The most distinguishable feature of the Blue Cave AC2600 dual-band Wi-Fi router is its unique design, which includes a blue-coloured hole in the middle, making it look more like a subwoofer than a Wi-Fi router. ASUS has also added LED lights in the hole to awash the space in blue light. Blue Cave measures 160 x 160 x 80 mm and weighs about 1.76lbs making it easily fit in most of the houses and offices. ASUS has also done away with the ugly antennas on the router to give it a much neater look. Instead, it has four antennas built into the Blue Cave that lie on the top half of the blue-coloured hole to direct the signals. According to ASUS, this internal antenna design is capable of providing speeds up to 1240Mbps, which is 20% faster than standard AC2600 routers. Thanks to Intel’s latest Wi-Fi chipset, and Trend Micro software. Further, Blue Cave comes with AiProtection (a security solution powered by Trend Micro), which is the commercial-grade security for all the home networks and ensures protection of all the connected smart devices on the home networks, including IoT (Internet of Things) gadgets against hackers. The AiProtection is backed by a lifetime subscription of TrendMicro’s Smart Home Network. The Family Overview feature of Blue Cave allows you to smoothly screen and control every connected family member’s internet and app usage right from your smartphone. To control this Blue Cave router, there is a dedicated app released by the company for the smartphone users that allows you to monitor usage per user, network activity, security reports, and restrict apps. Also, when a new, unknown device connects to the router, and if AiProtection detects a hack, the app will send out a notification to the user immediately. With smooth 4K UHD video streaming and also lag-free gaming, this router also supports IFTTT and Alexa. This enables the user to create automated tasks for any IFTTT equipped device or service, and will also help the user to talk to other IoT things via Alexa. While there is no release date as of yet for the ASUS Blue Cave, it is however expected to cost $180 when it debuts in the market.
