Synology RT6600ax Wi-Fi Router

Synology RT6600ax is a fully loaded Tri-band Wi-Fi 6 Router that delivers on ease of use, security, and parental controls.    

The RT6600ax is slightly larger than the popular Synology RT2600ac and there are now 6 antennas instead of 4.  On the outside, we have the WPS, Wi-Fi, reset, and power buttons.  The outer casing is a matt plastic that blends with any decor without crying out for attention.  

Technical Specifications

The initial setup took less than 15 minutes and it was seamless thanks to their intuitive wizard.  We could have stopped there but we opted to run their latest SRM firmware which required a few more updates and reboots that took 10 minutes each.  At the time of writing this review, the Synology RT6600ax was running SRM 1.3.1-9346 Update 2.  Firmware should always be kept up to date for security reasons but we will get into a second reason shortly.  

Most configurations, such as initial setup and creating security profiles, can be completed using Synology’s DS Router app for smartphone or tablet.  We can create up to 5 Wi-Fi networks, manage port forwarding, VPN, monitor traffic, etc.  

Synology’s Tri-band Wi-Fi distributed our devices between radios, avoiding bottlenecks. For home use, we can have one network for everyone.  In a home office or doctor’s office, we would have a network for everyone and visitors would be on a guest network.  As we sometimes get visitors that need to transfer very large files for our video editors.  Synology RT6600ax allowed us to create an additional 5GHz network for our editors and guests who need to transfer large raw media files.  

To help cut down on time spent on file transfers, we took advantage of any one of its four 2.5GbE LAN ports to achieve speeds up to 300 MB per second.

Synology routers has been our top recommendation when it comes to parental controls.  Parents can use their preset filters to block content related to Adult, Gambling, etc.  Or, we can filter specific websites like youtu.be and apply time limits.  If either the time limit or schedule has been reached, we can reward the child with additional time.

The RT6600ax provided excellent coverage indoors across 2 floors totalling 2500 sqft.  The average indoor throughput was 70 MB/s.  If we moved outdoors, 15 feet away from the router on the other side of the wall, the signal strength weakened.  We occasionally saw dropped frames and the throughput diminished by almost 40% to 41 MB/s. The outdoor results vary based on your location.  In a more congested area lose of signal strength can be attributed to signal interference from various sources. 

We boosted the signal strength by creating a Wi-Fi mesh network after adding the Synology Mesh Router MR2200ac as a Wi-Fi Point.  If you already own another Synology router, such as the RT2600ac, update the SRM to 1.3.1-9346 or newer and it too can be added as a Wi-Fi Point. By having a mesh router facing our back lot the 2.4 GHz network was stable and reliability improved to the point that we stopped getting dropped frames from our outdoor security cameras.  However, the 5GHz outdoor coverage was shorter and couldn’t outperform the 2.4 GHz network.  

We needed to reach out to Synology Support at one point for assistance with setting up the mesh network.  Their support staff was knowledgeable and response time has been under 24 hours.  They guided us through manually updating our firmware and tuning the wireless network.  Any new firmware delivered by Synology's automatic update has the fix for the mesh issues we encountered.  

Synology RT6600ax Wi-Fi router checks off all the boxes we wanted in a router.  Whether you are using a web browser or their DS Router app to manage the router, the Synology Router Manger’s graphical interface provides clear intuitive options to create multiple networks, set up parental control, or adjust network security.  Though RT6600ax’s may not offer the fastest file transfer or have the widest area of coverage, it more than makes up for it by providing consistent reliable coverage with impressive throughput.  And thanks to its fantastic parental control and impressive network security options, RT6600ax is our recommended router for home and small businesses.  .