First Wi-Fi 8 gaming router ROG Rapture GT-BN98 launches at a hefty price in North America

Asus has never been shy about jumping the gun on a piece of next-gen networking gear, and it's doing it again with the world's inaugural Wi-Fi 8 router announced at Computex back in June.

Asus GT-BN98 Wi-Fi 8 router price

The company has quietly started selling the ROG Rapture GT-BN98 series in Canada, making it the first Wi-Fi 8 consumer router to actually reach customers anywhere in the world. One can order the flagship Pro model right now through Asus's Canadian store for the equivalent of US$940 and a wider global rollout that is penciled in for October.

While Wi-Fi 8 isn't technically a finished standard yet, Asus is once again doing what it did with early Wi-Fi 7 hardware, betting that shipping now based on a relatively mature draft is worth more than waiting years for the specs to be set in stone. The underlying IEEE 802.11bn spec is still in draft form, though, and the IEEE regulatory body isn't expected to ratify it until May 2028.

Wi-Fi 8 speeds

For a device marked with Asus's ROG brand, the GT-BN98 lineup is a true beast of a router. Both the Pro (BN30000) and standard GT-BN98 (BN25000) use a quad-band design with 4T4R antennas and 4096-QAM per band, pushing theoretical combined throughput to 30 Gbps and 25 Gbps, respectively. The Pro is tuned for North American frequency allocations, while the standard version is meant for EMEA and APAC markets.

Wired connectivity is generous, too, with two 10 Gbps ports and four 2.5 Gbps LAN ports, with 20 Gbps link aggregation support. Asus already sells a similar Wi-Fi 7 gaming router monster with 30 Gbps speeds in the US as the ROG Rapture GT-BE98 Pro. While it doesn't support the draft Wi-Fi 8 standard, it is 30% cheaper on Amazon than the GT-BN98.

Because of the antenas and band support, Asus says you don't need Wi-Fi 8 client devices to see a tangible benefit in speed and coverage. Existing Wi-Fi 7 hardware should already get a measurable speed bump, while the real payoff will arrive once Wi-Fi 8 gear starts popping up to take advantage of all features like UEQM (uneven modulation) and NPCA (non-primary channel access). Both are aimed at squeezing out more stable, less congested connections.

Asus is also bringing a mesh option to the party, the tri-band ZenWiFi BN12, with 12 spatial streams, eight antennas, and a claimed coverage radius of up to 7,000 square feet, slated for October launch.

As usual, early adopters of the ROG Rapture GT-BN98 Wi-Fi 8 router series should be aware that buying pre-standard hardware means firmware updates that will be chasing a moving target for the next couple of years, yet the feeling that early adopters are ahead of their time should be rewarding enough to warrant their sizeable investment.