While the new Mesh systems retain a simple design and "hide" in the interior, gaming routers not only maintain the traditional "aggressive" appearance, but also more clearly emphasize their origin. At the same time, they provide a good level of performance and receive additional settings and features that may not be available in other lines. How the new TUF Gaming BE6500 router from ASUS can cope with its work, we will consider in today's review.
Package contents
The packaging of gaming routers is often not much different from simpler models. So, with the device itself, the user will find a power supply and a traditional Ethernet cable in the box.
Since the model does not provide any unusual installation options, the manufacturer does not offer any additional mounts or accessories. And let's be honest, they are not used that often by buyers.
Design and usability
The appearance of gaming routers is most often quite predictable. They get massive cases with a design close to something related to sports or futurism, large external antennas and rather large logos. TUF Gaming BE6500 in this regard adheres to customs and is a typical representative of its category of gadgets. Although the line with Wi-Fi 7 still received some of its own decorative elements, compared to its predecessors and variants of the ROG division.
The black case measuring 304×214×174 mm and weighing 772 grams will definitely require more space than a regular model. Six rather large antennas will also take up a certain amount of space around it. Of course, their direction can be adjusted, but they cannot be removed from the case, they are fixed. So small shelves and hidden niches in the interior are not a fact that they will be able to accommodate such a home upgrade. On the other hand, it is unlikely that buyers will hide such routers as far as possible from sight, because, for example, such a router will be able to complement the equipped workplace of a gamer or just a technology fan. (If, of course, the cable from the provider is somewhere nearby.)
The shape of the new TUF Gaming BE6500 case personally reminds me of the steering wheel of a racing car or track supercar. True, the manufacturer laid the idea of "powerful drone wings", so everything is subjective. However, the large "ears" on the sides additionally hide the ventilation holes, which is usually not superfluous. The rest of the grilles are located at the bottom, where there are also a couple of mounts for wall mounting. But considering the location of all the ports, this is unlikely to be a popular placement option.
I would like to thank the manufacturer for, firstly, placing the status indicators in a rather hidden position, and secondly, the relatively weak brightness and size of the diodes. Thus, they do not interfere at all in any lighting conditions and do not illuminate a dark room. Perhaps this does not greatly complement the gaming design, but overall it has a good effect (after all, in most cases at night you want to turn off the indicators so that they do not interfere with unnecessary flickering).
However, considering that we are talking about an entry-level gaming sub-brand, there are no complaints at all about the TUF Gaming BE6500 router. The appearance exactly matches the class, will complement other TUF devices (for example, a laptop) and the gaming fan's workplace in general. The black case has a mostly matte finish, with a small amount of gloss, so maintaining the case in proper condition will not be too difficult.
Functionality
The name of the model, as always, immediately suggests the standard of the new product - Wi-Fi 7. However, there are some nuances - this is a dual-band model. Again, for an entry-level model and a relatively limited budget, this is understandable. On the other hand, yes, the router will not provide the fastest and, in fact, the most interesting 6 GHz band with a 320 MHz bandwidth. But, spoiler, the router's performance is still quite good, and the manufacturer has also had much more expensive models without 6 GHz.
Thus, the user will have access to standard bands: 2.4 GHz (2×2) with a theoretical maximum speed of up to 688 Mbps and 5 GHz (4×4) with 5,746 Mbps, which is enshrined in the model name - BE6500. There is a standard set of acceleration tools with OFDMA, Beamforming, support for 4096-QAM, MLO, and a 160 MHz band.
The number of ports is quite small. On the back of the case you can find one WAN and three more LAN ports, as well as USB-A 3.0. A nice bonus here is that WAN and all LANs support up to 2.5 Gbps, which can be useful for owners of fast channels and wired clients on the network. Also, one of the ports is designated as gaming and the router will give it priority in operation. There is nothing unusual among the controls on the case: three buttons - power on, WPS and reset.
The work is provided by a quad-core processor with a frequency of up to 1.5 GHz, 1 GB of RAM and 256 MB of Flash memory. With all of the above, the manufacturer, for some reason, does not indicate the approximate coverage area. However, if you are guided by similar routers manufactured by ASUS, with proper placement you can count on 150-200 m². That is, for most apartments or small houses, the device's capabilities should be enough. And it can work in router, access point, repeater, media bridge modes, or join the AiMesh network.
Since we have a gaming router, it has received similar additional features as other similar models from ASUS (ROG). So, the Game Boost section will offer Gear Accelerator (priority for gaming clients), Mobile Game Mode (to improve the connection of portable devices such as smartphones), Open NAT profiles and Internet Game Boost, or WTFast. At the same time, there is a standard Adaptive QoS tab. We have already encountered the same options in, for example, the ROG Rapture GT-BE98 router or the ROG Rapture GT6 Mesh system.
The TUF Gaming BE6500 also features settings familiar to other ASUS routers: AiMesh, an updated network management menu, AiProtection, parental controls, traffic analysis, working with USB devices, AiCloud 2.0 cloud functions, VPN (PPTP, OpenVPN, IPSec, WireGuard, VPN Fusion, Instant Guard), support for Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, etc.
The rest of the administrative functions and the control panel interface in general also remain familiar to users of ASUS routers. Except that in the case of TUF we have a slightly modified design, stylized as a line. But the logic of construction and management is the same as in other routers of the manufacturer.
The smartphone control application is also universal, and for some reason does not have its own TUF theme. However, this does not particularly affect its operation. However, as in other cases, the application does not have all the settings that are available in the web version of the administrative panel.
In operation
Since the TUF Gaming BE6500 runs on a stock OS, the setup process is no different from other models. Except, again, that the menu itself is stylized in TUF colors. The "Admin" will guide the user through the standard path to setting up the connection and creating a local network in a few steps (along with a separate SSID for IoT devices, as is the trend of recent years).
And then you can start testing. For testing, we used ROG Strix SCAR 17, the new ROG Strix SCAR 18 (review coming soon) and ASUS Zenbook DUO 2025, and we also have a gigabit channel from the provider. First, we divided the ranges and tried a banal Speedtest. Ethernet showed almost the maximum promised by the provider. At 2.4 GHz without obstacles, about three meters from the router, the speed was 187/152 Mbps, at six meters through one wall — 152/107, and 95/68 Mbps at more than 10 meters behind two walls.
With 5 GHz, these figures increased to 910/889, 891/916 and 680/706 Mbps in the same places. A much more interesting range is expected. And it continued to maintain consistently high speed figures during random measurements, and they were also high for devices with older Wi-Fi 7 standards, although they could be inferior by one or two hundred Mbps.
More telling are the internal data transfer rates between clients. Gaming and premium laptops are just good options for this. At 2.4 GHz, with a fully wireless connection next to the router, clients showed an average of 33 to 79 Mbps, depending on the proximity to the router. Not much, but considering which devices will use this range today, we can say OK.
With one wired client, the performance did not change significantly - from 40 to 71 Mbps. Still, not the range that should have broken records. However, Speedtest was faster, which means its capabilities are potentially better. But, I repeat, it is not a fact that there is any point in complaining.
But from 5 GHz, there are more expectations and, in fact, requirements. In the same positions and without wires, clients were able to exchange data at an average speed of 563 to 813 Mbps. The maximum was 913. Not bad.
Having provided one of the clients with an Ethernet connection (let me remind you, all ports support up to 2.5 Gbps, as do the laptops themselves), the average speed increased as expected: from 958 to 1,692 Mbps. The minimum indicator did not fall below 600 Mbps, and the maximum slightly crossed the 2 Gbps mark. Using MLO did not significantly affect the performance. However, as for 5 GHz, this is still a fairly high speed, which previous standards, to put it mildly, could not always achieve.
The Ethernet connection is traditionally stable and close to the promised speed.
Further use in the automatic range selection mode did not reveal any special problems for customers. As expected, without Wi-Fi 7 support, the speed is slightly lower, but it is still enough for everyday tasks. Simultaneous downloading of large files and any other work with the Internet and the Web do not create problems for each other. And if we are talking about home use, then even a relatively large family is unlikely to create a sufficient quantitative load on a modern router.
Therefore, in general, if we ignore the not very high indicators of 2.4 GHz, then it is difficult to complain about anything. However, at a similar cost you can find a device with support for 6 GHz, and such a range can, firstly, potentially provide higher speed, and secondly, create more conditions for using MLO. But if the tasks of the router are mainly reduced to connecting to the Internet, and the user has already got clients with the corresponding support for Wi-Fi 7, then the TUF Gaming BE6500 should not disappoint.