I purchased the ASUS ZenWifi AX system, based in no small part to past good experience with other ASUS products and the great reviews of this product.
Big Mistake! The System is entirely unreliable, with numerous problems, the most significant being the system crashing every 2 to 4 hours and rebooting. Unlike the past ASUS support has degraded to the point where they are no help at all.
Being a past ROG customer for pretty much everything from ROG Motherboards and laptops to Monitors, their support is nothing like it used to be.
Their suggested troubleshooting was nothing more than help a NOOB would require. It didn't solve any issues.
Numerous "Reset to Factory Defaults" didn't solve the problem. I did manage to solve a few of the issues but swapping the nodes since they're symmetrical, making the former master node the remote and vice versa.
Following the support folks advice was worthless, got me nowhere in spite of frequent sending diagnostic info. An analysis of the syslog didn't show any error messages prior to a crash.
Eventually, I did another factory reset and went with totally default settings. That was stable but didn't meet my requirements. I let that run for a day or so before turning on IPv6 (in "Native" mode, again ASUS provided no help with this setting and their documentation on and in their "manual" was zero help). That also ran for over a day with no problems.
I next turned on AiProtection, one of the major router features. running with the settings recommended by that feature except for UPnP (I left it on), which I need for my network. 4 hours later, the crashes resumed.
So I contacted the ASUS office of the CEO and they promised to do a Manufacturer's Return and send me a check. I'm now waiting for their RMA instructions.
With these flaws (and others) the system is of little use to me. I would warn anyone with a fast and complex network away from this product.
I need a system that Allows for a large number of devices with high speed connections.
I'm still looking at my options after I return this system. The lead candidate for me at this time is the AmpliFi™ Alien system. Reviews on this are sparse, but I've had much better luck with Ubiquiti products in the past as they're generally commercial grade instead of consumer grade. Runner ups are the Netgear Orbi and Linksys Velop systems.
I'm quite disappointed that the Ubiquiti system wasn't included in this review.
Background: I have 1 GB Internet (Comcast), 1 GB Ethernet connecting the nodes and 14 of my over 50 devices. The rest are on Wifi with many IoT devices.
I also stream up to 2, 4K UHD streams simultaneously to 2 TVs, 3 Computers, 2 Amazon Echo Shows. I have 6 other Echo devices, Nest Thermostat, 3 Nest Protect Smoke/CO2 Alarms, plus a bunch of other IoT gadgets.
While my home isn't large, it has robust walls and even a 2.4 Ghz signal has trouble in my home. The big chimney in the center of the home doesn't help. I have Ethernet spanning the length of the home but no Ethernet in the middle as my home office is at one end of the house and the Media room where the Comcast termination and equipment rack is at the other end.
My plan is to put in a 3 node system with the base node in the Media Room and ethernet connected satellites in the Office and Living room (it's on the other side of the chimney and I can reach it with an new Ethernet cable without too much trouble.
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