Review on 📶 T-Mobile ASUS Wireless-AC1900 Dual-Band Gigabit Router - Enhanced Network Security with AiProtection by Trend Micro (Renewed) by Steven Nina

. Excellent dual-band router, very fast and very reliable. I've been using a regular Asus RT AC68P for over 1 year with no downtime or other issues. I wanted to get one to replace an existing 2.4GHz router that I was using to extend my network to cover a dead zone. First, the refurbished unit I received looks brand new. It was in perfect condition and came with instructions, ethernet cable and charger in a simple box. The only difference I saw from my AC68P was the T-Mobile badge on the front. The first thing I did out of the box was replace the firmware with the stock Asus firmware by following the instructions from bayareatechpros (search for ac1900-to-ac68u). then updated to the latest Merlin WRT firmware, first to Asus Stock 378.xxx and then to Merlin 380.xxx. The intermediate step is necessary because Asus has changed its internal partition tables. I now have a router with the latest Merlin firmware like an Asus RT AC68U. The last thing I had to do was put it in hotspot mode so I could connect it to my existing network as an extender. The whole process took a while but saved about $100 so it was worth it. Another thing to note is that Asus is currently beta testing its new AiMesh technology on several of its models, which will be launched for these models in the near future. If that's the case, these T-Mobile upgrades will be the cheapest way to get a proper Wi-Fi mesh network, with the next cheapest I could find being over $100 per node. You also get all the powerful router technology that's already available. Verdict – I think this is the best deal on a dual-band router right now, apart from everything else. To get a more powerful device, you will have to spend more than twice as much money, and most likely you will not see any improvement in your network speed. ) as a node with my RT-AC68P as the main router. None of the T-Mobile devices gave me any problems, except that I had to change the firmware update process slightly because Asus tried to block them. The new process updated on the same page I linked above still works to install them on the latest firmware. Note that this only needs to be done once. After that, the internal devices will be registered as standard Asus routers and you can use their firmware or customer service like Merlin depending on your preference. AIMesh works great and makes nodes extremely easy to deploy and update. Still highly recommended!