ZenWiFi BD4 (3-Pack) Dual-Band WiFi 7 Mesh, 3600 Mbps, 6500 sq.ft, Dual 2.5G Ports, Security and Parental Controls Included, Smart Home Master SSIDs

I was looking for a good router with satellites ever since my Netgear Orbi RBK50 bricked itself during an update. Great job, Netgear... NOT! And being out of warranty, they delicately showed me the finger. Well, I decided to return the favor. I digress, but I had bought that Netgear with 2 satellites because it had a dedicated backhaul, 2.4 and 5GHz bands and that it is a reputable brand. What I didn't realize is that they nickel and dimed me for full 3+ years for their Netdefender subscription of almost $100 annually! So on top of paying top dollar ($450+ to be exact), I was paying $100 after the first year. That is an average of about $225+ annual cost. Back to this product, Asus is an equally great brand. I was looking for something that allowed me to create multiple SSIDs. For some reason the general market routers do not allow creation of VLANs (or am not aware of. I am not a Networking certified person), so multiple SSIDs was what I needed. I was looking for an SSID for personal use (PCs, laptops, phones), another SSID for my security devices, another for all my IoTs that I enriched Amazon and Alexa ecosystem with and finally one for my guests that I can turn on and off as needed. Another need was that I could control it from anywhere I wanted, not just logging into the network. The pros of this product: - Three pack, great to spread accessibility - Mesh network, apparently it helps have lossless connectivity and though I have no tool to test, I have not seen any disconnect moving between rooms and such - Wifi 7. I have currently only wifi5 or wifi6 devices, but hey am ready for the next gen. - High speed ethernet ports for backhaul and/or wired networking - Great mobile app on Android - Allowed me the SSIDs I needed to set up - Share WiFi with a QR Code (Great for Guests when your password is super strong as it should be) - Automatic Quality of Service (QoS) control if you designate the device in a QoS priority category. - Auto wireless backhaul with optional wired one if you set it up that way - Small size - NO SUBSCRIPTION BS like Netgear. Comes with great protection and a VPN app for phone. HOW AWESOME IS THAT!? Thank you Asus. - Comes with a Three Year Warranty! You hear that, Netgear? CONS: Yes, it does have some. Ok, I will be honest, no it doesn't but they are my wish list. - Only two ports in the back, so you need a switch no matter what if you have more than two devices to attach or use a backhaul. - The switch has to be 2.5GHz capable to use the best throughput, else a 1GHz will not be bad, just if you are moving things thru the network, you will be bottlenecked by that limitation - Wish there is a way to mount it higher on the wall with power cord extensions. I may have to juggle something on my own. - Wish it had PoE to power and backhaul the extenders. I have that set up but cannot use it because of the power requirement to come from an electrical outlet. Sigh. - Ability to create VLANs. That would be so awesome to set up one SSID instead of 4 with a separate password deciding which one is for what. I had created a setup once with Ubiquiti extenders and they have spoilt me bad.

There is a learning curve involved in setting up the BD4 Mesh unit. This can be solved by going back to the beginning and be sure you follow instructions implicitly. Be sure you review and take the time to understand them. 5 days after I started using the system I woke up to an internet failure, and for some reason the main unit had stopped communicating with the Internet provided router. This was easy to identify and rectify. My speed tests are approximately 10% higher than my previous mesh unit and connectivity is quick and seamless now. Very Satisfied.

Great system but I couldn't set up from the app but through the dashboard via the home IP address.

I just got this tonight and tried setting it up. What a nightmare! It seemed to work great at first. I plugged it into my modem and a switch, and it went through the setup. It told me that everything was working perfectly, but for some reason it immediately gave me a red light, indicating that there was no connection to the internet. I tried restarting the modem. Still no connection. It turned out that it had decided to make the switch the WAN connection, so I disconnected the switch and plugged the modem into that port, restarted both devices, and I finally got a connection. That lasted all of 20 seconds. So I reset the thing to factory settings and tried to start the process again. This time, it connected to the internet right away and I got a notification that there was a firmware update. I let it download and install, and was them met with a red light and no internet again. I tried everything I could think of to fix this, but ultimately had to reset it to factory defaults again and set it up a third time. This time, everything went smoothly. I started getting my devices connected and even got the switch to work. All seemed fine until I did a speed test and got a mere 100 mbps. I was expecting more than ten times that. So I restarted the thing again, and was met with a red light when it booted up. No more internet. But this time, I couldn't even connect to it through the app, and it would start restarting itself every five or six minutes. I don't even know where to begin to troubleshoot this thing anymore. I'm going to contact support tomorrow and I'll update this review based on what happens next, but this thing has been such a huge pain that I thought I should mention it. ---Edit--- I got a new unit sent to me, and I successfully set it up, but that also wasn't without problems. The short version is, for whatever reason, I have to restart my modem every single time the router restarts, even during setup. If I don't do this, the router can't figure out that it has a WAN connection. This took entirely too long for me to figure out, and I don't like it one bit, but at least it works now. I have confirmed that the previous unit is definitely not working this way, and so I really think it's just a broken unit. Now that the new one is working, it is a fairly decent router. Speeds are high, latency is low, and I thoroughly enjoy having a 2.5G wired connection to my switch and NAS. It does take a very long time to reboot, however, and that's definitely not nice when you have to troubleshoot. I also just really can't shake the feeling that this thing could stop working like the first unit did. Fingers crossed, I guess. If you do buy this, just make sure you give it plenty of time to do it's thing during setup. If you get a red light or it seems like it's not doing what it's supposed to, give it an extra 2-3 minutes longer than you want to and try restarting your modem before you do anything with the router. Same with firmware updates. If you think it's broken, give it a lot of extra time and reset your modem before you try to mess with it.

I hate this router. My set up is a ASUS ZenWiFi BT10 main router and ASUS ZenWiFi BD4 as a backup point. I thought, when buying this, that the rated 4000 Sq Ft range would likely be fine on it's own for my 2300 sqft single story house, given that the router was on an edge of the house. That wasn't the case - I got OK signal from the other side of the house but my main TV in the living room and master bedroom took 20-30 seconds per streamed video to leave 720p. So I decided to get another AP. And the problems accelerated. ASUS APs and google devices? HARD PASS. You'll need to perform witchcraft to make them connect correctly. Did you want just ONE SSID? More problems. I didn't have any of these issues on my TP Link router, but they got compromised and I didn't want to use their products any further. My 1st choice was an ubiquity Dream Router - but they were 4 years old and needed a new model (they've since released one, imagine where I am going.) Failover to USB was such a cool feature, I set it up, tested it and it worked great... during testing. Then it decided failing over is for chumps. My wife and I work from home and I cannot deal with the downtime and the failed failovers were just the last straw. I write this review, using a USB tether from my phone RIGHT NOW to prove the point that it's NOT anything but this dumb router's fault. $500 wasted. Also had many issues with macs, my rachio sprinkler system, devices that required a 2.4 ghz signal... the list goes ON and ON. Buy this product, I guess, if you want OK performance at a premium price.

I love all the features with this product, internet throughput has been great for work and for home streaming. However, buyer beware, there is no WHOLE house filter for content. You have to configure content filtering by device in your household. What a pain when you an internet ready house and teenagers. It's unfortunate that I did not install right away so that I could return the product.

If you want to upgrade your home WiFi to a mesh system and increase you signal strength without changing cable providers this is your cheat code. The best part you can’t have multiple WiFi networks for different folks in your house. For the price this is common sense decision.

This was used with a BE92U router to set up a wifi 7 network in my home.