The new ASUS ROG Rapture GT-BN98 is the first Wi-Fi 8 router delivering faster speeds and lower latency than ever before. It’s available in Australia NOW and you can grab it here.
ASUS’s new ROG Rapture GT-BN98 is not only the company’s latest flagship router for gaming, streaming, and managing a household full of always-on devices, but also the world’s first WiFi 8 router, making its global debut here in Australia. Now, if you’ve seen or used a range of WiFi 6 and WiFi 7 devices and networks recently, you might be wondering what WiFi 8 brings to the table. The answer isn’t simply more speed, but brand-new tech that’s set to transform home networks.
What makes WiFi 8 a game-changer is its focus on Ultra-High Reliability (UHR). It looks at the modern home filled with consoles, smartphones, PCs, TVs, and everyday appliances like lights, speakers, and cameras, and builds new features to ensure that connections are always reliable, smooth, and lag-free. For gamers, WiFi 8 not only boosts speeds for mid-to-long-range devices, but also delivers the stability that means gaming hardware no longer has to deal with local lag or an unreliable connection in a household full of devices all sharing the same internet connection.
WiFi 8 is the latest standard and the follow-up to WiFi 7 and WiFi 6. The good news is that it’s also backward compatible, so even if the ROG Rapture GT-BN98 is introduced into a household with a mesh system and hardware that isn’t specifically WiFi 8-branded, it will still benefit every device and access point on the network. WiFi 8 is built not only to manage TVs, laptops, desktop PCs, and consoles all vying for the same bandwidth, but also for homes packed with IoT (Internet of Things) devices like smart cameras, appliances, lights, and more.
So even though WiFi 8 offers top speeds similar to WiFi 7, around 46Gbps, it’s still faster. It introduces new technologies specifically created to improve mid- to long-range performance and stability. For multi-story households, or setups where PCs and consoles are located through walls, WiFi 8 delivers a notable speed bump. WiFi 8 routers like the new ROG Rapture GT-BN98 can essentially create a more consistent connection to every device, one that isn’t affected by other devices on the network.
WiFi 8 also introduces improved tech for moving around the home. Let’s say you’re walking around the home with your smartphone out playing a video or a gaming handheld like the ROG Ally X playing Forza Horizon 6 online; the signal is not only faster compared to WiFi 7, but even when the overall speed drops the further away you are from the router, the connection remains smooth.
WiFi 8’s smart technology ensures routers and access points aren’t focused on the same device at the same time, eliminating overlap and creating an interference-free environment. WiFi 8’s reliability extends to households with multiple access points or a mesh system, because these are commonplace in a densely connected home. In turn, even for stationary devices like a PS5 connected to a TV, WiFi 8 acts as a smart traffic controller, ensuring traffic flows smoothly when multiple devices compete for the same bandwidth.
As the world’s first WiFi 8 (802.11bn) gaming router, the ROG Rapture GT-BN98 benefits from all of the advances outlined above. With WiFi 8’s focus on reliability over speed and its ability to improve stability and connection speed for multiple devices, one specific technology takes wireless and online gaming to the next level. Called Adaptive Quality of Experience (QoE) on the ROG Rapture, it’s the evolution of Quality of Service (QoS) features that have been around for decades, letting you pick and prioritize network traffic for one device, like a console, over everything else.
Here, it’s smarter, with a keen understanding of devices, connections, and their needs at any given time. This means that while connected to the ROG Rapture GT-BN98, you can jump online and play a game like Counter-Strike 2 with lower latency while someone else streams a 4K movie or show on Netflix and someone else downloads an update on their smartphone or laptop – all at the same time. In this scenario, every connection stays smooth and consistent, with the bonus of up to 34% lower latency for online gaming or cloud streaming through a service like GeForce NOW or Xbox Game Pass.
The ROG Rapture GT-BN98 not only benefits from all of the advances that WiFi 8 brings to the table, but it’s also a premium gaming router with impressive hardware and capabilities. Its stylish, futuristic design includes an aluminum top plate and see-through panel, plus eight high-performance antennas for coverage, a powerful processor with on-board memory, and quad-band coverage (including 2.4G, 5G, and 6G). It also includes multiple dedicated high-speed Ethernet or LAN ports, with one allocated for gaming that unlocks the router’s advanced gaming features and optimisations without any configuration.
It also comes bundled with enterprise-grade security and ASUS’s exclusive GTNet service that automatically routes traffic to the fastest game servers, which aren’t always the closest. Add a built-in VPN tool and the ability to create dedicated networks for things like gaming, the ROG Rapture GT-BN98 is not only the first device to usher in the WiFi 8 era, but also one of the most powerful and feature-rich gaming routers ever released
The new ASUS ROG Rapture GT-BN98 is the first Wi-Fi 8 router delivering faster speeds and lower latency than ever before. It’s available in Australia NOW and you can grab it here.