Who would win?

win in what?
killing somebody? obviously the cable, beating some one to death with the router is far less effective than strangling somebody with the cable.

Cable!

Cable would be winning...until you had to leave your desk.

Is anyone actually paying that much for a home router?

Cable is useless without a good router.
the winner is cable + router (100$+)

This... is kinda bullshit

The looks most like a spider contest. Duh the router. I so want that thing.

@jiraTicket luckly desktops aren’t able to leave the desk 🙏

Cable all the things!

It depends on the device to be connected. If it is a smartphone router will win!!

ugh where's the cat6 pls

@dfox would say the router (I guess) but then someone will knock it down.

@Faraaz haha!

@jiraTicket well that depends on the portability of your computer and the length of the cable

@Condor I know but $500 is more than double that. What I was trying to say I guess, is that I don't understand paying that much for a consumer device just because it has some outrageous numbers beefed up by marketing department. If you need it for some critical things you would probably go with wired, or if that is not the option with some other wireless solution (mikrotik/ubnt, cisco, ruckus, etc.) depending on the budget. Fritz!Box products are actually really good, so I would rather get them instead of this Asus.

90% of my devices don't even have Ethernet ports any more, so the router.