Review on ASUS ZenWiFi AX6600 XT8 2PK: Tri-Band Mesh WiFi 6 System for Whole Home Coverage, 5500 sq.ft, AiMesh, Lifetime Internet Security & More by Jason Melvin

I bought ZenWifi AX after reading positive reviews and 7 years of experience with ASUS routers and building a mesh network with GT ROG AC5300 and RT-AC86U. Use Zenwifi router as main router and wireless backhaul node with GT ROG AC5300 as Ethernet backhaul device. With previous routers, setup took less than 15 minutes, and with ZenWifi, it took an hour to connect the 2.4GHz loopback wireless node, forcing me to factory reset the devices and reboot twice. The routers were updated to the latest firmware during the initial setup of the router node at power up and after the mesh node was connected to ensure all nodes are up to date. The firmware of all three devices was updated within a few days of the initial configuration. When working with Zenwifi in service, wireless clients connect to nodes in a strange way, which isn't a big deal except that most wireless clients are always connected to the main router. I have Wemo power switches that are controlled by the Apple Home app. , they were constantly disconnected from the nodes, which made managing the house painful. I've had tablets and phones going offline, initially thought it was the ISP or maybe some other reason, performance also seemed poor given the 400Mbps connection. Everything got better every time. The main router rebooted, a popular method of reconnecting Wemo devices, but it quickly deteriorated. Moving from Quad 9 DNS to Cloudflare DNS improved throughput. but no disconnection, with a mesh node indicating a disconnection from the router, indicated by a blinking blue LED. I've also seen the Wireless Mesh Node connect to a GT ROG AC5300 that's physically farther from the router node, which all looked odd. I then looked at the top of the main router and saw the surface coating peeling off the case. Below are the attached images which led me to conclude that this router is not up to the task it was supposed to do and no doubt does not help most of the connected devices. I set up a call to ASUS service, missed the first call, made a second call and the agent asked me to describe the problem and then asked me to send back the lost logs, configuration files and wireless case document. After two weeks of back and forth with daily emails and more information I asked about the scrub and was asked if I had dropped the device so I sent lots of pictures showing no damage and was told if I had would damage the device, I have to pay for the repair. .It was already overkill and as I neared the end of the return window I set up a return, Revain support called me to try and resolve my issue but when I explained the issue and the 8 ASUS case numbers shared assigned to my Dialogouge , my return was quickly approved. Time to build trust and two weeks to destroy that trust. I will never buy an ASUS router or any ASUS products ever again.