’s inside
- Wi-Fi 8 (802.11bn), quad-band: 2.4GHz, dual 5GHz and a single 6GHz band
- Up to 25,000 Mbps combined theoretical throughput, 320MHz channels, 4096-QAM
- 2.6GHz quad-core processor, 2GB RAM
- 2x 10GbE (one a dedicated gaming port), 4x 2.5GbE, 1x Gigabit; USB 3.2 Gen1 and USB 2.0
- 4G/5G cellular backup WAN
There is also a North America-only GT-BN98 Pro. It swaps the second 5GHz band for an extra 6GHz band on the UNII-8 spectrum, which isn’t approved in most other regions.
Hardware you can’t hide
The chassis measures roughly 35cm by 35cm and weighs over 2kg. Wall mounting is out of the question, and the adjustable perimeter antennas give the router an almost insect-like silhouette. A thicker aluminum top plate and an upgraded heatsink layer handle passive cooling, and stress tests showed no throttling. Guru3D joked that unboxing it feels like “a small alien spacecraft has crash-landed on the desk.”
Firmware
ASUSWRT 6.0 drew praise as “noticeably more modern and much more responsive.” Adaptive QoE replaces the older Adaptive QoS and allocates bandwidth between gaming, streaming and everyday tasks. The revamped AiProtection adds network-level ad and tracker blocking at no extra cost. The new Wi-Fi Insight tool correctly flagged a Zigbee smart home device interfering on the 2.4GHz band.
Price and availability
The wider rollout is scheduled for October 2026. In the Nordics, ASUS set the GT-BN98 at 969 € in Finland, with availability from the middle of October. US pricing has not been officially announced. The router is aimed at enthusiasts on multi-gig connections who want the strongest hardware available now. Buyers without that kind of line can wait for the Wi-Fi 8 ecosystem to catch up.
