Hey all,
I have been looking for this Mesh Wifi (Asus ZenWifi AT8) for a few days and Amazon just price dropped to $719. JB did a deal to price match and using 5% gift cards, paid $683.
The cheapest in a while…
CamelCamelCamel.
In a few words why this mesh system instead of others?
Because they're easy to setup & have a stronger signal, can handle lots of devices.and tri-band (they have a seperate band just for sending traffic back to the router, rather then sharing with other devices).
Other than great signal and easy setup if you have kids they have free trend web filters and you can group kids devices to each kid and set schedules and disconnect their internet at the press of a button.
I have these and they are dreadful. Great when they work, but lots of firmware bugs - even after 2 years.
Drops to the 2.4Ghz backhaul on average daily for no reason (goes from strong to weak signal) and requires both units full power cycle to fix.
Drops internet connection to wifi periodically for a min or so - worst was every 20 mins, but currently notice it a few times a day.
Both of these are common problems.
Have returned mine twice. Last time they said it was a firmware issue that should be fixed in the next update - but it wasnt.
In May for a month the firmware was crashing the units regularly causing them to restart. Took a month for Asus to fix.
The App and user features are great, but this a buggy system that they just cant seem to fix. Great when it works, terrible when it doesnt.
Thanks very much for the information.
Drops to the 2.4Ghz backhaul on average daily
Drops internet connection to wifi periodically.
firmware was crashing.
this a buggy system.
No sorry, I think I'll pass on this deal LOL
Nice summary and I second that.
But that gives me another question to imp.
Why… why do you have these with all these issues…??
Never have that. Have you asked Asus/Whirlpool forums for assistance?
Why on earth are you using 2.4GHz as backhaul? It has dedicated 5GHz band for backhaul
Read again - he isn't.
@bboT: I'm very interested to know how it can use 2.4GHz for backhaul, you either have option to select 5GHz band or hardwired, I can't see anywhere it could use 2.4 band
I will second this….my problem is not as bad as yours. I am using is from last 3 years. But firmware bugs are for real. Someone really has to do his job sincerely before rolling out the firmware
No issue with mine. It was unstable in the beginning when it was dropping off once a fortnight, but subsequent firmware updates fixed it. Has been stable for a long time now.
People with issues may have tinkered with the settings too much. I leave mine untouched.
I had a dropout of the wifi backhaul about once a month when I first set them up so after a couple of months I switched to wired backhaul and they’ve been rock solid ever since. There have been firmware updates since then so when I moved house soon I’ll give wireless backhaul a try again.
Otherwise though they have good coverage of my house (2 storey with one unit upstairs and one downstairs), I’ve configured them for my Exetel NBN so I don’t need Exetel’s modem or double NAT, and the speed seems decent.
I am also using wired back haul. Rock solid for me too.
@Andy123: Yes wireless backhaul is just asking for trouble.
Have wired here any no issues.
Have a complicated network setup with many devices.
Also work in the tech sector so reliability was a requirement.
But to be fair most of the critical stuff is Ethernet as wifi issues are commonplace with all the interference these days.
After ready comments I'm still undecided on these.
I was planning to have router upstairs and both nodes downstairs, one will be wired in living room and the other one on wireless to cover the front portion of our place. Double brick downstairs
Has anyone had issues where 1 node is wireless and the other 1 is wired backhaul?
Have had this for over a year now, hasn’t encountered dropping out. But mine is set up using Ethernet as a backhaul.
Been supporting over 70+ smart home devices
I've got the XT8 and experienced some issues but not the same as yours. I run wired backhaul so I don't have issues aside from Asus not letting us use the 2.5G port for wired backhaul between the two units.
I have had devices fall back to 2.4ghz bands and sometimes cap speed at 286mbps. I set the smart connect to 5ghz only and split the 2.4ghz band as a separate band for just my IoT devices around the house. This fixed part of the fallback to 2.4ghz. The other part was disabling QoS and not labelling devices as 'gaming' or 'streaming' since labelling seems to force QoS to reactivate, which stupidly caps the bandwidth per device. Don't know why it caps devices to 286mbps as part of QoS when I'm not maxing out the 6600mbps per router (wireless backhaul disabled so I have full bandwidth).
My other issue is I bought the UK model on Amazon which has restrictive bands so I don't get 160mhz connections, only 80mhz connections.
Aside from these I haven't had any issues. Works better than my old orbit rbk50 setup, latency is decent and signal strength is decent.
I had similar issues with the CT8 and ended up giving it away. Wifi kept dropping out for me but even though the mesh units were only 10m away from each other.
I have these, working on 5ghz band no dropouts on latest firmware.
I have this and pretty happy as well!
Why are these so expensive?
compared to?
TP Link
tp link decos have much less customisabilty. i have the tp link models and they screw you over in the features department. it's great for plug and play kinda like Apple products. Rarely causes problems but doesn't allow you to do much with it. and then there's the issue with them sending info back to home base, quite similar to apple i guess lol.
if you don't know the extra features you need, deco units are much better value.
I'm assuming they are top-of-the-line (e.g. highest bandwidth available) for Asus, and so can probably have a price premium because they will typically attract those who are less price-sensitive.
For me personally, at this kind of price range I'd be considering installing ethernet in the walls. But that's probably only an option for those who own their own place.
I read some comments on Amazon, a user said that Latest wifi 6 technology. For the price well worth it, since similar products with the same specs are all over $1000.
So is that the case, because I'm looking around to replace my Netgear system.
Because 2 nodes equal 3 of the others.
They have tri-band, i.e. they have a seperate wireless backhaul between nodes, where most cheaper ones are dual band and thus the node shares the same wireless space as devices connecting to the router. In a road analogy, these have their own bus lane, for each node, where others share with the normal traffic. Ok when there's little traffic, but in peak hour you're bogged down in traffic.
This is nothing compared to what Netgear charge for the Orbi.
I bought Ubiquiti Amplifi Aliem mesh for upstairs and XT8 for ground floor
I would say ubiquiti is one step ahead with xt8
Use both of these meshes with Sophos firewalls. Amplifi series are stable with no flip whatsoever.
In xt8 , on rare occasions have seen some disconnections btw router and mesh
Interesting. I've got the Ubiquiti HD and was considering and upgrade, one thing I wasn't overly impressed with with the HD is the lack of good QOS.
Has that improved with the Alien?
I haven’t used HD, but AMPLIFI are very good.
I am a network engineer, tos figures are unbelievably good. My internet is aussie broadbands upto 1gbps for both these connections
I bought amplifi from mydeal.com.au for $634 for router with mesh in sale.
The main Ubiquiti Unifi line is asking for trouble. Even when wired. I haven't tried Amplifi though.
For our office/warehouse we swapped from 12 HDs to 9 Omada's and it's spot on now. (Yes we have tried to switch off 3-6 Ubiquiti's and still the same issue)
Ubiquiti has issues with handover, crosstalk. The controller is junk wrapped in a pretty skin. We have used the Java controller on Windows Server and also the Key2.
Was interested in this model for a while but most of the OZ posts were UK stock, missing some bands in Aus.
Got the TP-Link XE75 3pack, fewer ports (3 vs 4), no 2.5G port (XE75 pro has one, tho), but much cheaper ($500+, 3pack vs $700+, 2pack) and Wifi6E support.
Agree, the XE75 is a better buy.
These are fairly old. The XT9 have been out in USA/UK for 6mths, for this price. As usual we're overpriced dumping ground.
I've got a TP Link Deco setup for my partner's house. I find that they don't have as much customisability as the ZenWifi XT8 in terms of settings, but they don't need as much customisability as they work well enough out of the box. Whereas with my ZenWifi XT8 it took a bit of tweaking to figure out what settings were linked to what and how to get the best out of the units.
Shouldn't we be buying WiFi 7 these days?
I've been on WiFi 6 for so many years .. feels like it must be time to upgrade.
There aren't even many 6E devices so we won't see 7 for a while. That's simply for the early adopters to waste money on shit they don't need.
6E is just Wifi 6 + the 6Ghz band. There was issues and delays to implementing 6E as getting governments around the world to clear and license the 6GHz band took time - notably in Australia.
Hence Wi-Fi 6 devices was released first, and hence the spec also allowing for the 6GHz band to be optional which became 6E.
Now that the 6GHz band is stood up in most major countries Wi-Fi 7 doesn't need an additional 'E' version and so should hopefully result in devices coming sooner to market (once the spec is finalised)
Ahhh so maybe they'll skip 6E and go straight to 7.
@Maths Debater: Yep, that's the plan. Not worth it now that the spectrum only got cleared and licensed recently in many areas of the world - so close to the Wi-Fi 7 spec being near release, and well after the initial announcement of it. The first draft of Wi-Fi 7 was released back in 2021!
The Wi-Fi 7 spec hasn't be finalised, any devices today are on the draft policy. There's been delays and the expected completion date is now early 2024.
Most manufacturers won't bother making devices until it's finalised, only certain ones may do it to appear ahead of the curve - but really it's better to wait so the device is fully compliant.
Among the 802.11 working group are many many voting members from the chipset manufacturers. I'd like to think they won't put themselves into another Draft-N situation again.
Prooooobably.
As for manufacturers selling 11be devices…
I believe the TP-Link and Asus AU product cycles lag behind their North American counterparts a fair bit.
They're also like USD$700 access points soooooo
Yeah exactly.
Much better off with something like this: https://www.amazon.com.au/TP-Link-Deco-XE75-Pro-Router/dp/B0…
I like mine. I've meshed in all my old Asus routers to give me wifi access to the shed and garage.
Only issue is that as soon as I changed it from my old AC88U to this mesh system, my Fronius inverter disconnected and I can't figure out how to get it reconnected
Can't believe how much these are in 2023 given I paid close to $600ish back in late 2021. I'm very happy with mine and they worked amazingly well in my apartment which my previous Google Wifi struggled with (a 3 pack too).
With the asus xt8 you have wider total bandwidth, and free lifetime asus aiprotection pro network protection.
Thanks OP
Been waiting on non UK stock for a while.
Was hoping to pair it up with the Ax86u for our house
I paid $480 for these and I thought that was pricey. The annoying thing for me was a single 2.5GbE port, so I had to use another switch for the back haul if I wanted to benefit from it when using the port for WAN.
The lack of Merlin firmware at the time I sold it was also frustrating
$683 OfficeWorks price beat
Not sure why this isn't the title.
It's like as if people forget OW exists.
I purchased a netgear nighthawk something dualband wifi6 mesh (1 main unit + 1 satellite) and it's been more than sufficient for my single level 4 bed house. I remember paying $150 or so from memory. I work from home a lot (plenty of teams meatings, logging onto remote machines for work regularly and the likes), family uses various devices connected to wifi for netflix, youtube, prime video, etc. all at 4k usually, FPS gaming, etc. and there are a few smart devices as well. I have never felt the need to upgrade the router in the year or so I've used this setup, but there was no need to replace it even before that as the Telstra smart modem was sufficing also.
Genuine question - at what point does something like this for $700+ becomes a "necessity"? Is it purely coverage (double story or more, property is too big with several rooms), etc. seems to be the only use case that comes to my mind.
Can u plz share the model number or link to your Netgear one?
Sure, this is the one I purchased (not from costco though): https://www.costco.com.au/Computers-Tablets-Mobile-Phones/Ne…
Thanks mate
For my house and my partner's house, the NTD is in the front room which has too many walls for a single wifi router to penetrate to the lounge room at the back. My place does have Ethernet cables running to different rooms but that only helps with devices that connect via ethernet. So for myself, it made sense to use mesh router setup with an ethernet backhaul to expand the range of the wifi signal to cover the whole house.
My reason for choosing the ZenWifi XT8 was because Asus let you disable the wireless backhaul when running a wired backhaul, whereas with my previous orbi rbk50 setup, the wireless backhaul is still locked. So even though combined I should have had 9000mbps bandwidth with the orbit setup, around 5400mbps was locked out. With the Zenwifi XT8 I get full access to the 13200mbps bandwidth, which is a bit excessive, but helps with my IoT devices and NAS.
For my partner's house, she doesn't have ethernet cables running through the walls so I went with a TP Link Deco triple mesh router setup for a daisy chain connection to expand the wifi range.
So even though combined I should have had 9000mbps bandwidth with the orbit setup, around 5400mbps was locked out. With the Zenwifi XT8 I get full access to the 13200mbps bandwidth
So the 5400mbps was not sufficient for normally operating the iot devices and other things? The bandwidth became a bottleneck?
I totally understand purchasing the latest and greatest for the smug factor, but I am trying to find out if it's just that or there was a practical reason to get this setup for a lot of money.
To be more exact, it was 1733mbps per AC3000 orbi unit, so technically closer to 5200mbps that was locked out for wireless backhaul, which shouldn't have been locked out since I was using a wired backhaul on the orbi. For the remaining bandwidth of each router, it was split between each router at 300mbps of 2.4ghz and 866mbps at 5ghz. This is the part that was restrictive when it didn't need to be since I had a wireless backhaul in place.
It made transferring data between devices slower in cases where I had devices that were connected to the same router. The 300mbps cap on the 2.4ghz band becomes limiting rather quickly. And having multiple devices connected to the same unit on the 5ghz band eats up the bandwidth rather quickly.
Whereas in my case with the XT8, not having that wireless backhaul locked away means I'm less restricted. I can have multiple devices transferring data to each other through the same router since the bandwidth for 5ghz is 1201mbps+4804mbps per router and not have as severe of a cap as the 866mbps per unit shared between all devices on each orbi router.
The XT8 wasn't the latest and greatest when I bought it. I bought it earlier this year on an Amazon UK sale, which was a fair chunk cheaper than this price. The XT8 had more than enough bandwidth for my needs so I didn't consider units like the rog rapture, Zenwifi ET12, etc. that had much more bandwidth than I needed. I went with what suited my needs and has a bit of breathing room in case I need more bandwidth.
@DangerNoodle: Otoh, it looks like the cheap $150 mr6 mesh system I mentioned earlier also supports weird backhaul. :-)
@CocaKoala: A lot of them do support wired backhaul, it just depends on if they have set it up like the orbi where bandwidth will still be reserved for the wireless backhaul or if it's set up like the Asus where you can reclaim that bandwidth.
The XT9 which is a little bit faster (can be useful in backhaul) is similarly priced from Amazon US
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-XT9-Tri-Band-WiFiSystem-802-11ax…
Not sure why I was negged! 🤷🏽♂️
I have a set and they have been great. Only problem was when i moved house, for some reason needed to do a complete factory reset to get it the mesh working again…
For my knowledge, what is the difference between this and say using two cheapish Asus routers for aimesh?
Dedicated backhaul channel
I have fttn (ntd modem in garage) with patch panel in garage linked to all rooms via Ethernet. I suffer from wireless dropouts in back room. Would this be a better option plus also giving me option to connect my laptop to it through Ethernet ?
I just purchased this over the weekend, I had the TP Link X20 3 pack and I found that the XT8 performs much better in terms of performance. Range is subpar as the TP Link X20 came in a 3 pack. I have a wireless camera at my front gate which is about 70metres and with the XT8 it loads up way quicker to view the camera in live. I've noticed my upload speeds are faster at 7mbps than it was with the X20 at 2mbps. I'm on NBN Fixed Wireless and I have noticed a difference, haven't had any drop outs yet but will continue to monitor.
Do you use wireless backhaul or Ethernet cables to connect the 2 units?
I'm using wireless backhaul for both units.
Since i did take the dip, sharing some initial thoughts… I have HFC and setting this was a breeze, took me less than 10 mins to get everything connected and running. Previously, I had a firewall setup for parental controls, adblock etc. and I don't see a need to use it anymore. This device gives me sufficient control from the onset.
Lifetime access to parental controls, anti-malware, IPS and even Adblock are a big plus for me. Its blocking 88% adware (https://d3ward.github.io/toolz/adblock.html) out of the box. I was surprised, it allows install of an additional tool/app (Instant Guard) for VPN on that device.
You can content block specific devices as well as pool them. The app and WebGUI allow for easy monitoring and information gathering. There are so many options which are so easy to handle.
For speeds, on a wireless backhaul and latest firmware, its giving me exactly what I expected. No drop-outs yet :). Plus, I had the option to do multiple SSIDs (apparently, Orbi doesn't allow this) since some old devices at home don't do well without 2.4. Hoping it stays this way but then some niggles are part of the game.
Asuswrt-Merlin runs on these like a dream. Have multiple addons running on my mesh system with zero issues.
Have these and they are great!!