Legit Mods and Ends Reviews

ASUS RT-N66U Dual-Band Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router Review

Manufacturer: ASUS
Product: RT-N66U Dark Knight
Date: Thu, Oct 04, 2012 - 12:00 AM
Written By: Ken Brown -
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ASUS RT-N66U Power Consumption

ASUS RT-N66U Dual Band Router
Power consumption by your home’s electronic devices continues to be a very important issue so we have made an attempt to present some simple power consumption tests on the various routers that we had. To measure idle usage, we reset each wireless router to the default settings and plugged them with no devices connected to them. We then measured the power draw from each router at the wall with our P3 International P4400 Kill-A-Watt electric usage monitor.

Router Idle Power Chart

Benchmark Results: Power Consumption for the ASUS RT-N66U was towards the high end when compared to the various routers in our suite.  It seems that a higher power use may be the cost of the great performance that we saw under testing. 


Since most people will have their routers turned on for 24-hour a day operation, we think that examining power usage is an important benchmark. Total cost of ownership (TCO) is an important financial estimate that helps consumer’s direct and indirect costs of a product. In our TCO calculation we will be figuring up how much it costs to have a wireless router running per year in an idle state with the unit being installed 24-hours a day. We will be using 12.7 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) based on the bureau of labor statistics report from April 2012 showing that amount as the national average.

Router Energy Costs

Benchmark Results: The ASUS RT-N66U was one of the fastest wireless routers that we tested, so we weren't too surprised to see that the yearly cost of operation is a little on the high end.  The question that most potential buyers will ask themselves centers on whether they think the ASUS RT-N66U’s higher functioning performance makes up for the cost of operation.


Next Page - Final Thoughts on the ASUS RT-N66U Router


Review Index
Page 1 - Introducing the ASUS RT-N66U Dark Knight Dual-Band Router
Page 2 - ASUS RT-N66U Setup
Page 3 - ASUS RT-N66U Wi-Fi Performance Testing
Page 4 - ASUS RT-N66U Power Consumption
Page 5 - Final Thoughts on the ASUS RT-N66U Router