I’ve got a couple of emails from people who wonder if I am on Team ASUS again so to speak given that I gave a positive review of the RT-BE86U router and I now use it as the main router in my network with good results. Well, here’s the short answer. No, I have not become an ASUS fanboy again.
The long answer goes something like this.
First of all, the RT-BE86U is a very good router. With this router, ASUS has a router that does WiFi 7, and delivers excellent performance at a half decent price. By performance, I mean that it handles PPPoE traffic better than most routers that I have tested lately, and a WiFi 6E client based on my testing can mostly take full advantage of the bandwidth on offer. From that perspective, this router is a winner.
Now is it perfect? No, the price in my opinion could be a bit lower as most of its competition with a similar feature set (which to be clear is dual band WiFi 7) is priced lower. But the flip side of that argument is that it comes with a lot more in the box so to speak as opposed to the competition in question. AI Protection and parental controls which are subscription free. So while ASUS could make an argument that its price is justified, people don’t go into the weeds when they walk into Best Buy to buy a router. Thus a price drop to bring it in line with its competition would be something that I would advise.
Here’s why I haven’t jumped onto the ASUS bandwagon. While the hardware is solid, I question whether ASUS has improved their ability to support customers. For example I had this experience when I needed assistance with my ZenWiFi XT8 mesh router. At the time, I said this:
Now I would like to comment on the tech support that ASUS provides. It’s horrifically bad. I spent over two weeks with them running around in circles trying to help them understand what my problem was, which was that this router performs poorly via a PPPoE bypass setup, but performs just fine in the setup that I describe above. Then I ended up sending them endless sets of logs and exchanging endless emails with them to see if they could debug what was going on. The case ended up going to the “next level of support” (their words not mine) at ASUS. And the best that they could come up with is that I had a bad cable between the HH4000 and the XT8. Which is illogical as the PPPoE bypass setup created the slow upstream issue, and a DHCP setup like the one that I had outlined above does not create this issue. Which following that logic chain eliminates the cable as a possibility for the slow upstream issue, and points to a problem with the XT8 router. An organization the size of ASUS should have tech support people who can follow that logic and come to that conclusion. But clearly they don’t and out of frustration, I asked them to close the case.
What is worse is that all this troubleshooting was done via email which is the absolute worst way to provide tech support. Especially with complex issues like this. Getting onto a Zoom session or a phone call would have likely resulted in some sort of positive progress, and maybe even a solution. But they didn’t go that route and the net result of this rather negative experience is that it drove me to look at other options that avoided the use of PPPoE to get better performance from the XT8. It also made me decide that I won’t be recommending ASUS gear to my home and prosumer clients anymore. And chances are, my next router at home won’t be an ASUS product. While ASUS has great hardware, their support doesn’t meet the mark. Having competent tech support adds to the value of the gear that a vendor like ASUS makes. Or in this case, not having competent support detracts from the value of the gear that ASUS makes. So if the people at ASUS are reading this, they might want to look at this negative situation and make changes internally to make sure that they’re not on the wrong side of a public post like this as this sort of #Fail reflects poorly on ASUS as a brand. And will likely affect their future sales.
So while the RT-BE86U has become my “next router”, I have not recommended ASUS gear to my clients since that post. And that’s due to not only my experience with them, but also its due to browsing around places like Reddit where it becomes clear very quickly that the the quality of their support has not changed for the better. Add to that the accusations by YouTubers like Gamers Nexus among others who highlighted how “shady” ASUS has been when it comes to warranty issues. Now I have no direct experience with that, but again, plenty of people on Reddit do. And I am still finding examples of people who have had issues with ASUS on this front.
That’s honestly not a good place to be if you are ASUS.
So where does that leave me? Well, for starters the setup that I have with the RT-BE86U being my router with the XT8’s being purely WiFi access points is in my mind a stopgap while I continue to do research on what gear that I need to replace it. I have narrowed things down to a couple of brands and I need to confirm that those brands will have gear that will work for me while being secure at the same time. And not to mention provide competent technical support and warranty support as well. Now ASUS corporate (not a PR firm, but the folks directly from ASUS) are free to reach out to me and convince me why I should believe that the issues that I have highlighted here are no longer issues. Because I am always willing to re-evaluate my position on an issue if empirical evidence is presented to support a given argument. But in the here and now, while ASUS does seem to have some well performing hardware, there’s no evidence that their technical support and warranty support have changed for the better. And until that does, if it ever does, I’m not going to be an ASUS fanboy.
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This entry was posted on February 15, 2025 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Asus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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So, Am I An ASUS Fanboy Again?
I’ve got a couple of emails from people who wonder if I am on Team ASUS again so to speak given that I gave a positive review of the RT-BE86U router and I now use it as the main router in my network with good results. Well, here’s the short answer. No, I have not become an ASUS fanboy again.
The long answer goes something like this.
First of all, the RT-BE86U is a very good router. With this router, ASUS has a router that does WiFi 7, and delivers excellent performance at a half decent price. By performance, I mean that it handles PPPoE traffic better than most routers that I have tested lately, and a WiFi 6E client based on my testing can mostly take full advantage of the bandwidth on offer. From that perspective, this router is a winner.
Now is it perfect? No, the price in my opinion could be a bit lower as most of its competition with a similar feature set (which to be clear is dual band WiFi 7) is priced lower. But the flip side of that argument is that it comes with a lot more in the box so to speak as opposed to the competition in question. AI Protection and parental controls which are subscription free. So while ASUS could make an argument that its price is justified, people don’t go into the weeds when they walk into Best Buy to buy a router. Thus a price drop to bring it in line with its competition would be something that I would advise.
Here’s why I haven’t jumped onto the ASUS bandwagon. While the hardware is solid, I question whether ASUS has improved their ability to support customers. For example I had this experience when I needed assistance with my ZenWiFi XT8 mesh router. At the time, I said this:
Now I would like to comment on the tech support that ASUS provides. It’s horrifically bad. I spent over two weeks with them running around in circles trying to help them understand what my problem was, which was that this router performs poorly via a PPPoE bypass setup, but performs just fine in the setup that I describe above. Then I ended up sending them endless sets of logs and exchanging endless emails with them to see if they could debug what was going on. The case ended up going to the “next level of support” (their words not mine) at ASUS. And the best that they could come up with is that I had a bad cable between the HH4000 and the XT8. Which is illogical as the PPPoE bypass setup created the slow upstream issue, and a DHCP setup like the one that I had outlined above does not create this issue. Which following that logic chain eliminates the cable as a possibility for the slow upstream issue, and points to a problem with the XT8 router. An organization the size of ASUS should have tech support people who can follow that logic and come to that conclusion. But clearly they don’t and out of frustration, I asked them to close the case.
What is worse is that all this troubleshooting was done via email which is the absolute worst way to provide tech support. Especially with complex issues like this. Getting onto a Zoom session or a phone call would have likely resulted in some sort of positive progress, and maybe even a solution. But they didn’t go that route and the net result of this rather negative experience is that it drove me to look at other options that avoided the use of PPPoE to get better performance from the XT8. It also made me decide that I won’t be recommending ASUS gear to my home and prosumer clients anymore. And chances are, my next router at home won’t be an ASUS product. While ASUS has great hardware, their support doesn’t meet the mark. Having competent tech support adds to the value of the gear that a vendor like ASUS makes. Or in this case, not having competent support detracts from the value of the gear that ASUS makes. So if the people at ASUS are reading this, they might want to look at this negative situation and make changes internally to make sure that they’re not on the wrong side of a public post like this as this sort of #Fail reflects poorly on ASUS as a brand. And will likely affect their future sales.
So while the RT-BE86U has become my “next router”, I have not recommended ASUS gear to my clients since that post. And that’s due to not only my experience with them, but also its due to browsing around places like Reddit where it becomes clear very quickly that the the quality of their support has not changed for the better. Add to that the accusations by YouTubers like Gamers Nexus among others who highlighted how “shady” ASUS has been when it comes to warranty issues. Now I have no direct experience with that, but again, plenty of people on Reddit do. And I am still finding examples of people who have had issues with ASUS on this front.
That’s honestly not a good place to be if you are ASUS.
So where does that leave me? Well, for starters the setup that I have with the RT-BE86U being my router with the XT8’s being purely WiFi access points is in my mind a stopgap while I continue to do research on what gear that I need to replace it. I have narrowed things down to a couple of brands and I need to confirm that those brands will have gear that will work for me while being secure at the same time. And not to mention provide competent technical support and warranty support as well. Now ASUS corporate (not a PR firm, but the folks directly from ASUS) are free to reach out to me and convince me why I should believe that the issues that I have highlighted here are no longer issues. Because I am always willing to re-evaluate my position on an issue if empirical evidence is presented to support a given argument. But in the here and now, while ASUS does seem to have some well performing hardware, there’s no evidence that their technical support and warranty support have changed for the better. And until that does, if it ever does, I’m not going to be an ASUS fanboy.
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This entry was posted on February 15, 2025 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Asus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.