ZenWiFi XT9 AX7800 Tri-Band WiFi 6 Mesh WiFi System (2 Pack), 802.11ax, up to 5700 sq ft & 6+ rooms, AiMesh, Lifetime Free Internet Security, Parental Controls, Easy Setup, 2.5G WAN port

I bought 2 x 2 packs of the ZenWiFi AX to replace 7 Linksys Velop 7 Pros that were failing miserably, given I was in a late Victorian multi-storey house covering 3,000sq.ft., due to their poor coverage in my environment. These ZenWiFi AXs are fantastic, cover a large area with client speeds in the 500-700Mps range and backhaul in the multi-gigabit range. A stable mesh system makes for highly reliable inter-node connections and for trouble free 4K+ video streaming. I ran a ping for a week and only 1 in 20,000 packets dropped (34 out of 636,000 packets sent). The 4 units cover all four floors with the lowest speeds I am seeing around 300-400Mbs mark. Setup when using the router capability looked straight forward, but I did not want to change my addressing scheme and have subnets so needed to run in AP mode with AiMesh. This proved not so intuitive to set up and took a few hours, using a combination of the App and the Web Interface. That said it all works beautifully. The Asus App and Web interface knock spots of Linksys equivalent. Very happy with my purchase, highly recommend.

I was planning to follow the reviews here with using the app to pair install but due to wanting a black one for the lounge and a white one for the office they didn't arrive together... worse than that the white one was lost in the Amazon internal shipping process twice. Third time lucky. Hint tick the box to get the parcel wrapped although can't see that on the app. The one coming in from Barcelona to the UK kept getting lost. When it did arrive it's address sticker was on a cellophane wrapper of the box stuck on. It had fell off. Waited two weeks for the second one. Thus set up the first one in the meantime so didn't pair out of the box. The trip point on why the 5 ghz backhaul isn't used is on the Asus page Google asus support FAQ 1012132 If you have set up the hub with smart connect set off, you have to set it back on with Smart Connect Dual-Band Smart Connect (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) and Band 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Save etc. You do the pairing as per the instructions but toggle the Smart Connect to on if you have turned it off in the meantime by separating the bands. That triggers the backhaul on the 5ghz-2 band if you dont do that the backhaul wont be enabled on the 5ghz-2 band, backhaul may use the 2.4ghz band. That's what happened to me, said the signal was weak and was using the 2.4ghz band for backhaul. Didn't make sense to me says it was showing 800+ on the 5ghz band connection speed on the old router on line of site through a thin wall, across the landing and lounge - the two position points. Toggling changed this to "good" on the aimesh network app map shows this (green line). Bit of classic screwy programming telling you the connection was weak when it wasn't connected correctly. You can then change enable smart connect to off thereafter if you want to customise the 2.4Ghz channels. Use 20mhz band with for a upnp renderer so switched this back to off. Kept the SSIDs on the 2.4ghz and 5ghz-1 band as the same. Turned off the broadcast SSID of the 5ghz-2 so it's invisible... but you don't need to do that. It is the backhaul band since it moans if you try to rename it to the same as 2.4ghz / 5 ghz-1 telling you the backhaul band must have a different name. Bit more reading you can also use the backhaul band as well on devices other than backhaul (needs to be enable above as 160mhz when configured above to max out). Reckon best not to use it for devices just keep that for backhaul if you arrnt using wired ethernet to connect the mesh, which is why I hid the SSID. Any wifi 6 devices you could use on that I guess as the lower 5ghz band could get crowed but if you haven't got any, not an issue. I also enabled WiFi agile on the 2.4 GHz band. Asus says it works better on your modern internet devices quickly switching nodes. Internet of things devices. Thought this might be better on the Humax eye camera, boiler heater switch and Airstream upnp renderers. I had been watching via the app whether they had been connecting to the logical closest node. Seems about right now. I didn't tune up the switching parameters on RSSI left those as predefined. Just WiFi agile as described, the smart toggle as described else the backhaul wont connect on the 5ghz-2 channel if you are manually pairing the Mesh routers and using wireless backhaul. I tend to pick my own WiFi channels using InSSIDer rather than use the auto feature. Take up squatter rights on 1, 6 or 11 on the lower bandwidth. Ditto on 5ghz-1. Signal isn't propagated so far so isn't an issue. Left the backhaul band 5ghz-2 on auto select. My 5 ghz tablet I take to bed faithfully changes nodes between the upstairs lounge node and the office hub which serves the bedroom side of the house. The upstairs lounge node serves the downstairs kitchen and dining room. Open balcony affair with a wrap around upstairs lounge, antrim dining room / sun room. Upstairs office hub serves the five bedrooms (Office one) on two floors. Utility room gets the signal from the lounge mostly. So the house divides into two discrete areas. The backhaul 5 ghz top band linking through the office wall across the landing across the lounge to the node. No way you could install Ethernet cable into the office from the lounge without it showing. Had been using power line adaptors for this link and others but too problematic having pinned the issue down to ripples in the power. Get the BT Ethernet internet from the Smarthub2 on the lower floor just below via one BT black disc bought from Amazon into the Asus hub in the office. The BT disc ethernet port at the back is cabled into the Asus hub (both sit on top of a tall Ikea office unit). It was that using a powerline adaptors throu the house wiring that was causing grief with my old Asus tri band 3200 and TP link setup to the office. Basically power line adaptors turned out to be unreliable in the house with frequent glitches, mesh and wireless is better. All is good now. Think this is where people have issues where they can't get the backhaul working correctly since its not enabled when they add an aimesh to an existing configured hub. The Asus FAQ above "[Wireless] How to configure the Smart Connect on ASUSWRT?" is the key. Wonky programming.... best described as a feature. So you got to configure that correctly if you manually add a mesh unit unit rather than the two pair out of the box purchase and set up. Think this is why the reviews split into good and bad. The bad reviews trip on getting the backhaul to work correctly since they have manually configured and not stumbled over the secret that they need to toggle smart connect on during the pairing of the Mesh, as per the FAQ referenced for exact parameters, the unit is listed in that FAQ. The good reviews are either not using wireless backhaul or purchased two units together and used the automatic pairing. Useful tools obviously inSSIDer and Fast.com app. Footnote. On use for a month had one instance where the backhaul was triggered to orange on the app rather than green. The original issue. Needed the node switched on and off cleared it. Software reboot didn't. Two months in all very stable and reliable. Did an over the air firmware update on both nodes in situ, all ok. Did the original one out of the box on both units before pairing. Originally due to the second unit getting lost in the post configured the white unit destined for the office as the hub. Backed that up. Restored that on the black unit and did a factory reset on the white one, then did the pairing. The node has a spare Ethernet port which you can also use, giving one aditional Ethernet ports on the node unit, you can use a network switch to give additional ports, use network switches on both units in the lounge and office for traditional Ethernet cabling of devices. The USB port which can be used as a music server is only available on the hub. The other USB port on the node isn't available for use. Obviously the hub one supports upnp across the mesh. USB port can also be used with a 4g dongle, did test, works like my old Ac3200. Hopefully BT Openreach is reliable enough not to need to use it. All in all impressive mesh solution. Footnote 2 (November 2021) now on full fibre to the premises (FTTP) Reviewed the wireless backhaul speed on the net since it wasn't shifting the data fast enough. The tip on the net works. You make Wireless Mode "Ax only" on the backhaul band. Enable 802.11ax / Wifi6 mode, 20/40/80/160 Mhz and enable 160 Mhz band (force the bandwidth to 160 Mhz for Max speed, not Auto). Think it's the Ax only forces it into the top speed but getting the other parameters right helps. Now speed tests show similar whether it's on the backhaul or not. Also need to ensure Smart Connect toggle is set to on and activate the management settings. This steers your device between nodes (Asus material on that). The defacto settings work. Originally it appears I had this setting off which left the devices to use their own intelligence, fine with slow broadband. Once on full fibre to the premises you need to ensure that Smart Connect is set on via the WiFi setting screen and the toggle shows the band's bunched together. This is critical since the devices stopped being steered without this (probably with the higher bit rate the intelligence I was using in the devices by themselves failed to jump to the best node). You can alter the default steering property parameters, seemed complex but doable if required. Left as is and see how it goes. My tablet is now moving around the house to the nearest node, it had stopped. That goes for all other devices in the house. I'd also take it off automatic band selection. Test bands as to which are the best, keep it manually set. Getting a wired connection out of the node on backhaul fast.com test checks whether the backhaul is good. First footnote and WiFi speed checks on the normal 5ghz band. Footnote 3. Bought another node now. Disconnected the Smarthub2 on FTTP go in via WAN setting PPPoE, login [email protected] password bt. That is a fixed built in login that's default if you replace the BT supplied router. So back to where I was with Virgin 200 Mbit/s service in London, own equipment, but in rural Wales with FTTP and an Asus xt8 mesh rather than the rt3200 in London. Speeds 800 and 700 in the office and lounge nodes. Three WiFi points in the property. The house is like two detached houses in size so needs good coverage. Interesting the master "home" supplies the two nodes via the backhaul going up on one and across the property on the other, not daisy chaining. The mesh management screens work well. A development from the original Asus software. For backhaul connection you hit the optimise button and it selects the best connection for the mesh topography, although you need to work on the settings for a bit e.g. ax only, 160 Mhz bandwidth etc for the backhaul. Having found the best mesh backhaul route you can then twig the direction of the devices to help it along a bit. Between floors the backhaul with the fast.com test reveals the full 900 Mhz speed. Across the house, diagonal to the other node, 720 Mhz. The Asus menu via PC gives backhaul rates. As said in the text, good to check the node via link for green connection equals good but the Asus software also grades the links. Footnote 4 June 2022 All was going well till Asus released "ASUS ZenWiFi XT8 Firmware version 3.0.0.4.386.48706 (2022/05/03)" this is buggy I reverted back to 3.0.0.4.386.46061. Useful forum snbforums look under AsusWRT Official. They have threads running on each software version for the XT8. The 3 series are the official releases you pick up from the software firmware updates from the Asus site - can get back releases from the Asus site. I reverted each node back to the 3.0.0.4.386.46061 early 2022 release. No issues with that there after. Expect the fix for 3.0.0.4.386.48706 July time 2022 or so. Will go back to the current released when fixed. Doing a manual firmware update isnt that difficult, just fiddly. To May 2022 since I've had it all of the delivered firm updates have been fine. Possible the historic negative reviews were using a buggy release of the firmware similar to 3.0.0.4.386.48706. Something to watch out for, negative reviews on a duff quarterly or so firmware update. Seems a good idea to keep an eye on the snbforums for the Asus XT8 if you get issues after a firmware update. I'm eyeballing that to see what they will say about the next release. It was the WiFi backhaul that was effected by this release in question and long passwords, two issues. The other recent issue I had was with the top band 5GHz backhaul getting knocked out and the network running slow. The app under the network view picture, if it doesn't show the green link and "good" means the backhaul is degraded. Fast speedtests will show a drop of speed. There were two things going on when this happended, big military operations going on at the local live firing range and a new HP laptop top I had put on the network. One of the two. The world of WiFi some bands use "DFS" frequencies. DFS is used by radar, so a shared frequencies. The router will once a day tests whether a DFS frequency is being used if tuned into it and on automatic channel selection move off this. I use manual channel selection which the experts on said forum say is better. Always have. The 5ghz-1 band not backhaul, and 5ghz-2 band was on a high DFS channel. DFS marked channels are country dependent. I moved the 5ghz-1 back to channel 32 which is an non DFS channel in the UK. Had shifted it out of the way of BT Smarthub2 router which don't use those shared frequencies in the UK. So back to 32. Rural area, wide housing distance have never seen anybody else use the 5Ghz band, in London it was cluttered. The issue might have been a radio harmonic generated by the HP laptop which clashed with the backhaul messing up the DFS daily check on the 5Ghz-2 band which took down the link or that 3 week military local training operation. All is now fine and stable. Fingers crossed. The other thing I did was to put the 5ghz-2 backhaul beacon slap in the middle of the top band. So I moved that up from the lower point away from the 5ghz-2 channel. Wiki provides tables of Wifi frequency allocation by country. I set the beacon to channel 112. The whole 5ghz-2 backhaul band in the UK is taken up by the mesh if you select 160mhz band which you should to force Wifi6 on the backhaul and also hide the SSID. That gives speeds that are way above 1Ghz wired Ethernet on the backhaul and will accommodate Openreaches FTTP 920 speed service to the premise. E.g.. it will give you a wired speed connection between the mesh nodes if the distances are not long. Wired PC into the mesh will show no speed loss on a speed test over the mesh. Lesser devices connected via the 5ghz-1 band I've only seen a top speed of 720. Obviously these issues won't concern you if you haven't paid for the RR broadband service from your provider. A good backbone speed does allow fast internal networking, printers, file transfer etc hence the need to get the 5ghz-2 backhaul band on wifi6 by forcing the 160 bandwidth, not automatic in the settings. Green is good on the network map from the app, not green the backbone is compromised. Footnote July 2022 Firestick interference Might not have been the military radar upsetting the backhaul so you lost the "great" connection shown by the green lines on the app e.g. the backhaul was degraded so it stops using the dedicated top band. If using an Amazon 4k stick with the Amazon remote that comes with it, it uses its own WiFi that transmits on the same channel as your router. You can see it on inSSIDer popping up. A Google of Amazon Firestick Inference on Wi-Fi reveals it. See Reddit posts. The fix is to buy a newer Amazon Alex Firestick remote, they use Bluetooth. Can go the hole hog and connect up with an Ethernet / USB converter. The first should do the trick thou. Pulling out the Firestick did stop the issue which started to become regular. Having another beacon clashing with the channels isn't good that's sitting close to the router. Something to watch out for if you use an Amazon Firestick. Only specific models use WiFi to connect the remote back to the Firestick, the 4k one, is one of them. That's the story. The low cost option to stop the pesky tranmission of the beacon from the Firestick when not using it you hit hibernate the Firestick rather than leaving it live. You press the centre home button to make it up again and up pops the beacon. Pausing / hibernating stops the beacon so in the night or whenever the mesh is auditing it's backhaul it doesn't get confused with the Firestick sitting on one of its channels. I believe this was the root of the issue. Even with the Bluetooth remote the Firestick still puts out a WiFi SSID that is used for mirroring. Much message board stuff on that issue with people trying to get rid of it. Don't buy a Ethernet / USB stick with an OTG cable if not designed for the Firestick. Again that didn't work. The Firestick must have a proprietary way of using Amazon's own Ethernet / USB Firestick box they sell. Will test later. Waste of money if you try to mix and max yourself a Ethernet / USB adaptor with a cable and Firestick. You will find many posts of people having difficulties with OTG cables on the Firestick. More testing. You can use the Amazon Firestick Ethernet accessory to sort out the issue. You connect up the accessory, pull the Ethernet cable out. Delete the WiFi connection to your router so it stops connecting that way. Plug Ethernet cable back in. Move the Asus routers channel off where it was. Had mine in 36, set to 52 away from it since the Firestick will still send out the Mirrorlink beacon SSID you can't turn off. That then separates your mesh clashing with the beacon. All's been good since then. Stayed "green" all the way on the app diagram. See picture. The SSID for the 5ghz is shown in the image. Firestick beacon on the left with the arrow (pesky broadcast that starts up and stops from time to time). Next the 5ghz-1 band you connect to on a three mesh system I have (middle bar) plus the backhaul channel beacon on the right - hidden SSID name. Image via InSSIDer app which is very useful to check neighbourhood channel layout. So yes beware the Firestick on the Asus mesh but there are solutions. Connecting via the Amazon Ethernet accessory is the cleanest solution. Others to suspend the Firestick when not in use but obviously might effect things when it us turned on or stop broadcasting the Asus SSID, connect via Mac address and change channels... Just buy the £14 box and do what I said above, disable the Firestick WiFi and change router channels to leave the beacon you can't turn off, merrily transmitting intermittently but off the manual assigned Asus channels 👍. Jury still out (August 2022) on whether it was the hot heat wave which made the backhaul disconnect and shift to the 2.4ghz band or DFS radar interference (local military radar and the local port). Now shifted the 5ghz-1 to a channel within 36 - 48 inclusive. Following UK regulations router software does not need to check for DFS transmission in that range, 52 and above it does. Suspect it was tripping up on the DFS test, fixed channel and gave up. You check the WiFi log. It did link the 5ghz-1 band channel and the 5ghz-2 with failure. Suspect tripped on DFS on 5ghz-1 and then closed down 5ghz-2 backhaul. Keep in the range 36-48 and this shouldnt happen. Lasted a week now but then the hot weather has gone. Running latest firmware. Released in the summer had the same issue so either running hot in the hot weather or using a fixed channel in the 5ghz-1 band which shares with DFS solution put the beacon on 36-48 range. For the backhaul 5ghz-2 band use 160mhz bandwidth, WiFi 6 so you get 1ghz+ Ethernet backhaul speeds although on 160 bandwidth it takes over all of the UK top end band (5ghz-2). Don't hide the SSID for that. July issue of the firmware tells you not to. It synchs up faster if you don't hide it. In summary for manual channel selection and wireless backhaul: 2.4ghz 1, 6, 11 (might need 20 mHz bandwidth if pairing upnp) 5ghz-1 32-48 5ghz-2 112 selecting 160 bandwidth, wifi6 for backhaul.

I feel kinda bad giving these 4 stars, I wanted to give them 4.5 stars, but I can't, so unofficially they're a 4.5 from me. I live in a smallish 3 bed terraced, in the UK, so walls separating rooms are made of bricks. As is typical the Internet comes through the front wall, into the front room and so Wi-Fi range is inadequate for the back bedroom, which is where I work from, during the week. I previously got around this with a pack of 3 BT Wholehome discs, I had those around 5 years and didn't have too many issues, once or twice a year the 3rd disc would disconnect, my laptop just automatically connected to the next closest disc, but the printer, completely refused to find the network. The thing is, I hardly ever use the printer, but as is always the case, when I needed it, it wouldn't connect as the 3rd disc was playing up. My EE broadband contract was coming to an end and about a year ago full fibre became available down my street, so I decided to upgrade the mesh to take advantage of the faster speeds I'd be getting. This is my 4th set of mesh routers, having sent 3 back (sorry, Amazon). Initially I got the ASUS XD4 plus routers, they were fine for Wi-Fi, just 2 nodes served the whole house, flawlessly. The issue was I also wanted parental controls, as I can restrict what my daughter accesses at the hardware layer, but that's all moot when she has friends over, using their devices on my Internet, as they could simply access anything. Not that they were, just I like to be cautious. The routers were advertised as having content restrictions for parental controls, but it turns out they don't have AIProtection Pro, so you could only set time scheduling. In fairness to Amazon, I actually checked the ASUS site which said I could block certain content on that model, so ASUS were to blame for having misleading features advertised. I had to send those back as they didn't do what they said. Then I ordered the XD6 2 pack, which I believe were faulty. They connected fine on initial set up (they need to be close by for initial pairing), but once I unplugged the 2nd node to move to the next room, they wouldn't connect again and I spent 2 hours faffing around, to no avail. So I sent those back. Then, I thought I'd try eero, so I got 2 6E routers. They seemed fine from a hardware perspective, especially as Initially I still only had fibre to the cabinet. They wouldn't work with Alexa, like I couldn't say "Turn on the guest network" I'd installed the skill, but eero confirmed this wouldn't work. Not really a deal breaker, just an annoyance. The thing I found most annoying was the parental controls. My (teen) daughter was off school for a few days, ill, so I wanted to block access to TikTok and SnapChat during school hours, so I created a group, popped her phone and iPad in the group and set the rules. I checked and all seemed good, nothing would load in those apps. At one point I caught her messaging on TikTok, on her iPad, which was surprising. Initially I thought she'd been quite smart and used the neighbour's Wi-Fi, but nope, it turns out that when you block TikTok with eero, it does block all the videos and what not, but the messages can bypass the restrictions, at least on iOS, I didn't check with Android. Now, £100 per year for parental controls that didn't work properly seemed too hard to stomach, so I was regretting my purchase. Yes I did correctly set everything up, I know what I'm doing. Then the fibre got installed, I ordered a 500Mb up and down package. Next to the primary node I was getting full speeds, but we don't use that room. Close to the second node I was getting half speed download and full speed upload, which was a bit odd. In the back bedroom I was only getting 80 ish upload, the second node just needed to transmit through floorboards and 2 always open internal doors, so that seemed a bit poor. But as that 80Mb was faster than what I had previously anywhere in the house, it would have been fine for work. There's an Echo Dot in that room which actually acted as a 3rd node, so it wasn't a huge problem. The parental controls were though, if the parental controls were free or worked properly, I'd have kept the eero units as I had adequate speeds, not close to what I'm paying for in the rooms that need it, but more than adequate. Then I ordered these, Wow, just wow. Set up was easy, like 5 or so minutes. Unplugged the second node to place in the adjacent room, plugged it in and a couple of minutes later it had reestablished its connection. In the room with the primary node I get full speed up and down, in the room with the second node, again, full speed. Quite interestingly no hand off occurs, my phone stays connected to the first node, even though I'm closer to the second and there are obstructions in the way, 2 closed doors and a wall. It's only once I go into the kitchen that my phone moves to the second node and speeds are virtually identical. To the office I go, I check on my phone, I'm connected to the second node and getting around 440 up and down, I check on my laptop and I'm getting similar. I then bind my phone to the primary node, just to see, I actually get 120 up and 80 down, it has 2 brick walls, 2 open doors and floorboards to get through, at a distance of perhaps 12 - 14 metres. It actually smashed the set of eero and the Echo Dot all by itself over a larger distance with several additional obstructions in the way. If my ONT was in the middle room, one of these badboys would be more than adequate. The obstruction penetration seems amazing in comparison to the others, they're overkill for my house, they really are. But betrer to have overkill than flaky Wi-Fi. The parental controls and everything are free, well done ASUS. They don't quite have the granularity of the eero ones, more just pick a level than block specific apps. The app is OK, it's nowhere near as polished as the eero app though, but it's ok. So why just 4.5 stars you may ask? It annoys me that you can't put parental controls on the guest network, it also annoys me you can't auto add new devices to a default group. You couldn't do those things with the eeros either, but I gave them 3 stars. As kids get more tech savvy, they will of course learn about MAC randomisation, figure out they can actually see the network password in their phones etc, I just wish that there was a way to auto dump new devices into a quarantine group, where parental controls were set and I could allocate them manually through the app. I know I could get a Firewalla for that or just do that for the whole network, but I don't want to restrict my own Internet, just hers and her friends. Overall, extremely pleased with these, fantastic bit of kit for those of us where wired backhaul isn't an option. Extremely strong Wi-Fi signal, free security and parental controls for life, easy to set up. Quite expensive though, I paid 400 for 2, which is more than I wanted to spend, but I've now actually managed to get solid Wi-Fi performance throughout the house.

Ok, let me address some repeating comments here first. This system can transmit at upto 6GBps if you link the two nodes by a cable. This is standard practice and shouldn’t be seen as false advertising. If you use the Wireless meshing system you utilise one of the two 5Ghz radios as a dedicated mesh backhaul. That still gives you a great WiFi AX network. Also if your looking at true 6Gbps requirement you will need 10Gbps wired infrastructure to everything else anyway so it really isn’t a problem. I have about 70 WiFi devices in my home and there is no bottle neck across the network and I am using the WiFi mesh. Right, onto the main review. This router and node kit is fantastic! Powerful, fast and full of useful features from an easy to use App (Android and iOS both available FOC) or the web GUI. Features include advanced IPS and gateway antivirus (provided by Trend Micro), full VPN server, excellent QoS and a host of other features for the advanced user. Setup was a breeze via the iOS app and from unboxing to fully configured mesh WiFi took less than 10 minutes. Please note however that the WAN port is presented as upto 2.5Gb Ethernet so you will need a Modem if you use VDSL/FTTC. I have a DrayTek Vigor 130 in my setup but the white OpenReach modems will be just as good for 99% of users. So far it has been rock solid and not missed a beat. There are some really cool features built in including a Speedtest.net plugin to test directly on the router (so you don’t have the drop between router and client) l, also a real-time traffic monitor lets you see how much bandwidth each device on your network is using in real time (great for fault finding) the VPN server works flawlessly as does the endpoint for Site-to-Site VPN. This is a great router system for both standard and advanced home users and would definitely recommend!

I don’t often write Amazon reviews, but spent so much time on problems with this product, before ultimately returning it, that I thought it worth sharing my experiences. If you don’t want to read the detailed technical stuff below the summary is: - Mesh did provide an excellent Wifi signal everywhere. - The manual, online information and technical support are all terrible. - System doesn’t have all the functionality listed in the user guide. Specifically you can’t share a network disk if you have both Windows and Apple Mac PCs on the same network. - Initially worked fine for a few days, then kept on crashing so had to be returned. Overall a £400 system really should be a lot better than this. I chose this system improve the Wifi signal everywhere at home because my Virgin Hub router couldn’t cope with very crowded Wifi channels due to the neighbours’ systems and to setup a NAS. Initially I was very impressed, the ASUS system was quick and easy to setup and it provided a perfect Wifi Signal everywhere. However the problems started with setting up a NAS connected to the USB port on the main router. The drive setup didn’t work when following the instructions in the user guide. ASUS phone technical support were not helpful simply saying the problem needed to be escalated to the next level of support. After a lot of trial and error I managed to setup a network drive that was accessible from some machines, but would not stay connected. When ASUS support did get back to me (after 3 days) I was informed “you can use it either with a MAC OS device or with a Windows device, you would not be able to use it with both at the same time”. This was surprising because the user guide says disks can be shared using Samba share which is supposed to allow sharing between Windows and Mac. After a few days the Wifi signal began to repeatedly stop and the ASUS router had a blue light on it (as opposed to a white light indicating everything OK). Again, the user guide was not helpful - nowhere does it mention what a blue light means. ASUS phone support was not available to discuss this with since they do not work at weekends. Careful investigation of the log files showed the problem was the router was installing a firmware upgrade then re-booting which stopped the Wifi. However the firmware upgrade failed, so it attempted to reinstall it, reboot and stop the WiFi again. This process happened repeatedly every 20minutes with no obvious way to prevent it. At that point I decided to waste no further time on this and returned it to Amazon for a refund. A £400 system really should be a lot better than this!

TL;DR If you have a lot of WiFi devices and need speed, stability and range - just get it, you won't regret. I've had a lot of routers and mesh networks, pretty much from every brand, and this is by the the most stable, fastest and seamless network. I'll cut to the chase now - in order to get most of it you need you tweak settings a bit. It'll work plug & play, but it really shines once it is fully setup. 1) For initial setup, it needs to be close together, connected via wireless backhaul - easiest to do with the mobile app. Once done, I would recommend wired backhaul between nodes, however 4x4 160MHz 4800Mbps backhaul is fast enough, even at a distance. 2) Setup 2.4GHz, 5GHz-1 and 5GHz-2 networks as 3 separate SSID and don't use smart connect. Use 2.4GHz for all IoT smart devices, 5GHz-1 for TVs and non-WiFi 6 gear, and 5GHz-2 for WiFi 6 gear only (set network as AX only) 3) From then on, I recommend using web browser console, you have more settings there and it's easier to use. 4) For those working from home on VPN and having issues with MS Teams calls and Outlook desktop client - use your broadband provided kit as router with wi-fi off, and switch ZenWifi to AP mode. 5) Turn off smart connect, don't turn on any QoS or AI protect stuff 6) Tweak roaming mode to your own needs. I've included sample settings for 5GHz-2 network which gives full 1.2Gbps, I also get 1.2Gbps on 5GHz-1, this maxes out our 910Mbps fibre optic broadband anyway. With all above, our 2 x Galaxy S20s and laptops with Killer 1650 M.2 Wifi 6 AX are a lot more responsive - not to mention much faster max speeds - that's thanks to improved latency on WiFi 6, regardless whether it's 5GHz-1 or 5GHz-2, but separation gives better overall performance kids with their TVs and tablets are not impacting our work. Note 1 - currently it is not possible to use 5GHz-2 network in 4x4 mode, so max you can get is 1.2Gbps rather than 4.8Gbps, but this is irrelevant since you would need multi WAN internet connection to go over 1Gbps anyway, and gigabit is plenty fast. Note 2- NAS functions (whether FTP or Samba) maxes out at ~67MBps (536Mbps) even with Samsung T5 which gives me over 500MBps (4Gbps) when connected directly to PC - that's not great, but fast enough for a NAS. Note 3 - I'm currently on firmware 25524, it is stable, no issues, everything gets signal across 3 floors and in both front and back garden - and I have rather large network: 2 x XT8 in AP mode 3 x network switches 4 x 4K smart TVs (2 wired, 2 wireless) 5 PCs (2 wired, 1 on VPN all the time) 5 tablets 4 x TV streaming devices (1 wired) 4 x phones 7 x Ring devices 14 smart plugs 9 smart speakers 13 other smart wifi devices To finish off I'm going to add that the actual hardware is a lot smaller and lighter than I thought it is, less obstructive, looks very good in any room, it shows quality and it's very well designed and built. Highly recommended, especially considering it is actually cheaper than WiFi 6 mesh from other brands. UPDATE: Attached 2 more screenshots with speedtest over wire and wireless. Can't get much better than that!

I needed a new router since I was upgrading to BTs 500mb plan and was pretty confident the Smart Hub 2 couldn't deliver anywhere near that wirelessly. It felt like it struggled on my previous 150mb plan - with intermittent speed drops and trouble keeping up with casting my desktop to my TV. I have this set up in my living room in a 4-bed detached. It fully replaced my BT Smart Hub 2 (with a single complete wi-fi disc.) I initially wanted a mesh system to replace the BT setup since my direct connection to the BTSH2 was pretty bad from my desktop PC (it sits in the further part of my home.) I wanted a reasonable future proof replacement and my options were the Eero, Netgear Orbi or TPLink Deco. After countless reviews I ended up with the XT8 as it seems to provide the best speeds over a longer distance. Surprisingly (or not?) I get better speeds connecting directly to this router (signal shows 4 of 5 bars) as opposed connecting to the BT disc (previously 5 of 5 bars) which was sitting in the bedroom directly above the living room which hosts the SH2. Pros - Much faster and more consistent wifi than the standard BT router. I've attached a speed test I did to the furthest area inside my home. Better signal - no extenders or additional 'wifi discs' needed Guest network can be used if needed AiProtection included with no subscription required Parental controls (can be set against websites/apps/or specific devices). Time scheduling is also possible Built in speed test (with history) to show what speeds are going directly to the router. Useful to show your service provider if you aren't getting expected speeds. Built in VPN if needed IOS/Android app can be used to manage and monitor the network USB port supports devices such as printers and hard drives, making them available across the entire network Cons - None at the moment, it does exactly what I need. Current uptime in the log is showing 28 days - so far I have not rebooted this router since updating the firmware the day it was received.

Easy, fast setup. Works seamlessly with other ASUS ai-mesh products. Easy to use app. Very poor signal strength vs what is advertised especially it seems if you live in an old house with stone walls. The idea that one of these could cover a multi-bedroom property is fanciful. Maybe a timber frame new build but not a Victorian terrace or traditional cottage. For this reason I consider the value for money to be poor as I have had to buy the additional lower cost ai-mesh nodes to cover my property. I expected the signal to be a significant improvement on my ISP psychics router but it wasn't. Of course the functionally is way better not all that counts for nothing if you can't get a signal. All that said, with the additional nodes my house has blanket coverage at decent speeds so overall I'm not unhappy with the product. Just a lot of money to spend so I can use my phone in each room.