I got the
ASUS RT-AX86U Pro on a Black Friday for a good deal - 171,45 €. It arrived a few days ago and I was pretty excited to test it, because I was using a 10 yo Cisco Linksys WiFi N router, which had been working with no issues, but I wanted a faster one, because I upgraded my Internet to 600 Mbs. Anyway, First tests were impressive (see attached screen shot). I made the initial setup with the phone app. But then something very strange happeed. After the first 15 - 20 min., I started getting very poor and unstable connection. Like, I'm in the same room 1 meter from the router with my laptop with clear vision and it drops the connection. Phone - too. The other laptop - too. I can barely connect and it drops from time to time. I tried many many things, resetting it a few times, rebooting it, rebooting the laptop, the phone, changing some settings I discovered in online forums, "forgetting" the networks in the phone and lapto and so on - nothing. I tried disabling beam forming, QoS, splitting the 2.4 and 5Ghz SSIDs into two separate or in one name, disabled all kinds of settings which were supposed to help, but the router was practically useless! I tried with the latest beta firmware - same thing. I didn't try with Merlin, because I was going to return that PoS immediately to Amazon the next day. I even printed the label fro returning it with HDL. I went to sleep, but the router was in the same room but the LED indicators of the router were preventing me to fall asleep so I unplugged it straight from the power outlet.
The next day I was packing it already but remembered that I need to reset it once again so that my personal settings aren't there. I powered it on again just to reset it. I thought maybe I should reset it by holding the "reset" pin button for about 10 seconds and call it a day, but then I decided to try to connect to it once again and do the resetting from the web UI. And miracle happened! Without changing anything over night the router was just working perfectly. It's been behaving good for 3 days now. Nevertheless, I installed Merlin on it not because it's not working, but just for fun. It's OK, still. Just to be save I reset to factory defaults once again and it's working perfectly - strong signals and great speed - just like the first 15-20 min. after I turned it on. I did not change absolutely anything in the settings besides opting for separate names of the 2.4 and 5Ghz networks.
I really hate when this happens. Now I don't know if I should expect that to happen sometime again in the future. I have one month to decide if I want to return it. I searched for alternatives and was wondering about returning it and getting the AX 88U Pro or TP-Link Archer AXE300. I really don't care too much about 6e. I have very few IoT at home (appartment). I don't care about mesh, etc. I only want a single WiFi blaster at the center of my apartment.
I don't know what to do - keep or return. And if I return it, I could get the AX 88U Pro, it will be a bit more expensive, but not much. What are your thoughts? Overall I really like the device I'm only afraid of the issue that happened.