Synology RT6600ax
30-second review
The best wireless router should be part of the office's digital arsenal. It directly impacts the performance of connected devices and should have excellent bandwidth while covering at least two office rooms. Regular firmware updates from the manufacturer are another necessity to guard users against hackers. Lastly, it should be affordable as this is a market already saturated with good products.
Synology best known for their NAS has recently launched the RT6600ax, a Wi-Fi 6 ax router with the particularity of having a triple band radio covering the newly launched 5.9GHz frequency range. Since these bands operate independently, more users can simultaneously stream data without performance degradation. The router is based on a powerful quad-core CPU and offers plenty of software options such as out-of-the-box VLANs and VPN support.
Synology RT6600ax: Price and Availability
This is the third Wi-Fi router that Synology has released. The latest addition comes with a price tag of $299.99, falling in line with similar performance routers.
Synology RT6600ax: Design
The RT6600ax black plastic case is imposing with six external antennas sticking out on the side and back. It measures 17.6cm x 32cm x 20cm and weighs 1.6kg. Air vents located on the top and bottom regulate temperature with heat dissipated passively. The router comes with a 42W 12V DC regulator and consumes about 12W of power. Other items included in the box are an Ethernet cable and a quick installation guide.
Status is provided by seven multi-colored LEDs located on the top of the case. The first four display link activity of the 1Gb and 2.5Gb Ethernet ports. LEDs five and six show the WAN and Wi-Fi activity and the last shows the internal status of the router and will blink when searching for wireless devices. Two side buttons allow adding devices through WPS and enable or disable Wi-Fi.
External antennas provide up to 3.3dBi of gain while the transmitting amplifiers support low, middle, and high gain settings. The router includes six radios, two in the 2.4GHz frequency and four in the 5.1/5.9GHz frequencies. The 5GHz channels are advertised as having a maximum bandwidth of 160MHz. All three bands combine to give 6600Mbps under ideal circumstances.
The RT6600ax is equipped with a Quad-core 1.8GHz CPU from Qualcomm. Supported by 1G DDR3 of RAM, and 4GB of eMMC Flash, it also has hardware acceleration engines for both layer 4 and layer 7 packets which can speed up TCP filtering for example. A recessed reset button accessible using a paper clip is located at the back. There is also a USB3.2 Gen1 port that enables the mounting of a filesystem.
Synology RT6600ax: In use
The router boots in about one minute. Default settings allow its use simply by connecting an Ethernet cable to an existing network or through Wi-Fi using the preconfigured SSID. The RT6600ax has several modes of operation. It manages devices and forwards packets when used as a router. It can also work as an Access Point (AP) where it only transfers packets from one port to another. Finally, it can connect to another RT6600ax in a mesh configuration to extend the range of a Wi-Fi network.
Its high-gain antennas and powerful radio amplifiers allow robust transfers at ten meters or more with walls in between. The three radios can be configured to use any of the 31 available channels. Depending on local regulations, 5GHz channels may be limited to 80MHz bandwidth. This is the case in Canada resulting in a sub-par performance. This is compensated with the 5.9GHz band that provides an additional 18% throughput.
Synology uses QR codes for adding devices to its mobile app. The procedure works flawlessly and the well-designed DS router app shows all pertinent information in one place. It is available both for iOS and Android and contains fewer features than the web-based Synology Router Manager (SRM). What’s included are commonly used items, enabling faster configuration on the go.
Synology RT6600ax: Performance
The RT6600ax’s performance is evaluated using the iperf2 application, a copy of which is built into the router. The first metric, the throughput upper limit, is obtained using a 2.5G wired connection. Wireless throughput at different distances is then obtained using a Samsung S21 Ultra smartphone running the HE.NET application. The following graph shows the result at one, five, seven, and ten meters.
The RT6600ax can transfer at a rate of about 2Gbps over the wire. At one meter, the wireless rate drops to 855Mbps which is standard for an 80MHz channel bandwidth. From then, the rate drops to 600Mbps at five meters and by roughly 100Mbps for every subsequent data point.
Synology RT6600ax: Competition
With the Internet transforming into a public utility in many countries, the market for Wi-Fi routers has grown rapidly during the past decade. There are over a dozen router manufacturers with many having Wi-Fi 6 products. What Synology offers with the RT6600ax is excellent hardware, especially for those who already have their NAS.
TP-Link’s AX6600 is very similar to the RT6600ax being priced at $299. It has two additional antennas and one extra USB port but has a slower CPU, half the amount of RAM, and 128MB of storage memory compared to the 4GB eMMC that is included with the RT6600ax. Consequently, the AX6600 performance should be poorer in terms of simultaneous connections and a reduced number of features.
The Asus RT-AX88U is a comparable product at a higher price. It is only dual-band and lacks a 2.5G Ethernet port. Its eight 1G ports are more than the five found in the RT6600ax. With a similar processor and the same amount of RAM, the performance is expected to be on par with the Synology router. Still, the amount of application memory is sixteen times more in the RT6600ax than in the RT-AX88U.
Synology RT6600ax: Verdict
Synology is making waves with its latest router and for good reasons. The use of a third band improves the wireless throughput by 18%. We also have great hardware with a lot of potential thanks to the generous amount of flash memory. The web interface is snappy while the beefy processor allows smooth execution of tasks in parallel.
The few drawbacks that the RT6600ax has is not having Ethernet link aggregation. It remains a very good Wi-Fi 6 router comparable to higher-end access points.
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