ASUS ZenWiFi Whole-Home Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6E System (ET8 2PK), Coverage up to 5,500 sq.ft & 6+Rooms, 6600Mbps, New 6GHz Band, AiMesh,Instant Guard

I recently cut the cord on cable TV and upgraded to 1Gbps (fastest I can go in my area) service to my house. I started out the with typical all-in-one modem-router provided by my ISP but I was having the typical 1st world problem of coverage, lack of flexibility/control, and stability - so I used the money I saved on my cable bill to splurge on Mesh WIFI. It was between the Zen and Netgears Orbi and I ultimately picked Zen - I cant imagine going wrong with either, but the Zen was a bit more affordable and I used the extra money to pick up a pair of MoCA 2.5 adapters (Hitron HT-EM4) to backhaul the paring mesh node by wire vs. wireless.

I like that it is compact and that the lid works like it should, but I feel it is too sensitive. I have to leave it out in the open and cant put it under the open shelf area in my bathroom because the shelf (which is 3 above the lid) activates that sensor, thus it stays on and wont work correctly.

I invested in these, they wouldn’t operate as mesh constantly dropping signal. I returned and same issues. ASUS sent new ones. Same issues. I returned a total of 12 units I think. Horrible customer service and communications. (6) months of unstable WiFi

I had a T-Mobile branded Asus router and it worked great for years. It was solid with a very good user interface. I would rarely lose connection with that router.

My house is wired for Ethernet. I searched for a system that worked well with wired backhaul and found some very positive reviews for these units. Because wireless mesh is not needed if you have Ethernet you only need a dual band system. The range and throughput is outstanding, and it solves coverage gaps in my house that I had with the AT&T BGW210-700 gateway and AirTies range extenders. I used 3 units- two in our house and one in our detached garage, and the whole property gets very good coverage now.

I’ve had a 2-pk set for a few weeks now. I configured it and updated firmware and adding devices was simple. The management GUI is nice and modern but it is where some of the bugs are. It reports 6E WiFi devices as 5. I also had initial difficulty joining 6E WiFi cards and contacted ASUS support several times. The resolution was to update Win10 to the 21H1 optional update. Prior to that I made a registry update just to see the 6E band from one of my PCs but it still couldn’t join, until I updated Windows. I discovered this resolution from my own research, without the aide of ASUS support. As to their support, I can’t recommended their e-mail support. They mostly come across as techs I’ve encountered in my career that just want to update/work their tickets vs truly helping the customer—it’s all too common and not unique to ASUS. Also, I still have one ticket open…the ET8 product is not even listed in their product registration pull down menu on their own product registration page. So far I’ve sent a copy of my invoice and provided both serial numbers. Next I’m going to try to just mail them the registration card that came in the unit and see what happens. As for device performance on this mesh network…it’s outstanding. I upgraded to this mesh network from a high end single unit with two repeaters—my device performance is now incredible. I have 49 IPs throughout my property in use. I suspect the management app bugs will get ironed out in time, especially as this product becomes more popular and ASUS gets more end user feedback.

On paper the feature set is great, but I have had consistent issues with this router. Devices just lose connection to the internet, particularly if they are connected to the satellite.

In my experience, the mobile app yield better results when connecting the mesh network for initial setup. For some reason when using a pc, it kept stalling trying to find the node. Only have two computers at home that can use the wifi 6e option, but I bought these so I can have a better connection between my pc and the other appliances that use wifi (12 in total). I dont get slow down spikes when random things being to download around the house anymore.

So to start if you have any sort of issue you are on your own from a Tech Support perspective, they are very responsive and very polite but will never get to troubleshooting you problem, you case goes in a circle and they all repeat the same troubleshooting exercise. Being the ET8 is a newer devices I had a couple of issue s with wifi 6 and the interconnect, plus running vpn connections. I can tell you several months now and just funny to watch my technical support cases circle with no real resolution. As for VPN careful as there is no way to separate VPN connections based on hardware address, which i assume is causing severe performance issues.

The best router that I have bought in a while! Expensive, but worth it if you want high download speeds across all your devices. Comes with wifi 6E standard, so future proof!