ASUS - ZenWiFi AX Wireless-AX Wi-Fi Router - White

I will preface this review with some information about our prior wifi installation to give you an idea of what we were dealing with and how the ASUS Zenwifi tri-band fits in here. Prior to installing the Asus mesh, we had a single Netgear Nighthawk router handling our 1400ft² house. Overall the performance was fine for most of our stuff inside; outside was a different story. We spend a lot of time on our back patio, use an Amazon Echo out there for streaming audio and occasionally we like to take an iPad out to watch streaming television. The problem was that we could not get any reliable wifi out there in the 5Ghz band. It had to run at 2.4ac to get streaming content and it was just not reliable. We are in a subdivision with neighbors on 3 sides and all of them have wifi running. So it is a crowded spectrum issue here along with the fact that my cable modem is located in an opposite corner of the house. The Nighthawk router had a very good run, to be sure. I think I had had it maybe 7 years here and it had never failed us other than maybe needing a reboot occasionally. But the range and inability to get the higher performance of the 5Ghz outside drove me to investigating a more modern mesh system. I definitely wanted to get something that supported the new wifi 6 home network specification and after reading reviews and determining that a wired backhaul between nodes was out of the question here, a tri-band setup with dedicated backhaul channel was a must have. After reading many reviews - taking them all with a grain of salt, as should everyone - I determined that the Asus ZenWiFi AX XT8 was probably our best bet to try first. This system features two identical nodes, each of which can serve as the main router and the other as remote node. They have to be installed in a location where they can "talk" clearly in the 5Ghz dedicated 3rd band. I set the main router up in the same location the Nighthawk had sat in for years, in our back corner office where the cable internet comes into the house. The mesh node device I moved out into our living room where it has a clear shot to the patio area. It worked first try. As soon as I got both the router and node setup and configured the backhaul connection in both the browser and iOS apps showed up as "Great!" It took maybe 30 minutes to get everything hooked up. I saved a lot of time by just using our old SSID setup to avoid having to reprogram every IOT device we have. As soon as the network came back up everything we have connected to the new devices pretty much as before. I did have one problem with our Ambient Weather WS-2000 weather station. For some reason the console did not want to stay connected to the mesh. I solved that problem by basically doing a reset on the weather station that included a firmware upgrade. Since I did that the disconnection problems have stopped. I also had an issue with our Ryobi garage door opener that I fixed by resetting (erasing the old network and reinstalling it) Those were the only two devices with hiccups. Everything else just reconnected and worked. I guess the key thing I want to share is that our old problems with getting 5Ghz wifi anywhere in the house or on the patio are completely gone. I keep our wifi bands separate, meaning I have two SSIDs running: "Network" and "Network-5" (not their real names, of course, but you get the drift.) Now with the Asus mesh, we just leave our personal devices on the "-5" side and move about wherever we want. We do not have to worry about which radio we are connected to. The mesh system handles all of the handoffs from main unit to node seamlessly. I do not have to manage any of it. It just works. And that is the answer to my biggest question about Asus mesh operations. Would I have to somehow nurse the thing or spend hours trying to make the handoffs seamless? I did not. Right out of the box after configuring things we found that we could move freely about and the brains of the mesh system would hand devices back and forth between the node and the main router without any intervention or dropouts. Out on our patio, where I could barely get a 5Ghz signal before, I get super performance. My iphone 12 variant has a wifi 6 radio and I can get 400mbs download speed sitting outside! The main thing is we are no longer getting streaming dropouts out there and we never have to worry about changing our devices to the 2.4Ghz band. Our problems have been solved. Granted, we do not have a large house and I have no idea how the Asus would perform in another environment. What I do know is that it absolutely works as advertised in our place. Everything about it, including the control interface via web or app, is straight-forward and not fussy. The Asus is on the more expensive side for a mesh system but considering it is both wifi-6 enabled and tri-band equipped with a dedicated radio backhaul, it is not a bad bet for the $450 price point. About my only caveat would be how would it work in a multi-story with only two nodes? That one I can't answer, but I do know that the system can be expanded to more than two if needed as all of the mesh units are identical and can be configured on the fly. All in all I really recommend this mesh system. Happy we got it.

I use this product for almost a year now and it’s getting worse with every firmware upgrade. If you’re an advanced user using many wireless devices (Smart home, security systems etc.) on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies then just buy something else. Cameras go offline all the time, smart home bridge go offline, since December upgrade some of the Sonos speakers won’t connect to AX model at all (known issue). An option is to downgrade firmware but then you’re at security risk. I added my old Asus RT68 router to the mesh and binded “problematic” devices to that router. They work fine until.. Asus firmware still moves them to AX routers “because they know better” even if you bind the device (pic added). Some wireless devicess will show as “wired” and firmware won’t give you an option to re-connect. Extremely problematic with hardwired cameras since there is no option to power-cycle it. I really hoped that this product will work for my home especially that I use Asus routers for years and was happy with them. It did for the first 4-5 months until 2020 Q3 firmware upgrades. If you’re a basic user and will just use it for computer, tablet or phone it will most likely work. If you have more wireless devices on the network try something else. I really wish that I could still return it because I will be replacing this expensive hardware with other brand shortly

This highly-rated home mesh wifi system is a breeze to set up following the enclosed instructions and has been rock solid for the month since I installed it in our home. Placing the units in the house was simple and the signal coverage throughout is excellent. I replaced an 8 year old Mac Airport Extreme. Our internet package is fibre-optic and delivers 40mB service. I saw an immediate ~35% increase in download speed and a 100% increase in upload speed. Our home had a number of wifi "dead spots" due to a cement wall that runs through the house and a custom spread-out layout. This resulted variable connection reliability and frequent dropped cell calls. All of those problems have disappeared. The Asus - ZenWiFi AX is pricier than some other home mesh systems but I'm extremely pleased with the performance so far, and am looking forward to 5G WiFi service when it arrives here.

I had my doubts but I was pleasantly surprised that they work as advertised. Totally worth the money.

So Far, awesome. Super easy installation and setup. Just had to make sure that all devices in the household had to connect to new Wifi including all Nest products. But when done, my download speeds were 4 X from Linksys Mesh network I have had for 3 years. Coverage much better in whole house. The signal so far seems to be very reliable. I thought I needed a new Spectrum Cable router, but turns out it was my own Mesh net.

Easy to setup and much faster than our AT&T/Pace 5268 gateway. I’m very happy with this product.

I'd say it's a work in progress. Great mesh system. All the features I'd want except it's missing build in Speed Test like TP-Links and Netgear. (Built in test, tests your internet to router speed, not the client). Firmware still buggy. Once I started turning on QoS and Parental Controls, it started slowing way down. From 900Mbps down to less than 50Mbps. Once they address all the issues it will be a perfect wifi 6 mesh for the $$$.

I installed a 3 unit system to cover three floors of an older plaster and lath home and now have excellent coverage on all three floors. One unit is the main router on the main floor, connected via Cat 7 network cable to the lower floor and the 5GHz backhaul channel to the upper floor. Did require some experimentation in moving the upper floor unit around to maximize signal strength. Overall very pleased with the result as signal strength and bandwidth are much improved relative to my older Apple Time Capsule (which, btw, I still use for Time Machine backup hanging off one of the Asus nodes). Have noticed internet outage every few days but this may well be Xfinity/modem issues rather than Asus.