Review Asus ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro review: Making the most out of Wi-Fi 7

[admin]

The Asus ZenWiFi BQ16 pro doubles down on the best of Wi-Fi 7 with quite the performance payoff thanks to its dual 6 Ghz bands.

Asus ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro review: Making the most out of Wi-Fi 7 : Read more

 

[DavidLx]

If you read some reviews, you'd know a lot more things to test and have a lot more "cons" than that.

You can find this device under an alternative model name (BE30000) in 3 packs at Best Buy. There's a lot of reviews, many of them not so favorable.

I have a large multi building residence. It has 9 mesh nodes, wired with 10Gbps capable links. I replaced them with 9 of these. They seemed great, at WiFi 6/7. But some legacy devices (e.g. Orbit B-Hyve, which I have a number of) simply cannot connect in WiFi 7 mode, since they don't work if WPA 3 capability is advertised.

So, I tried downgrading to the equivalent of my existing WiFi 5 network, and found that these are just abysmal and unusable as WiFi 5 nodes.

I tried setting up a IoT network for the legacy devices instead. That failed, too, because these can't configure VLANs on ports when in AP/Bridge mode, and I can't use routed mode.

The bottom line was that these are great on paper and in superficial testing, but there are big gaps even trying to get the same performance or flexibility as a much older mesh setup.

 

[Chuck_Enthusaistic_Geek]

Nice Article! Tons of details and real world testing

I think I missed what ports are on the satellite units. In today's world, it's not impossible to get a couple CAT7/8 cables off Amazon and run them to a couple spots in your home and out to your pole barn.

I'd love to see one of these mesh systems with WiFi 7 and 2 10GBE ports on all units. One in and one out!

Even better would be 3! One in, one out, and one for the gaming computer with a $80 Nicgiga 10GBE PCIe adapter!