ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro Quad-Band WiFi 7 Mesh Router (2 Pack), up to 8000 sqft, 2X 10G Ports Each, Smart Home Master with Multi-SSID, VPN & Parental Controls, Subscription-Free Security, AiMesh

We purchased a new, larger house, and I needed to resolve some coverage and speed issues. My AX86U did an admirable job and while I could have just purchased another, we have some Wifi 7 devices so I figured I'd go ahead and futureproof. I read a lot about my options (primarily Wifi 6E and Wifi 7) on several sites, but ultimately, DongKnowsTech is what convinced me to buy this unit over others. My main reason for writing this review is because there are not many reviews yet, and there are a lot of experiences posted elsewhere that were not good. Based on my experience and what I've read, I believe that this is likely related to bad software on release and has been resolved with firmware updates. Perhaps my experience will help you feel more confident about buying this unit if you are strongly considering it. I was nervous about the setup and performance based on experiences some other people had. The only issue that I had during setup was that the node MUST be close to the main unit when setting it up. Even though they can communicate in different areas of the house, it has a difficult time completing setup if they're not close by and will just flash blue. If you experience this and it's in another room, move it in the same room temporarily to complete setup. Once the setup was complete, I updated firmware on both devices, and updated the MAC address on my ATT Fiber modem which was already in Passthrough mode. Once that was complete, I moved the node upstairs and confirmed that it was working. Since I have ethernet in the room that it's in, I plugged in to utilize ethernet backhaul. I also changed a couple of settings in the Asus router app to prioritize ethernet backhaul over wireless backhaul. Once that was done, I confirmed that I still had a connection upstairs, and the app confirmed that it was using wired backhaul. Ran some speed tests on my phone and I was getting 700+mbps on the unit upstairs on 5ghz. Faster than I expected. Wifi downstairs is just as strong. My office and gaming pcs are plugged in ethernet, and I'm capping out at 900-1000mbps whereas I was previously hitting 600-750mbps. NOTE: I switched out all of my ethernet cables to Cat 6A, so this may have had an impact on speeds. Previously, I had Cat 5E and some cables that were not marked and may have been lower grade. One odd thing that I have run into is that my Bravia 7 does not want to connect to any network that has 2.4, 5, and 6ghz available. If I limit it to 2.4 and 5, or one or the other, OR just 6ghz, it will connect fine. But, it will not connect to a network with all 3 active. For now, I have it on it's own network using 6ghz but I'll have to dig into this. I have not had any issues with any other devices connecting. That includes TVs, Hue bridge/bulbs, tablets, game consoles, soundbars, robot vacuum, smartwatches. Everything is working. Overall, I'm very happy with the product. The setup was painless and though I expected good coverage, the speeds are better than expected. It has the same Asus features that I'm familiar with, without extra fees. The only thing that I'm not happy about is the price. I know it will come down and Wifi7 devices will be cheaper in time, but I needed a solution now and didn't want to re-visit again in a couple of years. Since I used Amazon Rewards, in combination with a lower priced Like New unit with Amazon Resale, the price was quite as hard a pill to swallow.

I bought both the XT9 2-pack in Black and XT9 single-pack in white for a total of 3 node AIMesh network. They all set up reasonably quickly and easily, starting with the one in the two-pack which is clearly marked on the front as the one to start with. Then I added the 1-pack white XT9. I'm not using ethernet backhaul, depending instead on 5G wifi for the backhaul. My internet connection is not that great, so I am not able to really test the 2.5Gbps WAN or LAN aggregation features. My clients are a handful of PCs (variously connected via wifi, wired directly, or wired through a switch), a handful of android mobile devices, smartTVs, and a dozen or more IoTs [thermostate, smart bulbs, etc]). WiFi coverage is pretty good, and the system is fairly powerful in terms of features, although the documentation is not that great. It tells you what you can set, but rarely explains why you would want to make one selection over another. I like that you can admin it via a web-browser, which is one reason I did not go with other brands which require a phone app. That being said there are some features which are only available in the app, and others which are only available in the webUI. For example: In the app, you can set some interesting "parental" controls such as ad blocking, malicious content blocking, etc. The way to do this in the webUI is not very clear or perhaps not even possible. In the WebUI, you can "Manage" the different nodes of the mesh and do things like set the USB port for different purposes. As an example, on one node, I have a USB Drive serving uPnP media service. On another node, a different USB HDD is serving files via Samba and (LAN-restricted) FTP. Some features don't seem to work such as the ability to make the WPS button control the LED. And some of my devices (Smart Bulbs especially) don't seem to bind to the nearest mesh node, instead binding to the farthest one, which surprises me. Another thing that baffles me: 2 of the Cat5e-connected devices on my second node show "yellow" in the app (with vague description and confusing "Things to check"). One is a smartTV and the other is a connect AV-Receiver, both purchased this year. The one wired device showing green is a 10 year old Laptop. One thing I really don't like is that you cannot NAME the different nodes for where they are located. Yes, you can label them (as I've done) for Office, Living Room, and Master Bedroom, but when you see them in a list they all say "ZenWiFi XT9". Overall, this is a powerful system, more powerful than the single-node netgear WiFi router I've been using for years. I'm glad I upgraded!

I'm not one to leave reviews, but I wanted to warn people this is not a good, stable, reliable device. Maybe if you use it as a vanilla setup,you'll be fine but I wanted to make minor configuration changes.To be honest, I don't have a lot of networking skills, but don't feel I should need them. I wanted to an IoT network which was on a different subnet of my main network. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get it to work. There wasn't enough options allowing me to setup VLANs the right way. I settled by having the IoT network on the same subnet, but in isolation mode. Isolation didn't matter. IoT devices could still interact. Next, whenever you make a slight tweak, like adding a device to your static IP list, it was cause all devices to disconnect, the router took what seemed like 5 minutes to be available again, and clients struggled to reconnect. I tried to contact support. Their solution was to factory reset the device. They didn't even bother to look at the logs. The final straw what the network kept going down. Sometimes it would be one of the networks, Main or IoT, or both. A reboot would get it going again but devices wouldn't connect for a long time which was incredibly frustrating. I would even lose connection while hardwired directly to the main router, and it was during a video call. When the system was working, I had amazing speeds, even through the mesh node, using my Pixel 9 Pro. I'm sending the device back. I hooked up my old router, an Alien Amplifi with an extra router as a mesh node, and immediately everything came back online. I guess I will try again when I figure out a more stable device. Good luck!!

I'm using this as an AiMesh node with my main BE98 Pro router. ​The initial setup was a pain, but after it was done, it started working great. A quick tip: I'd recommend setting up three WiFi networks at most. Use the main MLO WiFi for your important devices like your phone, tablet, console and PC. Then, put all your IoT devices (surveillance cameras, smart bulbs, smart TV and etc.) on the separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. ​Also, make sure get rid of any old devices that are still on 802.11ac or older (even some devices using 802.11n). They really do bottleneck your router's bandwidth and slow everything down. ​This router has a lot of great features, and it was easy to set up AdGuard Dns and NordVPN. The speed is super steady and rock-solid. ​The only thing I don't like about these new Asus routers is that you have to reboot the router and all the nodes every single time when you add a new IoT devices. If you don't, it just connects and disconnects over and over. ​ The range for 2.4GHz and 5GHz is really great, but the 6GHz range isn't. If you have a big house with a lot of walls, the 6GHz signal won't be very good. Overall, I recommend this routers. It's pricy but worth to buy it.

The BQ16 Pro started out rough for me. It was crashing often and would lose it's configuration settings occasionally. I was assuming it was just a bad system. But I called ASUS support and we were able to determine that one of the nodes was defective. After receiving the replacement, it has been phenomenal. 1. The speed is fantastic. I was looking for a system that would allow us to take advantage of our 1GB Internet connection via AT&T. Speed from my iPhone 17 are over 1 GB when connected to the main router, and around 500 mbs when connected to the node. 2. Pretty easy to set up. I have an IT background, but I think that most would find this to be a relatively painless implementation. 3. Control over my network was the most important factor to me, and the BQ16 Pro delivered that in spades. I have different groups configured that have settings for Internet filtering and scheduled downtime. I'm easily able to temporarily bypass scheduled downtime via the app. My only complaint here is that my previous WiFi system would send me a notification if a new device joined the network. I'm not able to do that with the BQ16 Pro. 4. Note that configuration of the IoT network is going to be a "must have" if you have a lot of devices in your home. Some of my TP-Link smart switch devices could not connect to the regular network, as well as a scale. Surprisingly, my Peloton had trouble with the main WiFi network as well. Putting all of them on the IoT network fixed the problem. 5. Reporting features are fantastic. I'm able to see top consumers of bandwidth, traffic monitors and analyzers, statistics, etc. Lots of stuff for me to geek out on. 6. Coverage is great. I have a 3,300 Sq. Ft 2 story home. The main router is in a corner office on the 1st floor. (Not an ideal location being in the corner of the house, but that's where the AT&T router is). The node is also on the 1st floor in the middle of the house. I was nervous about going from 3 to 2 access points and how that would impact the 2nd floor. But there isn't a place in the house that doesn't have a strong connection. 7. Very easy backup and restore of system settings. This may sound small, but when I received my replacement system I did a quick restore, saving me hours of configuration time. 8. The Trend Micro protection that comes free is great as well. (Unlike some of the competition that charges an additional fee for such protection). I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5 for: 1. Not providing a way to receive a notification when new devices come on the network. This is important to me as when my kids' friends come and get on the network, there is no filtering on their device unless I go in and put them in a group. 2. The tech support was weak. Granted, we were able to determine that one of the devices was defective. The technician was very friendly and was trying his hardest to help. But there was a major language barrier. He clearly didn't understand a lot of the things I was saying, and would respond with a few of the lines he had memorized in English no matter what I said or asked. Overall, definitely worth the money. These are a lot more expensive than other options out there. But I just couldn't find other options that were cheaper and checked all the boxes I was looking for.

I replaced an 8-year-old Linksys with this Asus ZenWiFi BQ 16 Pro. Nothing wrong with the Linksys, but the new Asus has so many new features and security options. The two-module model covers the entire house and some more. The mesh network reaches everywhere even on the farthest areas on the deck. I have ethernet to the mesh module, so it connected simply. The security settings allow tuning many options to turn off features such as WPS and UPNP which you do not need. You can also set up as many sub networks that you need. I have three: main, IoT and Guest. All devices had no issue except my two Amazon Smart Plugs. For some reason they did not work. After much back and forth with Alexa support including trying two new ones they sent, the solution was to change to Amazon Basics Smart Plugs (cheaper and they work). My old Linksys had 8 ports; this router has only three. No big deal as you can buy a small switch and get more ports with it (see picture). Set up is really simple. I found doing it on my computer easier than on a mobile. All you have to do is to connect the computer to the router. The Asus app is intuitive and after a few minutes you can master it. One trick is to print out the manual before and note all the things you will want to change or adjust when the app is started. Helps not to miss anything. The router is a bit pricey, but when you consider it is for several years, worth it. All in all, quite happy with the choice and the capabilities.

I have been an ASUS for years and have always been quite satisfied, so I thought I would upgrade to their wifi 7 system. What a mistake. It would not hold a connection and will not restore the connection after an outage. The only change I made was to the router, no other changes, so nothing else was causing the problem. I returned it, and went with this newer Asus wifi 6 (AX7800), it matches the speed of the wifi 7 and has worked flawlessly since I installed it nearly a month ago. I highly recommend this router.

Tons of connection issues, especially with IoT 2.4ghz devices and older wifi standard devices. I'm coming from an older ASUS zenwifi product that had 2 nodes, so I was already used to using the app and setting up my network. Everything went smoothly until I noticed that my cameras and garage opener would randomly disconnect throughout the day. Rebooting the routers (I have 2 nodes again) would resolve the issue for a few hours, but it would never complete solve it. I created a separate IoT network and disabled the 5ghz band on it, and manually linked each device to the node that was physically closer to it. No measurable difference. I feel bad about giving it a bad review, since my phone and PC get about 90% of my rated bandwidth from my ISP everywhere in my house and even outside of it, but the hassle with all the IoT devices that I had no issues with on my older routers is a complete killer for me. Hopefully ASUS will fix the issue in am update soon. Looks like this issue is pretty widespread, and I'm not the only one who's complaining about it.