The IT Nerd

 ASUS today announces that the ExpertBook P5 (P5405), a groundbreaking Copilot+ PC designed to empower modern professionals is now available in Canada, starting October 21^st. Available through the ASUS Store, Costco, and select retailers, it comes in four configurations starting at CA$1,299.99.

Powered by up to the latest Intel^® Core^™ Ultra 7 processor (Series 2) with 47 NPU TOPS, the laptop delivers up to 3X the AI performance boost compared to the previous generation. Featuring ASUS AI ExpertMeet, this AI-driven powerhouse streamlines workflows and enhances collaboration. Its sleek, durable aluminum chassis houses a stunning 2.5K 144 Hz display, delivering exceptional visuals. With a 1.29 kg feather-light design, robust security features, and a focus on sustainability, ExpertBook P5 is the perfect companion for on-the-go professionals seeking peak performance and efficiency.

The future of work

Crafted with meticulous attention to detail, ExpertBook P5 boasts a premium aluminum design that seamlessly blends aesthetics and ergonomics. Despite its lightweight construction, at just 1.29 kg, P5 offers exceptional durability — meeting the exacting US MIL-STD 810H military standard. Its thoughtfully designed workspace, featuring conveniently placed function keys and a spacious mouse area, optimizes productivity and comfort during video conferences and multitasking. Engineered with the ASUS ExpertCool thermal structure, a newly-enhanced cooling design, the ExpertBook P5 ensures consistent, optimal cooling whether the lid is open or closed, guaranteeing peak performance even during extended usage. It is a productivity powerhouse designed to elevate professional performance, empowering users to achieve their full potential.

Forwarding the ASUS commitment to sustainability, ExpertBook P5 also represents a significant advancement in sustainable technology. This intelligent product has significantly enhanced its circularity by 10% to reach 50%, utilizing Circular Transition Indicators (CTI) for performance measurement. By incorporating recycled materials and a modular design, ExpertBook P5 directly addresses the pressing issue of e-waste.

Experience the power of AI in meetings

ASUS ExpertBook P5 benefits from the all-new ASUS AI ExpertMeet, an on-device AI assistant that transforms meetings into productive and engaging experiences, leverages advanced AI capabilities to enhance audio, video, and collaboration features, ensuring seamless communication and capturing every important detail.

AI ExpertMeet offers a comprehensive suite of AI-powered features to elevate every meeting experience. AI Meeting Minutes accurately captures and transcribe meetings, generating detailed summaries and identifying key points from multiple speakers. The AI Translated Subtitles feature provides translations, ensuring seamless communication across languages. Additionally, the Watermark function allows video calls to be personalized with customizable business card information and screen watermarks for added security and professionalism. All powered by on-device intelligence, personal data remains secure, allowing users to focus on ideas without privacy concerns – empower teams with the latest AI technology and unlocking the full potential of virtual collaborations.

ASUS ExpertGuardian: the ultimate guardian for confidential data

ASUS ExpertBook P5‘s robust security arsenal safeguards critical data. Engineered with a commercial-grade and NIST SP 800-155-compliant BIOS, it provides a foundational layer of protection against firmware attacks. Coupled with Windows 11 Secured-core PC technologies, the ExpertBook P5 creates a fortified defense against software vulnerabilities. To ensure long-term security, ASUS offers a comprehensive five-year support for BIOS and driver updates, safeguarding the system against emerging threats.

Complementing this robust hardware-based security, ExpertBook P5 includes a complimentary one-year McAfee+ Premium membership. This comprehensive security suite leverages McAfee Smart AI^™ for advanced threat detection, including AI-powered deepfake detection to protect against sophisticated social engineering attacks. Additionally, email scam protection provides an extra layer of defense against phishing attempts.

ASUS Business Support

Understanding the critical needs of modern professionals, ASUS Business Support is not merely a warranty — it’s a comprehensive service package that includes on-site repairs, dedicated technical assistance and 24/7 customer support. This robust support framework ensures that every ExpertBook user experiences minimal downtime and receives personalized solutions to their technical issues.

AVAILABILITY & PRICING

The ASUS ExpertBook P5 is available in 4 different configurations starting from October 21^st, 2024.

The 4 specifications are available on the ASUS Store, ranging from CA$1,299 to CA$1,799 both for B2B and B2C customers.

The ExpertBook P5 (P5404) with an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor 226V, 512 GB M.2 PCIe^® 4.0 2280 SSD, an upgradeable M.2 2230 SSD slot, 16 GB LPDDR5X-8533 RAM and Windows 11 Home is now available starting from CA$1,299 on the ASUS Store and Costco.

An additional version with Windows 11 Pro is available on the ASUS Store and selected retailers for CA$1,399.

The ExpertBook P5 (P5404) with an Intel Core Ultra 7 processor 258V, 1 TB M.2 PCIe^® 4.0 2280 SSD, an upgradeable M.2 2230 SSD slot, 32 GB LPDDR5X-8533 RAM and Windows 11 Pro is now available starting from CA$1,799 on the ASUS Store and selected retailers.

An additional version with Windows 11 Home will be available later starting from October 28^th on the ASUS Store and selected retailers, starting from CA$1,699.

You might recall that earlier this week, I posted a story about ASUS doing all sorts of shady things when it came to warranty claims that were sent into ASUS by customers, and their crappy tech support. When it comes to the first part, I said this:

That brings me to the second point. Which is ASUS not supporting their customers warranty claims by bullying them into paying for repairs that they don’t need.

I encourage you to look at the original story as it goes into way more detail about this. This morning I woke up to this document from ASUS trending on Reddit. ASUS is claiming that based on the feedback that surfaced in the last few days, they will be making changes to their RMA process and they apologize for any “communication of frustration”.

The thing is that I don’t buy this at all. This is not the first time that ASUS has been in a situation like this. Last year Gamers Nexus highlighted ASUS and their questionable behaviour in terms of their motherboards and how they worked with AMD Rizen 7000 CPUs. Which at the time was not well. The TL:DR is this:  Some users had problems with their Ryzen 7000 processors on Asus motherboards. And ASUS completely mishandled the situation in epic fashion, resulting in tech YouTube calling them out on it. Gamers Nexus was one of the loudest voices on YouTube calling them out as evidenced by this video:

As a result, ASUS had to do all sorts of damage control to deal with this issue. And they pledged to do better. Here’s the Gamers Nexus video that details that:

Fast forward to today and ASUS is again pledging to do better when they are caught red handed in a bad situation, and tech YouTube calls them on it. What this looks like to me is not a genuine attempt to address their issues and make things better for their customers, but more of a “let’s say something that sounds warm and fuzzy to make this go away as quickly as possible.” In other words, I am calling BS on this.

My advice from earlier this week remains the same. In short, don’t buy ASUS products as they need to be taught a lesson that this sort of behaviour isn’t acceptable and has a cost to it. And this change to their RMA process doesn’t change the fact that this company has issues that have a direct impact on you the consumer should you need assistance from them. There are plenty of other companies who have better service than ASUS. And you should make sure those companies get your hard earned money instead of ASUS.

As many of you know, I own a few ASUS products. Specifically, this gaming PC that I use for cycling indoors on Zwift. And this ZenWiFi XT8 mesh router that I’ve been using for a few years now. But today, I am going public with this statement.

Anyone who reads this blog should not buy ASUS products. Ever.

There’s a pair of reasons that drove me to make this statement. The first is their technical support. Which is abysmal. The second is that there’s an increasing pattern of ASUS not supporting their customers warranty claims by bullying them into paying for repairs that they don’t need.

Let’s start with their tech support. Or rather lack of it. I have had my own issues with their tech support as evidenced by this interaction with them where they couldn’t understand and help me with setting up a PPPoE connection that worked well. I ran around in circles with them for about two weeks before I got fed up with their incompetence. At the time, I said this:

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.

Since I wrote that, I’ve received dozens of emails from people that have had similar experiences with their tech support. That’s not a good look for ASUS because a company is only as good as the support they provide your customers. And if they provide bad support to their customers, those customers will get fed up and not be their customers any longer. And they will tell their friends, or someone like me who has the reach to tell a whole lot of people about how bad that ASUS tech support is. ASUS should consider that and change course before they have no customers to speak of.

That brings me to the second point. Which is ASUS not supporting their customers warranty claims by bullying them into paying for repairs that they don’t need. YouTube channel Gamers Nexus has investigated the bad behaviour of ASUS in the past. And their latest video details what looks like a systemic pattern of ASUS trying to extract cash from users who send in their hardware for warranty repairs by bullying them into paying for extra repairs that they don’t need. I would set aside 30 minutes to watch this video to get the full story:

The thing is, this isn’t the first time that ASUS has been caught doing something shady. If you do a search for “Gamers Nexus ASUS” on YouTube, you can see all the shady stuff that they have been caught doing. In addition, right to repair advocate and YouTuber Louis Rossmann has his own take on this:

If that’s not enough, there’s actually more. A Reddit thread surfaced in the last few days where ASUS quoted a Canadian customer a mind blowing $2799 USD to repair an RTX 4090 GPU that needed its 16-pin power connector replaced. The price is insane because the card had been purchased two week before this happened for $2050 USD. To say that the behaviour of ASUS is a bit suspect in this is an understatement.

On top of the fact that YouTuber JayzTwoCents dumped them as a sponsor to his channel because of their shady behaviour a while back. Here’s the video that details why he did that:

This is pretty bad for ASUS. When A YouTuber dumps you, you know you’re in a bad place.

Now in my case, I’ve been doing some dumping of ASUS products of my own. The PC that I mentioned earlier has been removed from service and replaced by this M2 Pro Mac mini. The PC in question is now sitting in my storage locker waiting to be sold. If you’re interested, I’ve got a fresh install of Windows 11 and it’s ready to go. Email me and we can take it from there. Now while I do have my issues with Apple, they support their customers and they don’t have a reputation for shady behaviour like ASUS does. Thus I will continue to buy products from Apple as they have largely demonstrated that they deserve my money.

Next up is my mesh router. While the XT8 mesh router has been generally reliable, the shady behaviour of ASUS combined with my negative tech support experience will mean that a mesh router from from another company will take its place when it’s time for me to go to WiFi 7. Right now the leading contender to replace the XT8 is Netgear who used to be suspect in terms of how they handled security issues, but have very much improved on that front after being called out on that front repeatedly. Though I have to admit that I’m looking at other companies as well, and I will base my decision on what I go with on the following criteria:

• Security posture: In other words, how well they deal with security issues. Such as deploying patches and how fast they go public in terms of letting their customers know about severe issues that need immediate attention.
• Performance: I want my router to give me top notch performance at all times because I want to maximize the speed of my Internet connection at all times.
• Product Support: As I said earlier, a product is only as good as its support. So this is going to factor into what I get.

I’m hoping to do this switch this year. But one of the things that I am waiting on is WiFi 7 routers to appear in quantity so that I get a fair amount of choice before serving up my credit card to pay for it.

The only other thing that I’ve done is that I stopped recommending ASUS products to my home and prosumer customers. In fact, that happened about a year and a half ago when I had that negative experience with ASUS tech support. The reason I stopped recommending them is that when I recommend something, it has to be something that I would be willing to stake my reputation on. I can’t stake my reputation on recommending ASUS products. No way, no how.

Finally if you have had an issue with ASUS when it comes to the warranty repair of a product, report it as per the advice of Louis Rossmann and Gamers Nexus. In the US you can file a report using this link:

https://reportfraud.ftc.gov

If I find a similar reporting vehicle for Canada, I will post it here. The point is that if enough people report the behaviour of this company to the feds, then ASUS will have a whole lot of explaining to do.

So in short, I am done with ASUS. Given the issues with ASUS that have been exposed by others, and the issues that I’ve personally experienced, the only conclusion that you should come to is that ASUS doesn’t deserve your money. And one of the best ways to drive that point home to ASUS other than to report their behaviour to the feds is to not buy their gear. After all, ASUS may not care about how consumers feel about them. But they sure will care about their bank account getting smaller and smaller as consumers don’t buy their products. Maybe then ASUS will change course and become a company that cares about consumers rather than appear to screw them over at every opportunity. Though I am not holding my breath on that front given how they have behaved up until now. But I suppose anything is possible.

A reader pointed me towards a Bleeping Computer article which then led me to this advisory from ASUS which basically says this. There’s a list of ASUS routers that ASUS is urging customers to upgrade to the latest firmware ASAP because of a security threat that seems to be out there. The company is recommending the following:

We strongly encourage you to periodically audit both your equipment and your security procedures, as this will ensure that you will be better protected. As a user of an ASUS router, we advise taking the following actions:

1. Update your router to the latest firmware. We strongly recommend that you do so as soon as new firmware is released. You will find the latest firmware available for download from the ASUS support page at https://www.asus.com/support/or the appropriate product page at https://www.asus.com/Networking/. ASUS has provided a link to new firmware for selected routers at the end of this notice.
2. Set up separate passwords for your wireless network and router-administration page. Use passwords with a length of at least eight characters, including a mix of capital letters, numbers and symbols. Do not use the same password for multiple devices or services.
3. Enable ASUS AiProtection, if your router supports this feature. Instructions on how to do this can be found in your router’s manual, or on the relevant ASUS support page, at https://www.asus.com/Networking/.

Please note, if you choose not to install this new firmware version, we strongly recommend disabling services accessible from the WAN side to avoid potential unwanted intrusions. These services include remote access from WAN, port forwarding, DDNS, VPN server, DMZ, port trigger.

The advisory also lists the following routers as being affected by whatever threat is out there:

• GT6
• GT-AXE16000
• GT-AX11000 PRO
• GT-AX6000
• GT-AX11000
• GS-AX5400
• GS-AX3000
• XT9
• XT8
• XT8 Version 2
• RT-AX86U PRO
• RT-AX86U
• RT-AX86S
• RT-AX82U
• RT-AX58U
• RT-AX3000
• TUF-AX6000
• TUF-AX5400

Now what strikes me as interesting is that a cursory look at the affected routers shows that a fair number of them have had firmware updates in the last few days. While others have not. Take the XT8 that I own for example. The last firmware update was in May which I wrote about my experiences with that. Others like the RT-AX86U PRO has have firmware updates in the last day or two. That might imply that all of these routers are about to get firmware updates shortly. But I am not 100% sure about that. It might be worth your while to keep an eye on the firmware page for your ASUS router to see if there’s an update for your router. As for if you should update to this new firmware, I would do so as there’s a clear benefit to doing so which is is security. But I would do it with caution and be prepared to roll back to an earlier firmware version as ASUS firmware can either be fine or buggy and there seems to be no middle ground in terms of that.

So I have been spending the last week working on trying to understand why the latest ASUS firmware for the ZenWifi XT8 is such a dumpster fire of a firmware. When I initially updated to it, it was so bad that I put out a PSA telling people not to upgrade to it. And to frank, even though I have things working now, that PSA will still stand because of a couple of reasons.

The first reason is that this firmware, which is version 3.0.0.4.388.23285, seems not to play nice with the advanced DMZ functionality of the Bell HH4000. Specifically the ASUS ZenWifi XT8 would get an external IP address from the HH4000, but the HH4000 would give the ZenWifi XT8 a self assigned address which looks like 169.xxx.xxx.xxx. If you see an address like this, it means that whatever device has this address will not be able to communicate with other devices on your local network or to the Internet properly, if at all. However on the previous version of the firmware which is 3.0.0.4.388.23012, I could not reproduce this issue. How I ultimately fixed this with the new firmware installed was to completely undo the advanced DMZ setup. Then reboot the HH4000. Followed by removing all the entries from the DHCP table in the HH4000. Rebooting again. Then redoing the advanced DMZ setup. Since no other ASUS firmware has required me to go through these gymnastics to make everything work after the firmware update, logic suggests that this is clearly a bug in the 3.0.0.4.388.23285 version of the ASUS firmware. Though to be fair to ASUS, this is likely a use case that they don’t test.

The second reason is that DNS resolution for reasons that I do not understand seems to be problematic. Before I get into why I say that, let me give you a quick lesson on DNS. When you go to a website, say http://www.itnerd.blog, your computer or smart phone has to ask a server called a Domain Name Server for the address of that website. And that server will respond with the exact address. Now that process should be milliseconds to do. But I was finding that it was taking 5 to 10 seconds for that to happen. Now I never use the DNS servers for any ISP that I do business with as ISPs have been known to track your activities and sell that information to third parties. Instead I normally use the Canadian Shield DNS service. But with this firmware, I could not do that. Instead, I had to use Quad 9 which is one of the list of pre-defined DNS services that are baked into ASUS routers. While I do get the same result which is to keep my browsing history private from my ISP, I question why I am no longer able to use Canadian Shield on my ZenWiFi XT8. I say that because as part of my troubleshooting I went back to the previous firmware which is 3.0.0.4.388.23012 and I was not able to reproduce this issue. That again implies that this firmware has an issue of some sort of issue with entering your own DNS settings.

One other thing that I should mention is that as another troubleshooting step, I factory reset the router and set it up from scratch rather than restoring the configuration from a backup. I did that because I thought that the backup might have been the issue. But as you can see above, that wasn’t the case.

The bottom line is this: While I do have things working at present with version 3.0.0.4.388.23285, I cannot recommend that any ASUS ZenWiFi XT8 user upgrade to this version. And this experience underlines the fact that ASUS really has issues with their firmware and their upgrade process that they really need to get sorted sooner rather than later. On top of issues like the ones above that managed to get out of their QA lab into the public domain, the fact I have to recommend that ASUS users reset their router config and redo it either via a backup file or from scratch when said user does a firmware upgrade makes zero sense. No other consumer or prosumer router works that way. And that reflects poorly on ASUS. This is why I have as of late been recommending Netgear and Linksys routers. With both of those brands, I am able to install them and forget about them so to speak. And ASUS needs to be in that camp or they will lose customers due to the fact that ease of setup and ease of use are thing that really matter to customers.

It seems that firmware version 3.0.0.4.388.23285 for the ASUS ZenWiFi XT8 is a must pass. I say that because when I tried to update to it the following happened:

• My Wife’s work supplied SIP phone stopped working.
• HomeKit broke in spectacular fashion
• VPNs would not work
• Surfing the web was difficult do to the slow speed.
• It seem to have issue with Bell and the Advanced DMZ method of bypassing their hardware.

Clearly there’s an issue with this firmware as rolling back to 3.0.0.4.388.23012 allowed me to get things back online. Though I will admit that I had to do two factory resets to make that happen. This reminds me of the last time that I had to put out a PSA about ASUS firmware which was this instance a few months ago.

Until ASUS formally addresses this, your best bet is to stay on firmware 3.0.0.4.388.23012. If you have already upgraded to 3.0.0.4.388.23285, then your best bet is to do the following: 

• Backup the configuration using these instructions. 
• Download and install firmware 3.0.0.4.388.23012 using method 2 from these instructions. 
• After updating do a factory reset of the router using these instructions. 
• Using a computer and a web browser, connect to the router and using the advanced options, upload the backup of the configuration that you saved in the first step. 

The reason why I recommend going this route is that for whatever reason, ASUS routers do not cleanly update the firmware. And that leads to all sorts of weird issues that are hard to track down.

I truly wish ASUS could consistently come out with firmware updates that improve the user experience rather than frustrate users. But until that day comes, if it ever does, your best bet might be to pick a firmware that you know to be stable, and stick to it until there is clear evidence that any newer firmware won’t break your setup.

Earlier this week there were reports of ASUS routers being knocked offline. The reports started to come in on May 16, 2023 and if you were affected by this (I own an ASUS router and I wasn’t affected, though I should have been. More on that shortly), your issues might have lasted a couple of days. Unless you factory reset your router to get back online.

Now the company was pretty silent about what was going on. In fact people complained about the lack of communication from ASUS. But the mystery was solved via this story from ARS Technica which a reader pointed me to:

Two days later, the Taiwan-based hardware maker has finally answered the calls for help. The mass outage, the company said, was the result of “an error in the configuration of our server settings file.” After fixing the glitch, most users needed to only reboot their devices. In the event that didn’t fix the problem, the company’s support team advised users to save their current configuration settings and perform a factory reset. The company also apologized.

Here’s the root cause in detail:

Asus still hasn’t provided details about the configuration error. Various users have offered explanations online that appear to be correct.

“On the 16th, Asus pushed a corrupted definition file for ASD, a built-in security daemon present in a wide range of their routers,” one person wrote. “As routers automatically updated and fetched the corrupted definition file, they started running out of filesystem space and memory and crashing.”

The explanation answered the question of what was causing routers to crash, but it raised a new one: Why were routers affected even when they had been configured to not automatically update and no manual update had been performed? Asus has yet to address this, but the likely answer is that the definitions file for ASD, which resides in memory and scans devices for security threats, gets updated whether or not automatic updates are enabled.

I might be able to answer some of this.

ASD is the AIProtection functionality that is built into many ASUS routers which is made by anti-virus vendor Trend Micro. What this does is block access to questionable websites, protecting users from spyware, malware, and other unwanted applications while preventing potential distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks and other security incidents. It relies on definition files to update itself. And the downloading of those definition files are completely independent of the downloading of firmware updates for the routers. That’s why users got this update even if firmware updates were turned off. In fact doing some experiments on my ZenWiFi XT8 indicate that the only way to turn off the updates for AIProtection is to turn off AIProtection. The other thing that AIProtection does is send your browsing history to Trend Micro. Presumably to help to improve AIProtection. But I can see that some people would be bothered by this as it makes you the product seeing as AIProtection is free.

Now this incident highlights the risks of having this sort of functionality built into your router. And if you’re someone who is concerned about this and want another option, I’ll give you two. There’s CIRA Canadian Shield which is a DNS service that offers a lot of this sort of functionality. Along with that is HYAS Protect At Home which is the same sort of product, but it’s a lot more advanced as it is based on their corporate security tech.

A final word about this. ASUS has a bit of a history of finding themselves in bad situations, and screwing the attempts to diffuse the situation in question. This incident is an example of that. It should not have taken ASUS two days to say anything about this issue. And their apology is pretty lame. ASUS really need to learn how to do a better job of managing a crisis situation that affected a large number of their customers. Otherwise, they will not have any customers.

Over the last few months, I’ve been telling out to either avoid or be cautious about firmware updates for the ASUS ZenWiFi XT8. And in the latter case, I said this:

ASUS really needs to get a firmware release out that stabilizes things for the vast majority of their users. And unfortunately, this specific firmware doesn’t seem to be it. Based on what I am reading in the Reddit threads that I linked to above, some people are getting fed up with being treated as “beta testers”. That in the long term will affect the probability that these users will buy another ASUS product in a negative way. Thus ASUS would be well advised to get on getting a firmware out that is stable for all.

Well we might, key word MIGHT have that firmware. Last week ASUS rolled out version 3.0.0.4.388.22525 of their firmware and it from all reports has been stable for most. Specifically, the connection between the nodes which has been a source of grief for many. I’ve been testing this for the last few days and have found zero issues with it myself. But I should note that I found zero issues with the last firmware that ASUS put out before Christmas, while many other had issues. But what gives me hope that this is stable is that looking at places like SNB Forums, the majority of users seem to be having a good experience with this firmware.

My firmware upgrade process for ASUS routers is as follows: 

• Log into the router using a computer and a web browser
• Backup the configuration using these instructions. 
• Update the firmware.
• After updating I do a factory reset of the router using these instructions. 
• Using a computer and a web browser, connect to the router and using the advanced options in the setup wizard, upload the backup of the configuration that I saved in the first step.

I do this because I have found that simply upgrading to the latest ASUS firmware can create problems. And doing this while taking up to 30 – 40 minutes to perform results in zero issues.

I would be very interested to hear the experience of other XT8 owners with this firmware. Is it better? Is it worse? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

I promised a follow up to the odd decision by ASUS to release a new firmware for their ZenWiFi XT8 mesh router just before Christmas. My experience has been positive so far. I have had zero issues with it. I had a brief look at my logs as since I factory reset my XT8 nodes after upgrading to this firmware. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I also note that memory usage on both nodes was around 72% of the 512MB of RAM. Previous firmwares had the RAM usage about 10% higher. That implies that the mesh router is operating more efficiently.

But to make sure that I wasn’t simply missing out on anything, I’ve been following a pair of threads on Reddit along with a thread on SNBForums. And in those places, the results are more mixed. The most common issue that has been reported is that there have been issues with the nodes disconnecting. Once that happens, it may be a challenge to get them to reconnect. Or they may never reconnect at all. Meanwhile others report no issues.

Based on that, this is clearly a your mileage may vary situation. If you are on a ASUS firmware for the XT8 that is stable, you may be better off staying on that version until whatever stability issues that I am not seeing are sorted out. However, if you do decide to upgrade, you should note the version of firmware that you are currently running so that you can downgrade back to it if problems present themselves. Specifically, losing connection to one of the nodes.

ASUS really needs to get a firmware release out that stabilizes things for the vast majority of their users. And unfortunately, this specific firmware doesn’t seem to be it. Based on what I am reading in the Reddit threads that I linked to above, some people are getting fed up with being treated as “beta testers”. That in the long term will affect the probability that these users will buy another ASUS product in a negative way. Thus ASUS would be well advised to get on getting a firmware out that is stable for all.