Asus is widely known for introducing some radical design changes to its wireless routers. The Taiwanese giant seems to one-upped itself by not proposing another angular black box with multiple antennas today at its press event ahead of Computex. Instead, it has debuted a differentiated square design with a massive hole, which is bathed in blue light, at the very center of this device.
Called Blue Cave, this wireless router is powered by the Intel’s latest Wi-Fi chipset that resides at the bottom. The upper half of the square-shaped router is occupied by — yeah, you may have guessed it — the antennas. The hole in the center of the router helps keep the internals and antennas separated from each other.
The wireless router delivers AC2600-class concurrent dual-band Wi-Fi speeds and the devices connected to the network, including IoT ones, are protected by Asus AiProtection, the first commercial-grade security for home networks that’s powered by Trend Micro. Asus is not adopting mesh technology to further its wireless efforts in your home but it believes the Blue Cave can seamlessly stream 4K videos and share files without any lag. This technology also provides the router with the ability to:
support more client devices simultaneously than most routers available today, and more than enough capacity to handle the growing number of connected devices found in busy households.
Asus cannot do away with the antennas to provide you ‘superb performance’ and ‘smart protection’ across the growing needs of your home. But, it can surely tuck them away into the body of the router to give it that elegant look with the hole in the middle. The said design gives the router a more refreshing and human feel, making it look more like a smart speaker — which are quite popular these days. It will add to the decor of your house instead of being an eyesore with wonky antennas.
In addition, Asus is providing Blue Cave owners more control over their wireless networks with the use of a smartphone app. This enables the administrator to keep a close check on overall network usage, monitor and set family restrictions. You can also limit an app from accessing the network using the said app. This eliminates the need for turning to your PC to check for the said details. It is presently being suggested that the Wi-Fi router will cost around $180 but there is no info on availability as of yet.
