Kill-a-Watt power consumption comparison for three wi-fi routers: ASUS and Cisco / Linksys

I've used open source router firmwares such as DD-WRT, TomatoUSB, and most recently FreshTomato and Asuswrt-Merlin. I had been using a trusty Cisco/Linksys E2000 on TomatoUSB 1.28 for a number of years, and sometimes marveled at its relatively good range despite having no external antennas. But having read ASUS routers and their stability, along with the Asuswrt-Merlin firmware and its ease of installation, I bought a couple of used ASUS routers. I picked up an RT-AC66U (AC1750) and a T-Mobile co-branded RT-AC68U (AC1900). Installing the latest supported Asuswrt-Merlin was a breeze. Then it was time to measure wattage to see how much power usage increase (all tested with wi-fi only, no customizations, no WAN connection, 1 LAN connection).

Cisco/Linksys E2000 running FreshTomato 2020.8, 5W usage:

ASUS RT-AC66U on Asuswrt-Merlin 380.70, 9-10 W usage:

ASUS RT-AC68U on Asuswrt-Merlin 384.19, 9-10 W usage:

I was pleasantly surprised that I'm able to run these around 10W. Some of these newer AC2600+ routers use multi-core CPUs and run too much power for my liking, for something that needs to run essentially 24/7.

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