TechPowerUp has covered brands such as MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte, CORSAIR, Cooler Master far more than most others. These brands started out offering something specific, be it GPUs and motherboards or memory and power supplies. As they got bigger, so did their ambitions to include more product lines. We've seen blurred lines now with lots of common ground shared between them and yet networking products remains one of the untapped markets for most of these. Perhaps it's because there are other household names involved there—NETGEAR, TP-Link, D-Link, Ubiquity, Linksys among others—or simply that there isn't a lot of room to do something brand new while being able to have the profit margins elsewhere. ASUS is an exception here in that it has been selling routers for a while, supporting the popular DD-WRT firmware and has recently added routers and mesh systems under its ROG gaming line too. I suppose it was only a matter of time before we saw others take this route seriously and MSI's re-interest begins today.

MSI first teased off the RadiX AXE6600 at CES 2022 and then again at a few different trade shows last year before displaying the final model at CES this year. I missed out on all these events unfortunately so I went in blind for this review, not really knowing what to expect. It was also my first WiFi 6E product review which required more time and thinking too—Windows 11 is a must for 6 GHz band support, for example, and many client devices are yet to support it—my only MSI experience has been with motherboards, keyboards, and the occasional GPU. I mentioned before how these product lines have software drivers that are not my favorite by any means and getting a router firmware right is paramount if you are going to make a splash in this market. To its credit, MSI got the firmware and features part spot on. The user interface is clean and modern-looking while still being full of features included for free at a time many others are trying to go the paid subscription route. We even get a USB port on the router that you can set up a media server on and I do appreciate the 2.5 GigE WAN port given I have a 1.5/1.5 Gbps internet connection from work. There's also a somewhat secret Android app which isn't advertised on the product box but gives you the functionality of the desktop admin panel on your phones too. I do have concerns about the language used in the privacy policy for one of the firmware features here however. AI QoS with its multiple QoS modes seems neat to try out in a household full of connected devices, and yet I want to see written changes to the policy before I feel comfortable recommending others use it too.

WiFi 6E is a mixed bag in itself. In theory, it offers you a mostly untapped 6 GHz band as well as a wider 160 MHz channel width for far more throughput of internet traffic back and forth. Indeed, my own testing showed the AXE6600 delivering numbers I haven't seen before on the older WiFi standards. If you have a PC / laptop / phone capable of using WiFi 6E then the RadiX AXE6600 should be highly considered. The issue is, for the rest of us who are still on 5 GHz, the AXE6600 can be found wanting. MSI tweaked the radios used here to boost performance on the 6 GHz band so the accompanying RadiX AX6600—same total throughput but no WiFi 6E and at a lower cost—should be more to your liking if you do not care about the newer band. Then there is also the part where different regions have different legislations about what channels can be used on WiFi 6E and it does feel like the market is not mature enough. WiFi 7 is supposed to get everything uniform across different regions but I am skeptical about it. The bottom line is the MSI RadiX AXE6600 does feel like an excellent router for the money for that small subset of the market right now. I have two other WiFi 6E products here which cost $1000 or more, and many WiFi 6 mesh systems also easily exceed the $350 being asked for here. The AXE6600 is not perfect by any means but is impressive and I look forward to what MSI comes out with next.