Merlin irrespective AC86U router country?

[Patrick de Souza]

Hi
I'm from Australia and the AC86U wireless router is exclusively sold via a retailer between A$350-$400. There are websites in Australia selling grey imports from HK, Malaysia, China for A$205. now you can see the temptation for the price difference. I was worried if grey import from say HK or Malaysia, the firmware and admin setup page may all be in their home language and not English.

Someone from other forums indicated that all I needed to do is to flash with the Merlin firmware and everything will be in English or at least its a great firmware.

Is this the case?

Thanks

 

[RMerlin]

If you import from Hong Kong, your router will be configured for the wrong radio region, which will be much more problematic than just the webui language.

 

[NoSync]

If you import from Hong Kong, your router will be configured for the wrong radio region, which will be much more problematic than just the webui language.

Not necessarily. I got my RT-AC86U from China (Gearbest) and it’s not region-locked, all I had to do was selecting Europe and it works like a breeze.

 

[nzwayne]

Not necessarily. I got my RT-AC86U from China (Gearbest) and it’s not region-locked, all I had to do was selecting Europe and it works like a breeze.

My unit from Gearbest, also had to change the Wireless Defaults from China to USA for use in Canada. When you restore the router settings, you have to manually change this region Wireless setting. Also...after a Factory Reset make sure you & your family...know what the two Chinese panels are (SSID & Router signon ID), setup each correctly, before you can get to the panel to change the region from Chinese to another language.