Customer Ratings & Reviews

I have used the ASUS RT-BE58 Go on a couple of trips now and have a pretty good idea of what it does well and where it falls short. First off, the router is compact, with foldable antennas, and easily fits in carry-on luggage. It was never flagged by TSA or needed to be removed from my bag at airport security. It has two Ethernet ports, which I personally did not have a reason to use, a USB-C PD power port, and a USB-A 3.0 port that I wish was USB-C (more on that in a moment). Setup is done through the ASUS Router app, available from your mobile app store. The router supports three modes: Router, Access Point (Extender), or WISP (Public Wi-fi) mode. Anytime you change modes, or even switch networks in WISP mode, the device will need to restart. This is probably the biggest disappointment I have with the device. I was hoping I could easily move from a coffee shop to my hotel and quickly switch public Wi-fi networks, but the process is cumbersome. In order to switch networks in WISP mode you have to power on the router, wait for it to boot, open the app (or web admin), log in, select “Change Network”, wait for it to connect to the new network, complete the login or accept whatever is needed on the new network, and then wait for the router to reboot again. On top of all of that, it does not seem to remember Wi-fi passwords, so I had to re-enter wi-fi passwords every time. Where the router is most useful is in hotel rooms or Airbnbs. You can connect to the property’s Wi-fi and then have all your devices join your private network. I have even set up a VPN to my home network so that my devices could access my printers and file shares as if I were at home. Another feature it has is the ability to point specific devices to different VPNs or exclude them entirely. I set my ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X to not connect to my VPN since I only use it for gaming. However, the extra hop between the ASUS router and the property’s Wi-Fi still introduced enough latency to affect my gaming in fast-paced esports titles like Rocket League. For normal browsing, zoom calls, the impact was negligible. I primarily used the router in hotel rooms with insecure public Wi-fi, but I also tethered it to my iPhone. Here, things got tricky. You either need a USB-A to USB-C (or Lightning) cable, or do the setup from a second device, as you can’t host a wireless hotspot and configure the router on the same phone simultaneously. I got both approaches to work but I ran into issues with the wired option on my first couple of attempts because the USB-A to C cables I had did not support data so plugging in the phone did nothing. This is where a USB-C port on the router would have been better. With the right cable, the router set up the tethering automatically (just need to accept the “Trust This Computer” prompt when doing it on an iPhone). I was also able to get tethering to work wirelessly, but only by using my laptop to configure the router while the wireless hotspot was enabled on my phone. Some might wonder why even bother and just connect the devices directly to the phone’s hotspot but this does give you some benefits as you’ll have device level configuration and can enable features like the VPN, QoS, or custom DNS. I found the range to be adequate for a hotel room or a few rooms but certainly not going to be enough to provide full coverage for most homes. Pros: - Compact Footprint - Wi-Fi 7 dual-band support - Supports separate guest and IoT networks - Robust VPN support - Support advanced router features like Port Forwarding, Manual DNS, DDNS, etc. - USB-C Powered – can run off battery pack Cons: - Slow to configure and reboot - Does not remember Wi-fi passwords - No 6Ghz band Overall, this is great hardware for someone who travels with a lot of devices, but the setup can be slow and complicated especially for doing something as trivial as switching public Wi-Fi networks.

The ASUS - RT-BE58 Go Dual-Band Wi-Fi 7 Travel Router is a very small router compared to today’s standard routers or Mesh systems. It is about the size of a classic 4-port network switch with the antennas sticking up. Don’t let its size fool you, this is a full-featured router that includes most of the features of its bigger Asus router siblings running the AsusWRT software and Quad-core 2.0GHz, 256MB Flash, 1GB RAM. Starting with its Dual-band Wi-Fi 7 speeds of up to 3600 Mbps with Multi-Link Operation (MLO) and advanced VPN connectivity built-in, this little router can be your main router in a small apartment or your hotel room while on the go. It can work as the main router or a satellite/range extender using the AIMesh technology. As a travel router, it comes with USB-C charging that supports the universal Power Delivery standard. You can use any USB-C charger that delivers 18W or more to power it, making it convenient to use on the go and use its USB-A port to charge another device connected to it. It supports multiple options as its WAN (input). The 2.5Gbps WAN port if you have access to an ethernet broadband connection. The USB-A port to tether it to your phone mobile hotspot feature. Or it can connect to a Wi-Fi (hotel) network, and NAT to other devices via its 1Gbps LAN port or provide a private Wi-Fi network via the WISP protocol. There are plenty of other advanced security and network features, one worth mentioning is dual-WAN setup, main broadband connection and simultaneous USB-tethering as a backup connection if your main ISP goes down. Overall, this little Asus travel router will come in handy on my next business trip, it will certainly provide a more secure connection than putting my laptop directly on the hotel network.

Travel routers can be useful if you have a lot of devices you travel with. This may include a family, each with their own two or three devices, needing to connect to a hotel's Wi-Fi. It could also be a work group that needs to share some files locally.The key is to connect each device to the router in advance. This way, when you get to your destination, you have to only configure the router, and all other devices are also connected to the internet. The biggest drawback to this approach is the router does not have a built-in battery. You therefore first have to find a place to plug it in. It only draws about 4 watts, so it can easily be powered by any phone charger or battery pack. The router can be configured to always use a VPN. If you have a subscription to something like Nord, you can use that, but only at the country level. Unlike routers from TP-Link, you can't choose which state in the US you'd like to connect through. Asus also provides options to use OpenVPN along with several other commercial providers. Using the VPN ensures your internet traffic is secure, even when you are connecting through a public network. Keep in mind, however, that VPNs do not play nicely with captive portal network connections. When using this router in WISP mode, it's easier to configure using a laptop or web browser instead of the phone app. When you use a laptop and your hotel has a captive portal requiring you to sign in, the router will simply pop up the login page in a separate window and allow you to continue with the configuration. The few times I tried this with my phone app, it locked up. I had to restart the app, and wasn't always able to get to the captive portal login page. Once I was connected to the public hotspot, all of my devices had full access. I checked the speed prior to connecting through the router and after connecting through the router. The speeds were the same. The router adds no appreciable overhead. Unfortunately, it also can't speed up a slow hotel connection. Be sure to turn the VPN off before attempting to connect to your hotel wifi's captive portal. As long as you do that, this travel router will definitely save you time. This will also help if your hotel has a device limitation, and you have more devices to connect. Overall, I was very pleased with the ease of use this router has to offer. The biggest downside is the initial boot time, and the time it takes to reboot whenever you configure the router to use a new captive portal. You won't have this issue if you use this in router mode, but there are fewer locations where you can get access to wired internet on the go. With a few UI tweaks, this router could be exceptional. Instead, it is merely adequate.