ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro Quad-Band WiFi 7 Mesh Router (2 Pack), up to 8000 sqft, 2X 10G Ports Each, Smart Home Master with Multi-SSID, VPN & Parental Controls, Subscription-Free Security, AiMesh

We purchased a new, larger house, and I needed to resolve some coverage and speed issues. My AX86U did an admirable job and while I could have just purchased another, we have some Wifi 7 devices so I figured I'd go ahead and futureproof. I read a lot about my options (primarily Wifi 6E and Wifi 7) on several sites, but ultimately, DongKnowsTech is what convinced me to buy this unit over others. My main reason for writing this review is because there are not many reviews yet, and there are a lot of experiences posted elsewhere that were not good. Based on my experience and what I've read, I believe that this is likely related to bad software on release and has been resolved with firmware updates. Perhaps my experience will help you feel more confident about buying this unit if you are strongly considering it. I was nervous about the setup and performance based on experiences some other people had. The only issue that I had during setup was that the node MUST be close to the main unit when setting it up. Even though they can communicate in different areas of the house, it has a difficult time completing setup if they're not close by and will just flash blue. If you experience this and it's in another room, move it in the same room temporarily to complete setup. Once the setup was complete, I updated firmware on both devices, and updated the MAC address on my ATT Fiber modem which was already in Passthrough mode. Once that was complete, I moved the node upstairs and confirmed that it was working. Since I have ethernet in the room that it's in, I plugged in to utilize ethernet backhaul. I also changed a couple of settings in the Asus router app to prioritize ethernet backhaul over wireless backhaul. Once that was done, I confirmed that I still had a connection upstairs, and the app confirmed that it was using wired backhaul. Ran some speed tests on my phone and I was getting 700+mbps on the unit upstairs on 5ghz. Faster than I expected. Wifi downstairs is just as strong. My office and gaming pcs are plugged in ethernet, and I'm capping out at 900-1000mbps whereas I was previously hitting 600-750mbps. NOTE: I switched out all of my ethernet cables to Cat 6A, so this may have had an impact on speeds. Previously, I had Cat 5E and some cables that were not marked and may have been lower grade. One odd thing that I have run into is that my Bravia 7 does not want to connect to any network that has 2.4, 5, and 6ghz available. If I limit it to 2.4 and 5, or one or the other, OR just 6ghz, it will connect fine. But, it will not connect to a network with all 3 active. For now, I have it on it's own network using 6ghz but I'll have to dig into this. I have not had any issues with any other devices connecting. That includes TVs, Hue bridge/bulbs, tablets, game consoles, soundbars, robot vacuum, smartwatches. Everything is working. Overall, I'm very happy with the product. The setup was painless and though I expected good coverage, the speeds are better than expected. It has the same Asus features that I'm familiar with, without extra fees. The only thing that I'm not happy about is the price. I know it will come down and Wifi7 devices will be cheaper in time, but I needed a solution now and didn't want to re-visit again in a couple of years. Since I used Amazon Rewards, in combination with a lower priced Like New unit with Amazon Resale, the price was quite as hard a pill to swallow.

I'm not one to leave reviews, but I wanted to warn people this is not a good, stable, reliable device. Maybe if you use it as a vanilla setup,you'll be fine but I wanted to make minor configuration changes.To be honest, I don't have a lot of networking skills, but don't feel I should need them. I wanted to an IoT network which was on a different subnet of my main network. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get it to work. There wasn't enough options allowing me to setup VLANs the right way. I settled by having the IoT network on the same subnet, but in isolation mode. Isolation didn't matter. IoT devices could still interact. Next, whenever you make a slight tweak, like adding a device to your static IP list, it was cause all devices to disconnect, the router took what seemed like 5 minutes to be available again, and clients struggled to reconnect. I tried to contact support. Their solution was to factory reset the device. They didn't even bother to look at the logs. The final straw what the network kept going down. Sometimes it would be one of the networks, Main or IoT, or both. A reboot would get it going again but devices wouldn't connect for a long time which was incredibly frustrating. I would even lose connection while hardwired directly to the main router, and it was during a video call. When the system was working, I had amazing speeds, even through the mesh node, using my Pixel 9 Pro. I'm sending the device back. I hooked up my old router, an Alien Amplifi with an extra router as a mesh node, and immediately everything came back online. I guess I will try again when I figure out a more stable device. Good luck!!

I'm using this as an AiMesh node with my main BE98 Pro router. ​The initial setup was a pain, but after it was done, it started working great. A quick tip: I'd recommend setting up three WiFi networks at most. Use the main MLO WiFi for your important devices like your phone, tablet, console and PC. Then, put all your IoT devices (surveillance cameras, smart bulbs, smart TV and etc.) on the separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. ​Also, make sure get rid of any old devices that are still on 802.11ac or older (even some devices using 802.11n). They really do bottleneck your router's bandwidth and slow everything down. ​This router has a lot of great features, and it was easy to set up AdGuard Dns and NordVPN. The speed is super steady and rock-solid. ​The only thing I don't like about these new Asus routers is that you have to reboot the router and all the nodes every single time when you add a new IoT devices. If you don't, it just connects and disconnects over and over. ​ The range for 2.4GHz and 5GHz is really great, but the 6GHz range isn't. If you have a big house with a lot of walls, the 6GHz signal won't be very good. Overall, I recommend this routers. It's pricy but worth to buy it.

I have approx. 60 devices in my home and a 2Gb internet connection. Mostly 2.4g, some 5g, a few 6g and 1 wifi7 MLO (my phone). Saying that, I setup my mesh (2 nodes) with a basic main net (all bands, Wi-Fi 7, MLO) and a IOT Net (2.4g only). Ethernet backhaul. Everything is set up with default settings. Setup went quick, everything was running and most devices connected (had to reboot a few) in < 30 mins. Results: Performance (when it works) is awesome. My phone’s speed test is ~1.9Gb. Problem is that it’s totally random. No consistency. My connection is constantly degrading to wifi 6, or just randomly resetting – a lot. I’m constantly switching my wifi on/off on my phone to get a better connection. Wifi6 devices seem to work, no issues. Update: Lowering my ratting by two stars because of the bad firmware. I labeled all my nodes in the web UI (it took a couple of hours) and the router reset them after reboot. DHCP server also just started assigning addresses without a default GW gateway it took me a bunch of time to figure that out. And finally, my Sonos devices (Arc, Era300, Sub Mini) don't like staying connected after router reboots (and trust me u do a LOT of rebooting). Really disappointed. I still buy their routers because when they work, they work. They have a ton of geek features to mess with, free parental controls, firewall, ad block, and outstanding HW and net performance. Their unstable SW is more than just annoying; it can be a pain in the butt sometimes. Most issues, non-power users won’t even notice. You, as the person that just spent a $1000 on a router, will.

I replaced an 8-year-old Linksys with this Asus ZenWiFi BQ 16 Pro. Nothing wrong with the Linksys, but the new Asus has so many new features and security options. The two-module model covers the entire house and some more. The mesh network reaches everywhere even on the farthest areas on the deck. I have ethernet to the mesh module, so it connected simply. The security settings allow tuning many options to turn off features such as WPS and UPNP which you do not need. You can also set up as many sub networks that you need. I have three: main, IoT and Guest. All devices had no issue except my two Amazon Smart Plugs. For some reason they did not work. After much back and forth with Alexa support including trying two new ones they sent, the solution was to change to Amazon Basics Smart Plugs (cheaper and they work). My old Linksys had 8 ports; this router has only three. No big deal as you can buy a small switch and get more ports with it (see picture). Set up is really simple. I found doing it on my computer easier than on a mobile. All you have to do is to connect the computer to the router. The Asus app is intuitive and after a few minutes you can master it. One trick is to print out the manual before and note all the things you will want to change or adjust when the app is started. Helps not to miss anything. The router is a bit pricey, but when you consider it is for several years, worth it. All in all, quite happy with the choice and the capabilities.

The BQ16 Pro started out rough for me. It was crashing often and would lose it's configuration settings occasionally. I was assuming it was just a bad system. But I called ASUS support and we were able to determine that one of the nodes was defective. After receiving the replacement, it has been phenomenal. 1. The speed is fantastic. I was looking for a system that would allow us to take advantage of our 1GB Internet connection via AT&T. Speed from my iPhone 17 are over 1 GB when connected to the main router, and around 500 mbs when connected to the node. 2. Pretty easy to set up. I have an IT background, but I think that most would find this to be a relatively painless implementation. 3. Control over my network was the most important factor to me, and the BQ16 Pro delivered that in spades. I have different groups configured that have settings for Internet filtering and scheduled downtime. I'm easily able to temporarily bypass scheduled downtime via the app. My only complaint here is that my previous WiFi system would send me a notification if a new device joined the network. I'm not able to do that with the BQ16 Pro. 4. Note that configuration of the IoT network is going to be a "must have" if you have a lot of devices in your home. Some of my TP-Link smart switch devices could not connect to the regular network, as well as a scale. Surprisingly, my Peloton had trouble with the main WiFi network as well. Putting all of them on the IoT network fixed the problem. 5. Reporting features are fantastic. I'm able to see top consumers of bandwidth, traffic monitors and analyzers, statistics, etc. Lots of stuff for me to geek out on. 6. Coverage is great. I have a 3,300 Sq. Ft 2 story home. The main router is in a corner office on the 1st floor. (Not an ideal location being in the corner of the house, but that's where the AT&T router is). The node is also on the 1st floor in the middle of the house. I was nervous about going from 3 to 2 access points and how that would impact the 2nd floor. But there isn't a place in the house that doesn't have a strong connection. 7. Very easy backup and restore of system settings. This may sound small, but when I received my replacement system I did a quick restore, saving me hours of configuration time. 8. The Trend Micro protection that comes free is great as well. (Unlike some of the competition that charges an additional fee for such protection). I'm giving it 4 stars instead of 5 for: 1. Not providing a way to receive a notification when new devices come on the network. This is important to me as when my kids' friends come and get on the network, there is no filtering on their device unless I go in and put them in a group. 2. The tech support was weak. Granted, we were able to determine that one of the devices was defective. The technician was very friendly and was trying his hardest to help. But there was a major language barrier. He clearly didn't understand a lot of the things I was saying, and would respond with a few of the lines he had memorized in English no matter what I said or asked. Overall, definitely worth the money. These are a lot more expensive than other options out there. But I just couldn't find other options that were cheaper and checked all the boxes I was looking for.

I was very excited to get ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro router in order to upgrade my network to WiFi 7 and improve performance. Unfortunately, while there is a lot of positive experience, I think I'll be returning this router for a refund. Starting with positive, I did notice improved WiFi performance with transmission speeds above 1Gbps and the router seems to be able to handle more traffic than my previous router. I also like all the advanced options that are available. (VPN, Time Machine support, secondary WAN) Great looking device that I don't have to hide in a closet. (although it's a bit bigger than I expected) Now with the negatives: - WiFi drops Occasionally clients lose connectivity to Internet with no obvious reasons. Mobile devices detect lack of Internet connection and switch to cellular, but other devices simply stop providing content. WiFi is up and local network is accessible, but not external. It seems to be related to DNS resolution, but I haven't found a way to fix it. I tried manually specifying DNS, but has the same problem. The issue is temporary and resolves itself in a couple of minutes. - Reboots Many settings require WiFi restart which causes all devices to lose connection. Firstly, it's not always clear when this can occur. Secondly, I have over 60 devices and when they all disconnect from WiFi it take a while to get them all back. Some devices don't manage to come up and require reboot. And this can happen from something as simple as adding a manual IP assignment to a host. - UI Mobile app UI is very nice, fast and modern looking. Web UI is so different from mobile that it makes it hard to find certain features. Web UI is so old looking that it makes me wonder why I paid so much for this router. I can easily block a device from accessing Internet in the mobile app, but I have no idea how to do this in the web UI. - Documentation It is hard to find documentation for the features that are available in the router. There are a lot of pages about how to change something, but not about what it means.

I was holding off on the install as the last time I did this with the ZenWiFi XT8, it took over an hour. The pair of access points were much easier to setup and I had everything running in about 15 minutes. AI Protection was turned off so that was the first thing I enabled. The install asked about an IoT or Kids network and that also worked the first time when I set up a network for IoT. I was concerned that I'd have to enable VLANs and routing but the Asus worked immediately. I did have to set the WiFi band to 2.4GHz for the IoT network but I was able to reach all my SmartThings Zigbee and Matter devices using the 6GHz WiFi network. It did take a few power off, power on cycles to connect the second router to the mesh network but it did work. I moved the second mesh router to another room after I confirmed the network was working but then it wouldn't connect. I unplugged it, plugged it back in and it worked. The box is about 1/3 larger than the XT8 so it's more noticeable on my desks but the devices also have 5 ethernet ports for the LTE extender, printer, desktop, and NAS. I replaced the XT8 WiFi 6 router pair as I was getting more disconnects and I had to reset the routers at least weekly. So far, the router pair is working very well.

There's work even better than I'd hoped. I have 900 Mbps broadband and I now get the full speed in another room, through two brick walls with just wireless backhaul (no cable). The functionality is also exceptional. So far I have a separate IoT wireless network and a Wireguard VPN server set up and it's only day one. Very expensive, but they live up to the hype.

Son fáciles de configurar y es la mejor tecnología de Wifi

Enfin un réseau Wi‑Fi digne de ce nom ! Le ZenWiFi BQ16 Pro d’ASUS m’a permis d’obtenir une connexion stable, puissante et constante dans toute la maison — et même au jardin ! L’installation est un vrai jeu d’enfant, tout est intuitif et bien pensé. La qualité du produit est tout simplement phénoménale : design élégant, performances impressionnantes et couverture jusqu’à 8 000 m² parfaitement assurée. ASUS confirme encore une fois sa réputation d’excellence dans le matériel informatique : fiabilité, puissance et simplicité réunies dans un seul appareil. Je recommande sans hésitation !

Terrible product. Kept dropping connections after initial setup, and I couldn't load web pages without broken images or watch a YouTube clip without major timeouts. Not what I expected from a top-of-the-line router.

I screwed up my first attempt at setting it up, but resetting the "base" unit allowed me to do it properly, and since then it's been flawlessly issuing a ~1GB signal without interruption. Handles multiple IOT devices as well as sometimes two laptops, two tablets, two handhelds, and one or two video streaming devices, with no interruption in service. Expensive, but worth it.