ASUS ZenWiFi AX Mini (XD4) Whole Home Mesh WiFi System (3 Pack), WiFi 6, 802.11ax, up to 6000 sq ft & 25+ devices, AiMesh, Lifetime Free Internet Security, Parental Controls, Easy Setup 3 pack
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Whole-home CoverageThe ZenWiFi AX Mini system consists of one ASUS AX1800 WiFi 6 router and two extending node, featuring unique technologies that give you superfast, reliable and secure WiFi connections — inside or outside your home! | WiFi 6ZenWiFi AX Mini puts your WiFi into top gear! With a total bandwidth of up to of 1800 Mbps, it’s up to 1.4X faster* than WiFi 5 routers **. * Compatible WiFi 6 device required. ** The data compares speed of 2X2 11ax on 5GHz 80 MHz bandwidth with 1024QAM modulation to speed of 2×2 11ac on 5GHz 80MHz with 256QAM modulation. | Easier-than-ever Setup3-step setup with the ASUS Router app:
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Smart Looks for Smart HomesZenWiFi AX Mini works perfectly with smart-home services — including Alexa skills and IFTTT — and is available in charcoal or white to suit your décor. | Make the Internet a Safer Place for EveryoneAiProtection Classic with Parental Controls is free for life. It gives you total peace of mind, and you can keep an eye on everything that’s happening on your network via the mobile app.
| Parental ControlsURL filter and scheduling allow you to protect your family from inappropriate content and unhealthy Internet usage behaviour. |
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Flexible Network NamingUniquely, ZenWiFi lets you choose how you name your WiFi networks: a single name for everything, or separate names for each frequency band. The choice is yours! | More Stable WiFi with Wired Connections between ZenWiFi HubsIf you have Ethernet ports in your walls, you can set ZenWiFi AX Mini to use Ethernet backhaul, reserving all WiFi bands for your wireless devices for even more stable and reliable networking. | AiMesh TechnologyEven non-experts can quickly set up AiMesh technology, while more experienced users will appreciate the comprehensive advanced networking features. More Stable WiFi with Wired Connections between ZenWiFi Hubs |
Commercial Grade Security
- No Subscription Fee: Some routers only offer 3 years of protection, ASUS AiProtection has you covered for the life of your product.
| Dimensions: | 9 x 8 x 9 cm; 1 Kilograms |
| Model: | 90IG05N0-MO3R20 |
| Batteries Included: | 1 A batteries required. |
| Manufacture: | Asus |
| Origin: | China |
These made the WiFi in my house stable. I have them connected over Ethernet backhaul. The only issue is that in AP mode, you lose the family features. These could be retained for Wireless devices but they are not.
Was easy to setup.
Very stable and reliable connection. I’m using the 5Ghz wireless backhaul.
Works perfectly with my BT FTTP connection and blows away the BT home hub.
Getting an average speed of 400-600mbps in most parts of the house on my AC phone. Not tested with an AX device yet which will likely be quicker.
Admin UI looks a little dated but has all the features most people need.
Forced to move our office upstairs well away from the router in the downstairs extension I struggled to get a good throughput. I tried WiFi, powerline networking and an extender for WiFi but my 200Mbps virgin connection rarely bettered 42Mbps in speed tests through the walls. Cue the Asus system and now I get the full 200Mbps signal at all points in the house, it is just awesome. Not a cheap solution, but it does deliver. The house is a 4 bedroomed detached, with a large extension and conservatory. The signal passes through a cavity external wall and multiple internal walls to link the two devices, and wireless anywhere on the property.
This is an excellent piece of kit and has solved all my WiFi problems. We’ve just upgraded to BT FTTP @ 300MBPS and the BT Home hub2 that was supplied was fine if you were sat in the same room as it, but anywhere else and the WiFi connection speed dropped massively. Plus you could not split the WiFi bands so smart devices kept connecting to the slower 2.4ghz. My work office setup in the upstairs bedroom was also suffering. All this from a 300mbpd FTTP!! I’ve tried Devolo Magic 2 Wifi Powerline adapters but they still didn’t provide the connection speeds they market. So I bit the bullet and bought the Asus ZenWiFi XT8. One unit in the living room connected to the BT FTTP ONT modem ant the other unit in my upstairs office. We’ll the difference is incredible, I get a full 300mbps WiFi all over the house and the handover between the units as I walk around my house is perfect. I’ve set the 3rd WiFi band to a dedicated backhaul and it provides an excellent connection between the units. I tried using the powerlined to provide an ethernet backhaul but they couldn’t match the speed and reliability of the built in 3rd WiFi band option. After more than 2 years of working from home due to Covid my Internet and WiFi issues are well and truly over. I can thoroughly recommend this Asus ZenWifi XT8.
Like other reviewers I’ve had dropout issues with the latest firmwares. Since I re-flashed to firmware version 3.0.0.4.386_42095 it’s been stable. Some have suggested going as far back as 3.0.0.4.386_25790. Once I got the right firmware in it’s been great. SNBForums has a lot of good info.
The app is fine for simple setups i.e. the vast majority of people. Anything more in depth needs to go via the web gui.
I’ve dropped a star as while the hardware is great, Asus should not be releasing firmware updates that s kill stability for nearly all user.
This is what wi-fi should be like!!
For years wi-fi has disappointed me, either not fast enough, doesn’t reach far enough etc etc. Not anymore!!
This mesh network is quite simply superb. It maxes out my 300mbps internet connection anywhere in the house, moves between the nodes effortlessly and has eliminated the need to run cables around the house.
I have the main node connected to my router and from there I’m wire free. The node downstairs runs over wifi only and it’s perfect.
There’s another review on Amazon that was very helpful talking about using a 5ghz network to run the back haul. Read it, like it and enjoy hassle free, fast wi-fi.
Not cheap, but definitely worth it.
Simple to unpack and install, the coverage around the house is excellent, especially when we used the old ASUS router as another node.
Would be nice to have another Ethernet port on each of the Zen cubes and for it to work with Alexa as it claims to be able to do. But all in all, value for money and wide, fast, hassle free coverage you can’t beat Ze
Simple to unpack and install, the coverage around the house is excellent, especially when we used the old ASUS router as another node.
Would be nice to have another Ethernet port on each of the Zen cubes and for it to work with Alexa as it claims to be able to do. But all in all, value for money and wide, fast, hassle free coverage you can’t beat Ze
After buying the ORBI 853 which failed to set up exchanged for this one to replace my old ORBI. It worked seamlessly. Tip when you set up make the 2.4g network with the exact same name (SSID) and password as the router you are replacing. This way when you switch it on and the old router off you don’t need to go round every bulb etc re connecting it to a new network just turn them off and back on – they’ll pick up the new router. Set up the separate SSID for 5g and then connect TV’s etc to that. Things like the ring doorbell now connect more reliably and faster so recommend this product. Connected are 50+ devices (bulbs, tv’s, speakers etc) and seems to handle without issues.
Been using them for about 3 months great an I never drop around my house on wifi an I even get full speed for my pc using cat 8 cables really good quality an not big ever so can put anywhere an it will look tidy. Would recommend for anyone that wants full speed an good wifi all over the house easy to set up aswell.
Great product. It is small and minimalistic. Can fit almost anywhere and looks elegant. Signal is good and works well for what I have at home. The range is effective. I can throttle kids devices so they don’t hog the bandwidth when I need it for work which is great. Simple set up. You need a switch if you want to link them all up via LAN cable to improve the back haul connection, they only have 1 lan port, thats Incase you need to connect multiple devises, but the wifi 6 hasn’t failed me so far. The app is great too, I love the GUI, shows which device is connected to each node. You can also dedicate devices to an individual node, I.e. tv to node 1 in lounge. So it won’t be searching Etc. The app does it all for you. Remote access. Seamless transfer of device across nodes when changing location in the house with no loss of signal, it’s really smart and detects when to switch node for optimum signal automatically. To install VPN you need to use a computer through browser. However once installed you can activate and deactivate from your device. This is helpful to gain access to media regions / work vpn quickly and remotely. All in all I highly recommend. It’s great value for money, reliable no glitch system, with no issues so far. All devices work and run well. You can add Alexa devices and they all connect smoothly from smart switch to CCTV. All in all I’m very pleased with my decision to purchase this over other devices.
Great product. It is small and minimalistic. Can fit almost anywhere and looks elegant. Signal is good and works well for what I have at home. The range is effective. I can throttle kids devices so they don’t hog the bandwidth when I need it for work which is great. Simple set up. You need a switch if you want to link them all up via LAN cable to improve the back haul connection, they only have 1 lan port, thats Incase you need to connect multiple devises, but the wifi 6 hasn’t failed me so far. The app is great too, I love the GUI, shows which device is connected to each node. You can also dedicate devices to an individual node, I.e. tv to node 1 in lounge. So it won’t be searching Etc. The app does it all for you. Remote access. Seamless transfer of device across nodes when changing location in the house with no loss of signal, it’s really smart and detects when to switch node for optimum signal automatically. To install VPN you need to use a computer through browser. However once installed you can activate and deactivate from your device. This is helpful to gain access to media regions / work vpn quickly and remotely. All in all I highly recommend. It’s great value for money, reliable no glitch system, with no issues so far. All devices work and run well. You can add Alexa devices and they all connect smoothly from smart switch to CCTV. All in all I’m very pleased with my decision to purchase this over other devices.
First of all, very fast delivery & at a good price from Amazon.
I have just started using 5g internet from Three & the speed is fantastic, but due to to the position it has to be in & the design of my home the WiFi has always been a problem, even with BT. Then I installed the Asus Router, it was extremely easy to set up & it was up and running very quickly. I have now got a supper fast connection thanks to Three & thanks to Asus not only all over the house but in the garden to.
I would definitely recommend ASUS ZenWiFi AX Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System(XT8).
I already have CAT deployed across the house so am using the “Ethernet Backhaul” option. It’s removed all WiFi dead spots, I can even now get a 20mgb connection from the end of my garden, which is about 30m from the closest node (but does have pretty much direct line of sight through some patio doors).
They were very easy to set up and have been reliable so far (2 weeks at the time of writing this).
I work at home a lot, and can now walk through the house on a video conference from one room to another and not lose connection.
The app shows what kit is connected to what node, you can easily rename them to something suitable to your deployment which
makes it easy to track connections.
Very happy with my decision to buy this ki
Theoretically, the Asus ZenWiFi XT8 is tri-band ethernet wireless at 6.6Gbps with a 2.5Gbps WAN ethernet port and three Gbps LAN ports. But within our wireless configuration was 1201Mbps OFDMA 2 antennae manual channel selection 36-64 only, and channel selection restricted in the router interface. And 2402Mbps OFDMA 4 antennae channels 100-140 only, and channel selection restricted in the router interface. And 286.8Mbps on the 2.4Ghz band at 20Mhz channel width but it will support 40Mhz width.
Note: The Asus XT8 does not support 5Ghz band C channels 149 to 161 which is permitted without a license in the UK at 200mW or lower indoors with TPC, and I wish Asus would keep up with the licensing law for wireless in countries, so if you need to use those 5Ghz band C channels don’t buy this router. I don’t know if all Asus wireless routers have the 149 to 161 channel restriction but it should be removed for the UK to 200mW with transmit power control (TPC) or 100mW without it on wireless band C 5Ghz.
Attention is lost in the router interface and it isn’t as good as open-source router interfaces, but I know zero open-source routers that support 802.11ax wifi 6 standards and this is the main reason one would buy this wireless router for future-proofing.
It has a quad-core 1.5Ghz processor, 512MB of random access memory, and six antennae for wireless and is housed in a nice-looking box that stands upright, eg it will keep the wife happy without protruding antennae for they are enclosed in the unit and comes in white or black colour. It has a USB 3.0 port for a 4G dongle or USB storage device as local cloud storage.
The unit runs really cold without generating almost any heat. And it has a 3-year warranty in the UK, but I think it’ll last longer than that with its lack of heat generation.
The radiated power of the 5Ghz DFS band B channels is higher than the restricted power output channels 36 to 64 band A that we noticed with the Asus XT8 router. It absolutely bangs out a signal on 5Ghz between channels 100-140 band B for good area coverage and is the best I’ve seen for a 5Ghz wireless router on these channels. And I suspect it is transmitting more than 200mW for the power is permissible to higher levels, 1W, on DFS band B but most wireless routers don’t do it for simplicity. It would perform beautifully in an area of 25 metres cubed through two brick walls and likely better than that in reality at lower speeds than 200Mbps throughput on 5Ghz band B channels (5Ghz-2).
For 802.11ac clients, the bandwidth would be 866.7Mbps and 1733Mbps respectfully on the 2 and 4 antennae (streams) at 80Mhz, so bear this in mind if you have lots of 802.11ac clients its 256QAM OFDM streams but some 802.11ac clients do support 1024QAM as a none standard modulation for 802.11ac.
The router does support a 160Mhz wide channel on a 5Ghz-2 band (4804Mbps OFDMA) which is reserved for the backhaul wireless mesh if you have more than one unit and it connects as a wireless mesh node(s). And 40Mhz width channel (601Mbps OFDMA 1024QAM) on the 2.4Ghz band. The 2.4Ghz band radiated signal wasn’t as good as other 2.4Ghz wireless routers I’ve seen.
I have no doubt this wireless router mesh would work lovely in a mesh with 2 units for larger 4-6 bedroom houses over 5Ghz in those houses where running ethernet cables is difficult but it was not tested in a wireless mesh setup. But that is where the Asus XT8 excels on the 5Ghz performance on the 5Ghz-2 band B wireless whether reserved for the wireless mesh or wireless clients in its own right as in our case for power, coverage, and throughput.
One of the reasons for obtaining an 802.11ax was for power saving on wireless clients, eg: an iPhone 12 Pro Max, and the battery when on 802.11ax wireless is lasting almost three times as long as when it was and does use 802.11ac standard wireless routers!
If you have only 1 unit or the backhaul is ethernet cabled then all three wireless transceiver bands are available for the wireless clients, and this is the configuration we have in use. We had the channels and bandwidth set to automatic, and it set the 2.4Ghz at 20Mhz width and 5Ghz both bands to 80Mhz width in our environment which is a high population wireless area.
Effectively the maximum theoretical throughput for all the wireless bands at maximum bandwidth 160Mhz (5Ghz-2 Band B), maximum 80Mhz (5Ghz-1 Band A), and 40Mhz (2.4Ghz) is 6.6Gbps for those environments that have the frequency available and the clients, 802.11ax wifi 6, with 1024QAM with little to no wireless interference. But don’t expect to get anywhere near those wireless speeds in real-world environments or the widest width channels on automatic channel width, and the ethernet ports don’t support those speeds.
The Asus XT8 supports 802.11ax and therefore WPA3 security out the box, we have a wireless transceiver, the widest and highest power with 4 antennae on WPA3 AES security, and two 2.4Ghz & 5Ghz transceivers (2 antennae) on WPA2 AES security for clients wireless devices that don’t support WPA3, eg: separate SSIDs. We have an array of some 25 wireless clients or so with some 2.4Ghz only and 802.11ac & 3 * 802.11ax client standard devices and experienced no issues connecting clients to their respective wireless band and security (WPA2/WPA3) and WPS worked flawlessly even with the oldest 2.4Ghz wireless band printer whilst pairing. Over half of the selection of wireless clients we use are Apple equipment.
The quad-core 1.5Ghz processor didn’t seem stressed at all with most of the features enabled including deep packet inspection (DPI) for adaptive QoS and application flow monitoring which is very demanding processor-wise. The Asus adaptive QoS and scheduler are very good.
The wireless router settled on channel 9 (2.4Ghz 20Mhz), channel 40 (5Ghz-1 80Mhz), and channel 112 (5Ghz-2 80Mhz) respectfully for each wireless transceiver after 2 days of operation. It is recommended you leave the router alone and settle on automatic wireless channels for about 4 hours at least before performing throughput speed tests, eg: it takes that time to sort itself out on the best channels.
I did notice that the latency for 802.11ac clients was quite high on the 5Ghz wireless band at around 4ms to 11ms periods. But the latency on 802.11ax wireless clients was quite remarkable at under 2ms and very consistently low with almost zero spikes/peaks, well, to be truthful, I couldn’t get the latency over 2ms to a client on the LAN from wireless on an 802.11ax wireless client with every client wirelessly connected. If you can only use wireless for a gaming console or gaming laptop and it has 802.11ax wireless then that’s the way to go, and I do have a gaming laptop with 802.11ax wireless in use.
In real tests of throughput the Asus XT8 router gave a performance on 2.4Ghz on 802.11ax to iPhone 12 Pro Max 65Mbps with ten or so clients connected with a great deal of interference, and our maximum easily achieved at 220Mbps throughput for our broadband speed on either of the 5Ghz wireless bands under 802.11ax wireless standard with 15 clients or more connected with the test being done on 802.11ac & 802.11ax 80Mhz wide channel; this was throughout our 2 bedroom house. We are pretty sure it will outperform throughput requirements for mosts people on wireless even at 500Mbps or even higher with all tri-bands for clients in a 3 to 4 bedroom house…
At 25 metres from the router through two red solid bricks walls, it achieved a throughput speed of 160Mbps on DFS channel 112 (80Mhz wide), and the whole of the back garden our speeds was maximum for our broadband at 220Mbps throughput through one solid red brick wall with the iPhone 12 802.11ax Pro Max. The wireless router is centrally located in the house on a shelf in the living room and performs best on 5Ghz-2 banging out a signal on DFS band B wireless channels.
The parental control system was a bit of a waste of time in our case, we basically have some guests that visit the house and we wish to restrict their access to less than pleasant social gathering material, eg: very adult and pornographic material! This was not possible by SSIDs but only possible by MAC address by either reject or accept which is pointless in this day and age with rotating MAC addresses for privacy on smartphones. Take note router manufacturers’ parental control needs to restrict access by guest SSIDs and SSID solely reserved for children on wireless as well as fixed MAC address filtering that can of course be spoofed or rotated for privacy by almost anyone, eg: with the SSID the user connects to cannot be spoofed so it’s more full-proof internet filtering for wireless at least and it would put those 9 guest SSIDs available to some use. Fortunately, we have an upstream firewall that does excellent internet filtering, timed and very accurate, and with little chance of bypass.
The DPI, QoS, 2-way IPS, and monitoring use Trend Micro for classifying, prioritizing, filtering for threats, and monitoring respectfully, and those parts are excellently implemented in the firmware. And the Trend Micro service is free for the life of the router. The DNS resolver for the router isn’t the best in the world as it will not support DNS over HTTPS or DNS over TLS, something that could be easily added for privacy.
The router has 3 types of VPN functionality both in and out, eg: OpenVPN, IPSec VPN, PPTP, and a proprietary Instant Guard Asus VPN. And it can be controlled by an Alexa or IFTTT routine(s).
Very good router/mesh system, not tri-band meaning the mesh connection is using one of the bands for data between the APs unless you use LAN for backhall.
App is a bit slow on the connections info, sometimes a reboot is needed.
But all that said, they aren’t to bad.
Our Virgin router is less than serviceable and, despite being on their all-inclusive package, we couldn’t get their range extenders. It’s not even as if we live in an old thick-walled house! The signal away from the router dropped to almost nothing. Streaming facebook vids and youtube proving to be as bad as dial-up in the ’90s! Out of the box, plugged in and a small amount of set up and, bang! This thing has changed our internet experience. In our bedroom, the strength was never more than 2 or 3 mps. Now, we’re getting 200 plus. A seriously good piece of kit. I had thought of buying the 2 pack but, because this is so good, we’ll just stick to the one. Buy it now if you’re having problems with Virgin and its range, you won’t regret it.
Firstly, this is a premium price for a good product. The plastic feels a bit cheap but this is compensated with the less intrusive design.
Pros:
Easy set up with Virgin Media in modem mode. One is in the front room, one in the sun room. I don’t experience much loss and approx 210mb across my 4 bed detached.
I also use it with NordVPN through OpenVPN protocol and this was easy to set up for novice like me.
Cons
I tried to do the split set up with 2.4ghz and 5ghz signals as recommended in other review. However this kept dropping the signal on my phone or laptop. I had to turn on/off the WiFi on device to get back on. Having a one signal with combined frequency has resolved this.
Parental controls are good which is main reason why I purchased it. Its easy to switch off all devices for bedtime or restrict certain devices. You can also prioritise devices for when you work from home.
I would have liked another router for upstairs although it doesn’t appear to be an issue.
Fianlly, documentation (or lack thereof) could have been better.
I would buy again.
After obtaining the Virginmedia 1Gig Fibre I wanted to get the most out of it around the house.
After a lot of research and testing, the only way to get 1 Gig speed or close to it around the house is to invest in an AX Tri-Band Mesh system and the best one to do this based on value for money is the ASUS ZenWiFi AX.
Replaced my mains 2 gang socket with wireless repeater built in with this as mobile devices kept getting confused when connecting to the extender then connecting back to router. My router supports mesh so i paired it with this, works a dream & really fast using wireless backhaul, best of all , all the mobile devices in my home work great with the mesh system. So far all good, can now get wifi in my garden.
Replaced my mains 2 gang socket with wireless repeater built in with this as mobile devices kept getting confused when connecting to the extender then connecting back to router. My router supports mesh so i paired it with this, works a dream & really fast using wireless backhaul, best of all , all the mobile devices in my home work great with the mesh system. So far all good, can now get wifi in my garden.
Great router system that has greatly improved wifi coverage in our house. Important benefit is that these allow setting up the router to connect with a VPN server directly, which means that every device using wifi is behind that VPN connection as well. (you will have to subscribe to a VPN service that offers the protocol to do this, but Youtube is your friend to explain all this)
I bought these to replace a BT Smart Hub 2 following FTTP 1GB upgrade. I live in a 4 bed house, loft conversion, extensions to the rear and proper thick brick walls between rooms. SH2 just couldn’t cut it, max DL was around 400mbps max.
I initially bought an Asus RT-AX89X to replace the SH2. On paper it fitted the bill, but try as I might, I couldn’t get any WiFi speed above 450mbps, I tinkered with the settings, made sure that AX was enabled and also tried beta firmware. Nothing made a significant difference.
I bought these XT8’s initially to have as mesh routers, crazy expensive if you include the RT-AX89X just for decent WiFi. I configured them through the Asus app on my iPhone and fine tuned using the Asus webpage. I still couldn’t get decent WiFi speeds, so I thought I’d remove the RT-AX89X and just use the XT8’s. This was much better, easy to configure and using Ethernet backhaul, the WiFi speeds are much better. I have split the 6G WiFi off so that ax enabled devices can connect to it. After settling down, I’m getting consistently about 750mbps around the house and even the full 900mbps through the speed test page in the Asus webpage.
I returned the RT-AX89X and will continue to use the XT8’s. I get excellent coverage around the house and into the garden. The second floor coverage is excellent too, 630mbps+.
If you’re torn between this and the RT-AX89X, then this wins hands down.
Wish I’d have bought the ASUS ZenWiFi network years ago! Ok, I know it’s pricey. But if you work from home in a data intensive job like I do then the ASUS is so worth every penny. From the super easy set up to the blazing fast connection speed to the rock solid stability. I struggled with TP Link Deco P9s for about a year. The Decos were a constant frustration with intermittent connection issues. The straw that broke the camels back when I started having to reset the whole Deco network every month or so. We’ve had the ASUS for about 2 weeks and it’s been absolutely floorless. We run a home network of mainly Apple devices including laptops, iPads, iPhones, and 3 Smart TVs, oh and a PS4. We have a 600MB Virgin Media package and get 600 in the same room as the router (and the room directly above it). Wired connection to one of the nodes is around 450mb. The lowest speed is 200mb in a bedroom. We have a fairly large 4 bed house and we have x4 ASUS to cover the whole house. I believe the max you can go to is 5 units.
Very easy to add the my existing Asus router to make a mesh network. The interface easy to use and very configurable. Gets great signal to part of the house that was previously poor.
Purchased to replace a basic (cheap!) dual-band mesh system I’ve been running with for a couple of years which was starting to throw up some issues, particularly regarding slow device handover and Apple HomeKit disconnections and automation failures.
Installation of the ZenWifi with my existing modem/router should have been easy once I connected the supplied ethernet cable to my existing modem/router. However after almost 4 hours of multiple resets, retries with iPhone app, connecting with laptop, trying different setup configurations, the ZenWifi units would just not connect to the internet. At this point I had the packaging all ready for a return when I thought ‘one more try’ but, this time, I disconnected the SUPPLIED ethernet cable connecting the master unit to my TP-Link modem router and used an old one of my own – bingo! – had the units setup and connected in a couple of minutes. Moral of this story is to never fully trust a connecting cable supplied with the product!
The difference compared to my old setup is phenomenal. Full internet speed via wifi with all iOS and MacOS devices everywhere in the house, including the back garden, despite the fact that the house is 18th Century with 2 foot thick walls. All IoT devices work flawlessly. Wireless file transfer to my NAS is 4 to 5 times faster that with the old mesh system. Stability seems as solid as a rock. Haven’t even bothered to ‘tweak’ any settings as the default out of the box configuration seems to work just fine – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!. In saying that the configuration options are plentiful, either accessed via the phone app or the web interface.
In summary, although relatively expensive, this system is worth every penny if you have a need to bolster your WiFi and have a multitude of devices to connect, including some with WiFi 6. Just be wary of using the supplied ethernet cable if you have setup problems! Highly recommended.
The saviour of home working!!! Our BT speed through most of lockdown, during the day, was hovering around 2-3mbs, and that’s connected via wire, not wireless. Needless to say 2 people working from home trying to do video calls was impossible. Finally I invested in a 5g router, and to assist the signal around the house purchased this bundle. What a difference. Over 5g we are seeing speeds north of 50 even as high as 300. I paid for pro installation which, value for money and ease, was money well spent.
Currently working at either end of my house through multiple walls.
Some minor niggles which I forgive easily given its performance …
The install wizard should be expanded to cover the different modes of use and not assume a router mode install. Initially I ran it in access point mode until I worked out how to get rid of my BT home hub (DrayTek Vigor 130 in case this helps anyone). I found some reliability issues /poor stability with the wired clients list, and setting up static DHCP assignments more awkward than it should be.
Don’t understand why buying the black version is more expensive.
Bottom line though – excellent.
Purchased to replace my ISP-supplied router after studying reviews of many alternative tri-band routers. I bought a third AX6600 at the same time to extend coverage, but coverage and performance is so good from the two included devices that I think I might return the extra one.
Reasons for rating: guest network and mesh network support, performance, included network protection, unobtrusive appearance, ability to assign specific IP addresses to specific devices + many more configuration controls and tools, and it was very simple to set up.
Power on, set up, and presto! Very satisfied with the purchase.
In the past I always had to go to some lengths to set up a network configuration that would give me the speeds I want consistently (300+ mbps) throughout the place. It was usually comprised of multiple APs and / or power line repeaters and / or anything else you can think of. I recently moved to a new place, which presented new challenges, but after reading several reviews I decided to get this set of two routers. I followed the instructions to set them up, which took about 10 minutes, and then placed one router in each corner of the property (~12 m apart with 3 walls in between). I now have consistent speeds between 300mbps and 450mbps through the apartment and also have strong signal on all outdoor devices, doorbell, cameras, etc. Very satisfied.
I’ve had so many different wifi systems, including the most recent Google Mesh Wifi. None of them have been able to penetrate my Edwardian double brick walls. Until this! It’s connecting at 2000Mbps through two double brick internal walls when the google system could hardly get a weak signal through (50Mbps).
And it’s smart. I’ve connected one of the four points (I bought two sets of two) to powerline backhaul and put it in my garden office. It priorities the powerline instead of, what google does, flip flopping back to the wireless backhaul.
Clicking a weblink on a mobile phone opens the page instantly. Before it would take a second or so. Or just give up.
I should’ve bought these a year ago. Expensive but they work amazingly well.
The only negative would be, it took a few attempts to update the firmware. And the app, and web app, are geared to people who know what they are doing with technology. Which means they are highly configurable but probably confusing for the layman.
Does what it says on the tin and the mobile app works a treat and very easy to install and much more stable by the sounds of things since firmware updates and had no issues since installing and I have 4 units, overkill but peace of mind should I need to extend the wifi to remote areas or outbuildings or outside for a social gathering etc..
These units can cope with higher speeds than cheaper ones to it all depends on your needs and future proofing I guess and the type of wifi signal you are trying to boost and your current internet speeds.
Nice solid mesh system. Not the best of speeds but certainly up there with the best. No problems with WiFi5 clients connecting on a WiFi6 setup. The WiFi backhaul is stable and overall system performance is great. Some clients are not discovered right away even if they are pinging just fine. For example, one NAS on a wired connect came up on the client list right away while another of the same brand and same model, also a wired connect came up on the list of clients after 3 days.
However, one thing the XT8 does not like is any other brand extender being present on the network. It allows the extenders to get connected and stay connected. After a few minutes of random time period, clients connected to the extender do not have internet access. I have tested by setting up the same name SSID with same credentials as well as a different named SSID for the extender. It is as if that traffic to and fro from the clients on the extender is blocked! Basically ASUS is telling you to get additional ASUS nodes ONLY if you wish to extend the WiFI coverage. Therefore you might as well throw away your collection of extenders if you wish to fancy a WiFi6 mesh network brought to you by ASUS. Please note that the extenders cannot be a part of the mesh, and the XT8 want no part of them in any which way.
IMHO ASUS should be upfront and say that they do not permit any other brand extender to be a part of the ASUS WiFI network.
These are a good looking and highly functional set of WiFi Mesh routers. They are easy to set up and both the Web GUI and mobile app are functional and easy to use. The web GUI features layer 7 application analysis allowing you to view your top used apps and devices. It also allows visibility of security events to see what attacks are being blocked. I’ve owned previous ASUS routers and found them reliable so have high hopes for this one. The mesh provides gret signal coverage all around my house where previously I would have dead spots and weak signal in certain areas.
USB storage allows access to your data from inside or outside your network and can act as a UPNP, iTunes or other (SAMBA) media server. I haven’t quite figured this out properly yet and having problems streamin mp3 from an iphone where this works from a laptop.
Help is widely available from ASUS but is limited detail and I have yet to try contacting support.
It was very easy to set up with the ASUS router app and the WiFi signal and speed is hugely improved now. Highly recommended when paired with a compatible AiMesh router.
It was very easy to set up with the ASUS router app and the WiFi signal and speed is hugely improved now. Highly recommended when paired with a compatible AiMesh router.
These are amazing. Was very sceptical because of the price but you definitely get your monies worth. Excellent range my plusnet hub would not reach my office and when it did it gave 2mb but now the main node which I have plugged in sat next to my router covers over and above the range I needed and gives me the full 57mb speed. Although the 2nd node is in my office which I can make use of my 4 devices. I now have a reliable range across the house and the entire street! Love the parent controls as I can switch off the access to the Internet when they are not listening. Not explored the full features but this more than surpasses my expectations. Wireless 6. Fantastic kit!!!
This router replaces a 3 pack of Google Nest Wifi pucks in a 3 bedroom house. The speed is blazingly fast and on my wired and wifi 6 devices I am getting nearly close to the max of my gigabit connection when in range. The speeds have also improved in the devices upstairs where I saw a drop previously in some rooms however I am doubtful of the 4400sq claimed range. My house is only 1500 sq foot and the rear security cameras which were previously covered by the Google Nest Wifi cut off intermittently and they are located about 5m away in line of sight of the router behind a single wall. All in all, the upgrade has improved my performance heavily for most devices apart from those on the outskirts which is basically the camera’s.
I have coupled this with an existing ASUS WiFi Router I have at home (GT-AX11000) and it seamlessly connected using AiMesh.
The whole setup was straightforward and only took a few minutes with excellent coverage compared to previous mesh routers I tried (Google WiFi and many tp-link models).
I have coupled this with an existing ASUS WiFi Router I have at home (GT-AX11000) and it seamlessly connected using AiMesh.
The whole setup was straightforward and only took a few minutes with excellent coverage compared to previous mesh routers I tried (Google WiFi and many tp-link models).
Easy setup, simple to secure. Full coverage throughout the house and gardens BUT 2 units are not enough, 3 is a minimum I’ve gone for 4 units since I live in a sprawling bungalow with a lot of garden.
You must follow the instructions for multi unit setup to ensure they all communicate properly but simple to follow and they do work.
No signal drop off even in the furthest part of my garden.
Ideal for our new norm of home working.
I have had the devices up and running for 3 weeks, I have 2 WFH setups using teams and zoom regularly and 2 teens using google classroom for schooling as well as SKY TV and 4 Sky Q mini boxes and 4 phones plus tables all running on the meshed network and all connected to Virgin media 350Mbit connection. I have had no issues so far so all looks very good. The most difficult thing was connecting the Sky router and the printer wirelessly
I got fed up of my family blaming me for poor wifi, and fed up of me being on 24 hour call out to fix wifi issues that are impossible to fix anyway, and just a few mins later everything goes back to normal in any case, and then I get blamed for messing around with it! So to improve my wellbeing I thought I’d buy a mesh wifi system. We live in a converted barn, big but not huge at around 3,500 sq feet across two floors. It’s long, if you imagine a barn, and the broadband enters at one end of the barn, so wifi is variable at best at the other end. I’ve tried all manner of repeaters but they’re temperamental and patchy.
I installed this yesterday as so far it’s excellent. It has three units and is ever so slightly fiddly to set up I found. The app is amazing and my tip is to use that to optimise the location of the units in the first few hours and days. Wifi is now super fast everywhere and so far, zero dropouts, but I will keep you posted. I’ve connected to my broadband provider’s router and it’s fine. I’ve left the wifi on from the broadband provider’s router too so we have two networks until I’m brave enough to switch off the old one to save energy and minimise interference.
One tiny issue I have is on look/ feel/ quality: I expected the units to be weighty like a SONOS speaker or small bag of sugar but they’re a bit lightweight so they don’t look or feel that premium. And the plugs are bulky and ugly. To save a few pence the manufacturer has integrated the transformer into the plug, not the unit, and then on top of that you also have to select a UK plug fitting adapter which you slide on the the already-ugly plugs making them feel quite wobbly and fragile. A bit cheeky with a product costing over 300.
Update June 2021: I’m about three months in now, and it started being temperamental about six weeks ago to the point I almost returned it or smashed it up out of frustration. I did some reading and the advice was to switch on a setting which reboots it once a day. I’ve set this for 3am, and since then it’s been pretty infallible. The kids are amazed by the wifi they can get in the garden as well as in every nook and cranny of the house.
Nonetheless I’ve marked it down a point as it still drops out occasionally and the issues I had can’t be excused on a 300 piece of kit from a major manufacturer.
I installed this yesterday as so far it’s excellent. It has three units and is ever so slightly fiddly to set up I found. The app is amazing and my tip is to use that to optimise the location of the units in the first few hours and days. Wifi is now super fast everywhere and so far, zero dropouts, but I will keep you posted. I’ve connected to my broadband provider’s router and it’s fine. I’ve left the wifi on from the broadband provider’s router too so we have two networks until I’m brave enough to switch off the old one to save energy and minimise interference.
One tiny issue I have is on look/ feel/ quality: I expected the units to be weighty like a SONOS speaker or small bag of sugar but they’re a bit lightweight so they don’t look or feel that premium. And the plugs are bulky and ugly. To save a few pence the manufacturer has integrated the transformer into the plug, not the unit, and then on top of that you also have to select a UK plug fitting adapter which you slide on the the already-ugly plugs making them feel quite wobbly and fragile. A bit cheeky with a product costing over 300.
Update June 2021: I’m about three months in now, and it started being temperamental about six weeks ago to the point I almost returned it or smashed it up out of frustration. I did some reading and the advice was to switch on a setting which reboots it once a day. I’ve set this for 3am, and since then it’s been pretty infallible. The kids are amazed by the wifi they can get in the garden as well as in every nook and cranny of the house.
Nonetheless I’ve marked it down a point as it still drops out occasionally and the issues I had can’t be excused on a 300 piece of kit from a major manufacturer.
Solved problem of not getting a signal in various rooms due to 9 inch thick solid walls. Had tried various powerline wifi units with varying degrees of limited success. Highly recommend this product. Easy to set up straight from box
The wi fi signal between the two units seems very strong which in turn gives excellent coverage throughout my property. I have previously used wifi extenders, but this works much more reliably with improved stability.
It’s not cheap but a reliable home WiFi is so important these days, I couldn’t recommend this enough.
The App is also very intuitive. Now able to to turn off the WiFi on any device as required. So can turn off the children’s WiFi on a timer or whenever appropriate. Great all round.
After installing this, I now have full WiFi strength all over the house. I installed the main router in the same spot as my old router in the bedroom, and then the second unit in the kitchen directly beneath, and between them they easily provide full WiFi coverage throughout this entire old house.
I am an experienced IT pro, so I expected to do a fair bit of customization on this unit. More on that later.
The basics:
Initial setup is pretty easy. The app finds the devices and the node attaches to the master pretty easily as part of the setup. As we are all advised, I updated the firmware during initial install, to get off on the right foot. This went well, except the node had a bit of a meltdown and needed to be manually powered off and restarted, after which everything went well.
One problem I did run into related to power. These things are really hard to find right now. I bought mine from the Amazon UK store, but they were shipped from the EU with EU-style 2-prong plugs. So, I went back to Amazon and bought a pair of EU->UK adapters. Problem solved.
Next came placement. You want to strike the balance between the devices being widely enough separated to cover the whole space, but close enough that they maintain good communication with each other. I am in a 250 year-old set of cottages with 18-inch thick solid stone walls, so this is not a trivial challenge.
Initially, I tried to live with just the Wifi backhaul between the nodes. This was OK but the layout of the property really compromised the signal. (If you click on AIMesh in the control interface – app or web admin page – It will classify the connection OK/Good/Great, so it’s pretty easy).
So, next I tried a hard-wired backhaul using NetGear PowerLine adapters to pipe Gigabit over the house electrical wiring. This improved the backhaul connection considerably. However, the connection is not always really stable and this caused a number of remote mesh node dropouts, with consequent internet disconnection for any clients attached to that node. It also sometimes caused the remote node to lose its mind a bit and need rebooting.
So, eventually, I caved, bought a really long Cat6 ethernet cable and wired them together. The ASUS picked up the connection instantly and connectivity between master/node is excellent. Since I have had this arrangement in place, everything has been super stable and performance excellent. As a bonus, I have been able to mess around with placement, since Cat 6 cables can be really long, and I have been able to find unobtrusive locations for master and node but still get excellent signal coverage.
Now, configuration:
To set the context, here are the things I needed to set up:
1. Custom LAN subnet and DHCP configuration, including many static leases
2. Virtual server port forwarding to Kubernetes and OpenVPN server
3. QoS to keep my son’s gaming habit from overwhelming everybody
4. DoS protection
5. Custom SSL certificate and CA for device management
6. Multiple guest networks
7. Dynamic DNS
I quickly found that I didn’t like the app for managing all of the above. Others with simpler configurations may like it just fine. Or perhaps it’s just that I am too used to the more traditional management UIs using an embedded web server. Anyway, I abandoned the fancy app and HTTP’d directly to the master node (immediately reconfiguring it to HTTPS only) from where I found myself in the excellent, familiar, but subtly expanded web admin interface. Everything an experienced ASUS user would expect to find is exactly where it should be. (I don’t understand why some vendors think it’s a good idea to continually rearrange an established UI.). You will also find new areas to manage things like the mesh. (The Traffic Analyzer is particularly nice – good job ASUS.)
So, in summary, an excellent, capable, powerful mesh router, but you probably want to find a way to leverage the hardwired ethernet backhaul to get all of its potential.
Wifi6 is a game changer. We get 910Mbps to the house, getting around 850 on average over WiFi. We went for the one box rather than the pair as we live in a fairly small new build with walls made of tissue paper and get pretty good signal all through the house considering it’s just the one router.
What I will say is we had to make sure to dedicate one of the Tri band wavelengths to the AX WiFi 6 to get the best speeds.
It took seconds to setup as advertised using the slick iPhone app. The house is now absolutely drenched in super quick wifi and I am I getting the maximum out of my Virgin Media subscription + 10%! Don’t hesitate, this device is superb!
Not had need to delve deeper into the browser based settings yet nor have I setup a second node with a backhaul so cannot comment on either.
Performance and stability is better than anything I have used to date. I have the satellite unit at the far reaches of my usual WiFi range where I can’t get a good signal with just the one unit, but adding the satellite gives me very stable and fast WiFi in this area. I’m not getting the full bandwidth this unit is capable of, but considering I’d normally be lucky to get 8Mbps if devices even connect at all, to be getting 400Mbps and rock solid stability tells me all I need to know.
This is for the 2 set XT8/AX6600 unit.
I have had this product for a few months now in a three floor house, where wired connections are not an option. On a wireless connection across floors, I have an unbelievable increased speed compared to my previous mesh router. While I used to get 40mbps across the wifi on speedtest, I now have an insane 600! This is with a wifi dedicated backhaul.
I am running over virgin media. Note: I achieved 200-400 mbps on wifi until I switched the virgin media hub-3 into modem mode and disabled its router function – that brought me up to >600 and with more stability.
Love the various tech options in the router interface and the very good phone app. I can monitor and turn off internet on individual devices if needed.
I have used many wifi routers over the years (Asus, linksys, d-link, portal) and I’m really impressed with this equipment. The only niggle is sometimes my iPhone-7 can get confused when switching between routers while walking through zones. The new Asus firmware update seems to help but need more experience to be sure.
Finally, I found setup to be quite easy and trouble free, just needed to follow the instructions with the original setup.
Superb coverage and speeds, setup was easy enough, and the web ui is pretty well laid out and easy to use. The mobile app is ok, a lot of actual control is only available in the web ui. I had a cheap mesh network before (Tenda MW6 with 3 nodes) that whilst a massive improvement over the WiFi coverage and speed provided by Virgin’s routers, could still be overwhelmed if everyone in the household was on Zoom , Teams, signed into various VPNs, with someone streaming video, and someone else gaming etc. This has been rock solid so far, and simple things like being able to choose that the 2.4ghz and 5ghz channels are single or separate SSID’s can make a big difference to productivity. Other basics, like being allowed to choose what the LAN ip address for the primary router is, meant setting up did not require reconfiguring everything on the network (again).
Lots of advanced features that I do not currently need, but may in the future, and a mostly sensible and straightforward layout so I’ve never felt lost in the menus.
A lot of the features, like AiProtection and QoS, require acceptance of Trend Micro T&C’s that are pretty invasive from a privacy perspective.
Assuming you don’t need one of the features that Trend Micro cover, and can thus ignore/decline their T&C requests, I’d highly recommend these even though they are quite pricey.
Very good extender on Virgin WiFi. Pit router into Modem mode and run the Mesh Wifi through the house. Also works great as hardwired if you’re close to the hub and extender hub….pricey but for total control over devices think it’ll pay dividends managing the kids screen time!
I wasn’t sure if I needed one or two, as we only have a small semi detached, but we have an outdoor space with large tv at the bottom of the garden and even with extenders etc. has made coverage there checkered, with either no signal or about 2-3mbps..
First job is to go onto Virgin Hub admin site and change router to modem mode. Then plugged in two Asus units, downloaded app and just followed the instructions. Firmware update (bit challenging) later and boom!
Main unit is downstairs at the front of the house and other is upstairs at the back. Now get 210mbps near the main unit, 90-165 upstairs and even 48mbps at the bottom of the garden, approx. 20m from the house. Stable, reliable broadband at last. Virgin must be loosing hundreds of customers with their awful hardware, I think they should have a chat with Asus!
Can’t get the node to work wirelessly without a ton of continual dropouts. Removed the node and it worked fine. Might try wiring in the second node to see if that helps.
Update : Wired in the second node and now seems to be working very well. No dropouts , great speed. My advice would be to not bother with this unless u can wire it i
Superlatives fail me. This kit is 200 cheaper than Netgear’s Orbi WiFi 6, but in my large house offers better coverage and faster connections, observed via a fantastic iOS app that has the added bonus of free parental controls and security protection. Setup took no more than four minutes and the firmware in both units updated to the latest version without a hitch in the next five. Rarely have I used kit that it so well designed that it’s use seems completely effortless. Highly recommended.
Update: Several weeks on, this wonderful kit continues to delight – no issues whatsoever. A firmware update was automagically delivered with minimal intervention, parental controls functioning well.
hese look great and are fantastic pricey but worth it i never got a signal in my kitchen and bedroom but now 500meg all over the house no dropouts low ping on my ps5 will tide me over until wifi 6a is ou
I relied on the Virgin router, had 1gig speed but wifi reception was unreliable even from 4-5 meters away in the kids room, I resisted paying for a separate router but the kids had enough and i invested in buying this after researching a lot – i must say it is incredible , took me 10 minutes to connect , made the virgin router a modem and now we have 500-600 mg on the phones from the room and 200 from the computers in the room where we had unreliable 10mb before. incredible product Asus Mesh AX with wifi 6. amazing
We have a house over three floors and had continually suffered from WiFi connectivity issues. Range extenders helped slightly but didn’t cure the problem. However, the Asus system has made a huge difference. Very simple to set up – less than 30mins from unboxing to having it all set up and ready to go. The app is very simple to use and manage. Had five people working remotely, three children home schooling with live lessons on with no discernible drop in performance. Units are very unobtrusive and gentle on the eye. Yes, the system is at the more expensive end of the range but the removal of IT Helpdesk role at home is worth it!
After much research, I decided to spend a bit more to get the latest WiFi 6 mesh technology.
The XT8 set seemed to be a good option for me, as it included 2 mesh points, latest standards, and subscription free parental controls.
My setup is a virgin media SuperHub 3 in modem mode, 500mb connection, and the ASUS routers connected to each other via wireless backhaul.
When connected to the mesh point with an iPhone 12 (so I assume using WiFi 6), I am able to see 520mb+ in speed test apps.
My devices all seem to get really good speeds regardless of where in the property I am, and it has around 30 devices in total connected.
I also use some of the port forwarding etc, which all works great.
The downside to this great kit though is that it can be unstable.
I’ve tried various configurations, but every once in a while it just crashes and disconnects every device. This is not ideal when everyone is so reliant at the moment.
A simple hard reboot solves the issue quickly, but my previous Ubiquity kit just worked consistently without issue.
On balance, the kit is really good, so the stability may be tolerable. But I’m hoping a new firmware will be made available to resolve the root cause.
I researched many different mesh network ‘extenders’. I was looking for an AX wireless system that could handle up to 40 devices and could extend wireless throughout my stone built 4 bedroom house. I was slightly concerned about setup having read the reviews however having set this system up I would say that as long as you set the two routers up in the same room and follow the instructions the setup was simple. I also upgraded the firmware after the setup and it took in total about 15 mins to setup both routers, a new network, and upgrade. Post setup I now have full wireless around the hose (where previously I had one bar in some rooms) and I have one of the routers for the ground floor and the other on the first floor landing.
I would thoroughly recommend this system if you want to strengthen Wi-fi, connect many devices and stabilise usage for wfh/ learn from home.
Easy to set up initially, however once i upgraded the firmware and restarted the router I had to unplug all the nodes and begin abd bring the nodes and router physically together again to resync them. The main problem I had was the older laptop couldn’t see the new network. After uch googling, I realised this product defaults to WIFI-6, and older devices cannot pick it up. Even though websites say that wifi-6 is backwardly compatable it didnt pick up my old devices.
Eventually I found in the app I could disable “ax” (WIFI-6) and it reverted to “ac” (WIFI-5). The app is very detailed in what you can do. Would highly recommend. At least it is future-proof, as my older devcices get upgraded in the next few years will switch it back to wifi-6 . No more deadspots. I have a large 5 bed L shaped house. router is at one end, one node I placed upstairs at the bend and final router at the far end of the L. So the app shows the far end connects to the middle node back to the router. I get full download/ipload speed at all points. Amazing especially after trying extenders, powerline adaptrrs, more powerful rotuters etc over the years.
Using the broadband provider’s router, I’d struggled with poor wifi for quite some time – coverage was bad, and performance wasn’t great either. With a 200Mb broadband connection the best speedtest result I could get on any of the wireless devices was around 100Mb, while wired devices got full speed.
The Asus ZenWifi AX was well recommended in online reviews, and looked like it would suit my use case well. I’d say it took a couple of hours to set up, partly because I have a small home network with a good few devices, and partly because I made a few mistakes in the initial configuration using the iPhone app. I’d recommend using a wired connection and a web browser to get everything set up, if at all possible.
Having had this in place for a couple of months now, the difference is night and day. With the second unit, we get strong coverage all the way to the end of the garden, and throughout the house. It comfortably handles all that we ask of it, and there’s no more complaints from the kids about YouTube videos not streaming properly.
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.
Set up was very easy with the app and within 40 minutes all my devices were up and running (I have 40ish devices) they all appear stable without any drop outs and when I tested my speed around the home and garden I am achieving between 156 and 460mbps so very pleased with the result. The bonus to all this is they also look great rather than your typical router.
I have installed a wired backhaul however I think they are still using the wireless one, I will check this and sort once I get some time to do it. Either way they are working great.
Was a simple installation and setup process, took max 10 minutes. It’s easier if you have a bit more technical knowledge, but can be done as a complete novice. Once you’ve used the mobile app to get the nodes paired, definitely go to the web app as it’s 1000x better and you’ve got a lot more options and gubbins that you can change to enhance performance.
Started out using the 5ghz band 2 as the backhaul link between satellites, and it worked for the most part, but my walls are made from concrete, so decided to go whole hog and put in an ethernet backhaul, which has improved performance from the satellites considerably.
They’re incredibly reliable, just remember to turn off the WiFi on your modem and not plug any other devices into it if you’re using the XT8 in router mode, otherwise you’ll run into IP assigning issues. The XT8 does not work well with DHCP turned off, and i lost all access to them when i tried to use the modem as DHCP server. Involved a factory reset of the whole system.
Performance is amazing, getting an extra 50mbps down when compared to my previous mesh system. These things really can handle anything you can throw at them. Receiving well over 850mbps down when using ethernet from one of the satellites as well, which is pretty decent. WiFi i get just over 600 mbps down, but i do not have a WiFi 6 network card in the laptop, so can be forgiven there.
If you’re looking for a top performance mesh system, this is definitely the answer!
I bought this, as I had major troubles with the netgear night hawk, so I put that one aside and decided to buy something better but more expensive. Its easy to setup, done it in 15mins max. It has lots of functions that can be used and does have a app that can do many tweaks. I like the fact that I can create a mesh network and also I can create guest networks that can seperate the WiFi networks, as I have some WiFi products that can only work on the 2g WiFi. A mesh network mixes 5g and 2g WiFi together to create a seamless WiFi, but that also means some problems with connect with 2g WiFi products. So luckily this product can create seperate WiFi for these situations. U can schedule the box to do a weekly reboot which can keep it working in better shape. Overall brilliant product.
Incredibly easy to add this into/onto an existing Asus router supporting mesh and I did it via the mobile phone app. Fascinating to watch it pair up autonomously, great job to the teams who put all if that together. If I ever need wider coverage I’d happily buy another to extend my mesh. Good range/penetration BTW which was my primary requirement, don’t care as much about bandwidth/speed
I was nervous about spending the money on a router upgrade, considering I only upgraded to my last router, Linksys WRT3200ACM not too long ago. However since working from home, my connection in the “home office” has been anywhere byween 2 and 20mbps (paying for a 360mbps service). After setting up the ASUS XT8, which was simple enough after downloading the app, I am now getting speeds in excess of 200mbps at the furthest point in my house. A device with wifi6 compatibility is getting the full 360mbps with no issues. Even if you don’t have wifi 6, the increased coverage and speed of the XT8 is phenomenal. I highly recommend this, even if you have a modestly sized house, it really does the job.
I have suffering for the long time as my computer was able to receive only 20 -25 Mbs over electrical socket AC1300 adaptors from incoming to the router 350 Mbs and WIFI was nearly dead at the point. I assume it was down to the fact that foil packs with rockwool was fitter in between celling and next level floor. Router was located on ground floor where desktop we located on first. Direct distance between them was about 4 meters.
I have placed one ASUS ZenWiFi AX (XT8) next to the router and put another next to the desktop. So I became able to get all 350 Mbs now, and all other devices connected by WIFI on 5 — 10 meters started receiving Internet around 150 — 300 Mbs.
I became very impressed very fast Internet connection any ware in my 3 floor house and garden.
My only criticism (besides the price) is the interface looks like a website from 2005. ASUS, like all the old school router makers, still can’t design a GUI to save their lives (have they not seen a Google Wifi?). But besides those gripes, the tech inside this little white box is best in class.
Before installing this router I thought I explain my current setup. I have Virgin broadband to fix my black spots, I had connected a long cable from the router to another old SKY router upstairs. This router provided WIFI upstairs. For the back of the house and the garden I used another RJ45 slot on the back of the router to a powerline adapter. In the back of the house I had the powerline adapter this time connected to an old BT router. My son room need faster internet connection to play online, so he also has a wired connection from the router to a network hub in his room. This all worked fine but I did have 3 different WIFI SIDs. It was a pain keeping the other two routers updated.
Setup was easy, I just put my Virgin router into modem mode, then connected my ASUS router to Virgin. I rebooted the ASUS. I installed the app on my iPAD and went straight into setup mode.
With 1 router I now have no blackspot in the house. My WIFI 40% faster in almost every room. The one room that had no WIFI at all was my sons bedroom who plays xBOX. He can play online fine using the new WIFI. He switched from hardwired to WIFI and hasnt noticed any difference.
Overall I very happy with this device, it had made my network quicker and simpler to manage. Note I am only using the 1 router, so cant comment on how it performs with 2.
I have a 3 storey house and a virgin superhub. Am getting great speeds throughout the house. No more deadspots. I hardwired the satellite hub to the main hub after setting them wirelessly when close to each other. Enjoying shutting the net down a 10pm for all devices for the children using parental control. I have had the unit for a couple of months and it is working flawlessly in that time.
Easy to set up, almost plug and play! Amazing coverage, even in the dark spots of the house. I have always struggled, as we live in a older house with solid walls. I have had 3 BT Wholehome routers in the house, but still struggled and they became intermittent. Plus, I am on Virgin 500MB/ps speed, however the BT ones only cover 100MB/ps. With only two boxes, these cover a wider part of the house and reach great speeds…..
Best purchase of the year.
Expensive, but well worth it if you want to cover blackspots and / or increase your speeds in these areas.
Ignore the low reviews.
Really good setup. Funnily enough when I tried to hard wire my sky q box it destroyed the network and meant the node I plugged it into dropped the 5ghz connection between the units.
Removing sky q and putting back to WiFi solved the issues.
This is an issue with sky not ASUS.
Now getting 550mbps on WiFi when I pay for 500mb to the router and get the same speed on wired and WiFi. This is the speed connected to the extra base unit which is connected to the other unit via 5ghz channel.
The app is very good and only web page config has everything and more.
Bought to solve WiFi problems, especially upstairs in bedrooms, replacing BT homehub WiFi which was poor.
Had to update WiFi drivers on one old Lenovo laptop (that use an old Intel Wifi card) to be compatible with WiFi-6 standard, but all other devices just worked immediately. The ZenWifi AX gives much improved transfer speeds, but more importantly is far more reliable – connections no longer drop repeatedly. Basically it just works. Also I was impressed with the ZenWifi management APP on a phone – use of Bluetooth for initial configuration is clever and it remains useful even once all is set up and working.
Arrived today & seems very fast. Super easy set up (plug in, turn on, DL the app & follow the steps on the app). Really simple.
Speed (via Ookla) is the same whether laptop plugged directly in to the Virgin router as a modem (219mbps) as it is plugged in at the satellite on the opposite side of the house, connected only by default wifi backhaul.
This is despite being a big long house, with 4 solid walls plus floor/ceiling in between the 2 nodes.
I will add that the 1st unit is on the floor behind the TV stand (hidden) and the 2nd is on the floor upstairs right by the external wall (i.e. i couldnt get them further away if i tried).
The connection is excellent (-47db) and frankly I’m impressed.
Sadly mine turned up with a damaged cable with the copper visible, so will have to go back, but i’ll be replacing it ASAP.
So far so good, easy to setup and was up and running quickly. No issues so far though it’s early days. Second node is hard wired but via a wireless connection to main hub, connection was still great.
I’ve replaced a bt whole home WiFi setup along with a Netgear X4S router which has cut down the number of units I’ve got in the lounge so whole setup looks alot ‘cleaner’. Only need 2 units and they’re nice looking units so perfect on a shelf or side table.
I bought these (plus a separate unit – to make 3 in total), to replace another mesh system that occasionally dropped out on me. Once I had understood the benefits of wifi 6, the decision was a no-brainer. There’s some great videos on YouTube worth watching!
FYI, I chose to have 3 units based on having a modified 1960’s house – with lots of steel inside it. I have deployed one on the ground floor, one in a spare bedroom and one in the loft. We are getting truly amazing speeds – especially those family members with wifi 6 enabled phones!
There are many really good features on the devices – but one of the best for me is the ability to schedule a ‘reboot’ – which I do every morning at 4am. (If you don’t reboot your router on a regular basis, then you really should!).
Expected more of a faff after reading the reviews, but found the setup reasonably straightforward. These were purchased to replace an old home LAN setup that was increasingly unstable, with intermittent dropouts.
Used the quick start guide – downloaded the phone app, plugged in the APs and updated the firmware in 10 to 15 minutes. I use double NAT, with the home LAN the only connection into the ISP modem. And with a few home devices set for 10.x IP range, needed to change the factory DHCP settings. Found it much easier to use the browser based manager, rather than the phone app, to do this. Still took a few goes to figure out (you have to reset the host / gateway IP on one page first, and then the DHCP range on another page second), but other than that it’s quite a nice and clear set of features, controls and monitors.
Am not currently using the Trend micro provided monitoring feature; if you would like to use the features must agree and consent to their data collection policy:
“Please note that your information will be collected by Trend Micro through AiProtection, Traffic analyzer, Apps analyzer, Adaptive QoS and web history. ”
Not all of those features should require Trend Micro to have access to your home LAN activity, so it loses a star for that.
Otherwise, solid and fast enough connection, with good coverage through several Victorian brick walls.
This is lightning quick, however it is very expensive and I would not recommend purchasing this unless you can make use of the fast wifi. It is also very expensive for 1 unit, around 230 or 400 for 2.
Wifi 6 is quite new and most likely will only work on wifi electronics from 2020 so you won’t be able to make use of speeds above 30mb/s unless you upgrade.
The coverage of the wifi is also not as large a range as advertised and struggles at transferring data between floors. The distance also affects speeds, so wifi speeds dropped to around 4mb/s at further distances.
The software that comes with the mesh network is very solid and robust.
It also functions great as a router, and I’ve replaced my router with this uni
Connected to a Virginmedia hub 3 modem. Easy to set-up, literally took me minutes and has provided me with great coverage and very stable. The node is placed the other side of the house – roughly 17 metres away, passing through 3 brick walls and the connection is strong over he whole house and garden. The phone app is informative and intuitive to use. The actual router and node are quite large and boxy compared to some, not particularly stream lined – in size about the same as an average paperback book but maybe two – three times as thick. I’ve not really experienced any issues or problems, so despite the high price tag I think it’s worth it.
I finally succumbed and decided to buy a mesh system and after much cogitation, went for the ZenWiFi AX.
I have to say, I have been incredibly impressed. Setup was all very straightforward and went without a hitch – even if the instructions are, to say the least, “sparse”! But having got the units connected to my BT modem, and the node installed some 40 feet away from the router (both downstairs), I now have an incredible strong signal all around the house (4 bed – 2,500 square feet). Previously whilst sitting in bed surfing, my phone would struggle to connect reliably because the signal there was so weak. 5GHz was essentially unusable and 2.4GHz flaky at best. I now have an “Excellent” signal according to my phone and 600 Mbit sync speed. 4k Netflix streams start *instantly* and since installing on Sunday, I have not had a single dropout or disconnect on any of the dozen or so devices around the house.
WiFi 6 is perhaps overkill for me at the moment, but I figured this would be an upgrade which should last a while and inevitably more and more of the bits of kit I buy will be WiFi 6 enabled. Also the dedicated back-haul on WiFi 6 is probably beneficial, gaining higher speeds for any given signal strength.
So all in all, I am delighted with these units. They look good – not too intrusive – are easy to install and seem to be very high performing and very reliable. I cannot fault them, even if 400 is quite a lot of money to spend on a WiFi upgrade!
I have used a few routers in my time….BT home hub, Sky, and I am now on the Virgin Media 1Gbps with their super hub 4.
That is a very good router but failed to deliver signal – I live in a large Victorian House with extension and loft conversion and including a Garden Room leading to the medium sized garden….
I could not get WiFi in the 2nd reception room….or the loft or the Garden… I used power lines (due to our electrics would only connect downstairs and not to the upstairs sockets)
Boosters always needed restarting and were unstable…. then I found Mesh networks and ASUS ZENWiFI ….it just works !
I have put the VM router into modem mode…. using a primary ASUS node as the router, then connected the other 2 nodes within a couple of metres of the main node. (Once they set up unplug and find a suitable area for them further afield). It is important to actually put VM /BT /Sky router into modem mode then once it has restarted I turned everything off …then connected and turned everything back on and set up was then seamless.
One is placed on the first floor gaming room, and one is placed in the Kitchen…I am now getting maximum throughput to the point of 750Mbps in every downstairs room of the house. About 600Mbps on the first floor.
The Garden and Loft I get about 100Mbps (they are quite a distance from the node) so I then purchased a further 2 nodes (one for the Loft itself and one for the Garden Room) – so now I get 650Mbps in the Garden (right to the bottom of the Garden where we have another seating area) and the same speeds in the loft.
Very happy that we can finally connect everywhere and with all our devices (total of 60 devices within the household)
I also Game and I downloaded a 80GB game in about 15min !! (Connected to the node via 2.5Gb Wan port)
Very happy that these have enabled us to actually utilise the service we paid for from VM.
And obviously we can take them with us if ever we move.
One last thing : i think its always good to reboot once every 3-4 days so I have set up a timed reboot to occur Mon & Fri at 04:00am
The only minus point is lack of documentation for expert options.
Easy to set up
Stable
Look good out on the side or shelf as very stylish
Excellent speeds only bested by Orbi I am told)
Highly recommend 9/10
Have been using Asus routers for a while now in an AIMesh so when I wanted to upgrade to wifi 6 I naturally stuck with Asus. If you into IT then they are simple to setup and less nerdy shall we say than many routers on the market now so they blend into the house a little better. Like the AIMesh setup as tried google wifi for a while and whilst they give good range and simplicity wanted more control over my router so ended up with them sat behind another router which then gives you the Double NAT problem.
Performance wise I am getting faster connection speed on my wifi 6 enabled laptop than I get over my gigabit wired network. I’ve got a dedicated wired backbridge between the routers as already had one setup but if you don’t one of the 5GHz bands is used purely for that and can’t be used to connect other devices to so whilst it in theiory has 1 2.4 Ghz band and 2 5 Ghz bands you can only use 1 of each in AIMesh mode.
Yes they are an expensive investment but if you want to upgrade to wifi 6 whilst still supporting all legacy hardware then these are a great option.
My 4 bedroom house is now filled with fill signal wifi that is extremely fast and stable, my previous BT wireless router would continuously drop its signal and perform poorly. Nothing like this with this Asus, perfect wifi all the time.
The quality of the units is typically Asus, very nice build quality, even the box feels quality.
The setup was absolutely pain free using the asus app, just needed to plug the two routers in and it was up and running without issue within a few minutes!
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 4×4 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 4×4 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!
After watching videos on youtube i decided to buy asus zenwifi ax6600 mesh system as it is future proof and its cheaper than the lynksy velop and the net gear orbie wifi 6 mesh systems. the reviews on amazon are abit mixed so i know i took a chance when buying this system. The set up was easy i was up and running within 10 minutes. I put my virgin media v3 hub in modem mode and connected the asus router via ethernet cable used the asus app to set up a new ssid. the nodes had a firmware update which took 5 mins to update. once then set up was complete and then placed the routerin the front room and 1 node upstairs. I have full wifi around the house. Its a medium size house with thick walls and i now get very good speeds in the garage room/games room. In the front and back garden which gives my smart cameras perfect connections. As of yet i have had 1 problem with my wifes apple iphone it dropped off the wifi a couple of times but reconnects straight back. I have not experienced this on my android phone. I would highly recommend. Finally getting the speeds i pay for.
I have a fairly large 5 bedroom house and have always struggled to get decent wifi in some areas. I had been using a Netgear tri- band router with powerline extensions, but coverage was still not ideal. following the COVID 19 situation, I found myself competing for bandwidth with my wife and 2 children. With all the MS teams, Zoom meetings, streaming and gaming going on, my broadband was struggling.
My initial plan was to get an Asus GT-AX11000 as the main router with the ZenWiifi XT8 as nodes in a mesh system. I was however unable to get hold of that router (at a decent price anyway). so I thought I would give the XT8 a go on their own.
Set up using the mobile app was simple, basically it guides you through setting up one unit (doesn’t matter which) as the router and then set up the other as a node nearby. Then move the node to another location. To my surprise the first unit alone was sending out a strong enough single to cover over 80% of the house. I put the node upstairs and got a good strong connection to the router. Coverage now spread to the rest of the house and also was able to get decent speeds outside in the garden and in front of the house. I was able to wire in a few devices by ethernet cable into the node. There was no difference in speed to the than anything wired into the node vs the router.
This is a tri-band router, with a 2.4ghz and two 5ghz bands, the units connect to each other wirelessly via the 2nd 5ghz band which is dedicated for that purpose, unfortunately I didn’t have the ability to connect them by ethernet which would free that band up. However you can combine the 2 bands into a single one using a feature known as smart connect. Coverage and speed are both great and Iwas also able to move around the whole house and garden without losing connection. There are lots of features, many are of course in common with other Asus routers.
Pros
Great coverage
Stable, have not lost any coverage or connection to the node so far
Aesthetically pleasing, ie doesn’t look like an alien spider
Great parental control features, can turn off any device connected and can even limit what can be done ie stop streaming/ gaming, but allow surfing etc
Dual Wan, was able to plug in a 4G USB dongle with a data sim. If the primary connection goes down, The router can be set to automatically switch to a 4G network, tried this by unplugging my modem and it works very well
Has other built in feature like Aiprotection and Aicloud
App is easy to use
Straightforward setup
Expandable, you can add further nodes/ Asus routers
Future proof, has wifi 6 and can be used with other newer Asus Routers later on as nodes in a mesh
Cons
Expensive, you may be better off considering the wifi 5 version, CT8 which is similar in features but significantly cheaper
Complex, although the app is simple, web configuration is more complex and the is a bewildering array of options
Firmware issues, I have not had problems, but many have, sometimes a firmware release may cause problems, but it is possible to rollback to previous, I would advise waiting a little while before updating to the latest firmware
Worth it if you want screaming wifi over the whole house.
Easy to setup. Not sure why people are having issues? Using the app it is a doddle!
I’m using this with 160mhz backhaul currently. May upgrade to gigabit backhaul in time.
Why?
The node can lose signal sometimes. Must be firmware issue. Signal is ‘great’.
The fix so far is a scheduled router reboot (automated) at 5am daily.
So this package is really good once installed but there are a few things that would have helped greatly pre and during installation.
First up I have BT Infinity with the fastest line speed possible in my location.
I replaced the modem a few days earlier (a new Draytek Vigor 130 and tested that and there were much fewer/no issues compared to the old EIC one).
I am not a techie so some of this will be obvious no no’s if you are, but here goes..
Make sure you give your new network a new name. Once following the instructions on the app, make sure you update the firmware on all the units (takes about 10 minutes) otherwise they will not link up.
As for ethernet cabling if that is the plan (I have 4 units including the router) then you have to directly ethernet cable 2 units to the router when installing (although you are best to set them up in a large room together with just the router cabled to the modem and all other devices switched off).
The other unit/node was daisy chained by ethernet cable from one of the 2 nodes cabled directly to the router.
The third ethernet slot on the router links to an 8 port TP Link switch which seems to work fine.
Overall coverage/speed and lack of outages have been excellent in the first 2 days. It’s pricey and a little awkward to set up but so far I’m very pleased with it.
I was contemplating the cost and mess of having my house CAT 6 cabled until a clever IT guy at work suggested a mesh network. And he was right, I now have access all over the house at up to 200Mbps, and even good numbers in the garden.
Is it expensive? Yes. Is it worth it in a house full of kids? Definitely.