QoS settings are extensive and can ensure that anything from web conferencing, through video streaming to gaming can be prioritised on various devices. The Asus ZenWiFi Pro XT12 is a tri-band Wi-Fi 6 router with two 5GHz channels and a 2.4GHz channel that offer a combined, theoretical throughput of 11,000Mbps. Many routers offer 5GHz connections, but not all 5GHz routers are built the same. The ZenWiFi Pro ET12 can access a high-power 160MHz slice of the 5GHz spectrum. Only recently made available for home WiFi in the United States, this 5.9GHz band is unaffected by radar signals, and it offers wider coverage than you’ve come to expect from 5GHz.

That said, fibre speeds are not fixed, and dependent on a lot of other factors, including service provider and its network set-up, and other physical factors that end-users are not always able to control. Optimized memory utilization and fixed an occasional server error when registering DDNS with an app. Today’s highest-performing wireless networks need to serve more and more devices with more bandwidth than ever before. ZenWiFi Pro mesh wireless routers offer the most MU-MIMO capacity of any ASUS mesh system for the most demanding environments. The ZenWiFi Pro ET12 harnesses WiFi 6E to offer cutting-edge connectivity to compatible client devices, while the ZenWiFi Pro XT12 delivers a premium WiFi 6 experience. Up close it scored 627Mbps, which is fast but about 100Mbps slower than other top Wi-Fi 6 rivals. Next to the secondary node it scored 609Mbps – which represents only a 3% drop-off and the fastest speed we’ve ever seen from a test by a secondary node on a mesh!Plus, it helps that the XT12 units are easily the most aesthetically pleasing networking devices we have ever seen. The cuboid design with the Perspex top really makes them stand out (but in a good way this time) and they are something you wouldn’t need to have hidden away. In terms of speed, the 11,000 Mbps on the marketing material was nothing more than wishful thinking but also because in Singapore, the common standard offered is 1 GBPS (1,000 Mbps), which is decent but a far cry from the 4,804Mbps ASUS mentions for its 5Ghz band. Business and prosumers will like the idea of being able to use up to 12 SSIDs to group users and devices onto separate network segments – each with different levels of access. However, the access controls for these segments are very broad and nothing like (again) the Synology, which offers numerous, IoT-optimised, firewall and sharing configurations for each network. Nine of the SSID networks are essentially forms of guest networks.

SYDNEY , Australia, February 17, 2022 —Today marked the launch of ASUS ZenWiFi ® Pro XT12, a high-performance tri-band WiFi 6 (802.11ax) mesh networking system designed to provide fast whole-home WiFi coverage. Getting connected: Dual-WAN vs Link Aggregation | Dual-band vs Tri-band vs Quad-band | Fiber-optic vs Cable | Getting your home wired | Multi-Gig explained | Cable modem activation | Routers explained | Mesh explained For now, in my trial, that was not possible yet. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t link them together. The AiMesh setup process would just fail every single time. And I tried many times.Hardware specifications: ZenWiFi Pro ET12 vs ZenWi-Fi ET8 ZenWiFi Pro XT12 vs ET12: The third Wi-Fi band changes everything Alas, connecting to the 5Ghz-2 band didn’t fare too well in our testing, as we saw a reduction in speeds vs 5Ghz-1. Perhaps this is a frequency not utilised yet by many devices, but perhaps this is part of the future-proofing ASUS has built into the XT12 system.

Long gone are the days when upgrading your home router involved a crash course in networking. The ZenWiFi Pro ET12 and XT12 streamline the entire setup process down to roughly three minutes. After you find the right spots in your home for each mesh networking node, plug them in, and set up the main router, they’ll automatically sync up to create the wide coverage area afforded by mesh networking tech. Additionally, on the 5GHz-2, the XT12 supports the latest UNII-4 portion to have a third 160MHz band which is free for DFS channels. By default, the ET12’s 6GHz band doesn’t have to deal with DFS. It’s in a relatively new market segment for prosumers and SMBs that was recently brought to the fore by Synology’s RT6600ax. The problem is that while the Synology is much uglier, it offers even more features, similarly impressive performance and costs (gulp) around one-third the price of the XT12, depending on where you are in the world. What this means though is that every month, a new line of Wi-Fi 6 routers hit the market, all touting speeds that mere mortals and few devices will never experience, but also all future-proofed, until a refreshed model lands in four months time that is. Per Asus’ naming convention, X is short for Wi-Fi 6 (802.11a x), and E is for Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax e). The letter T signifies that these are Tri-band broadcasters — they both have three Wi-Fi bands.Wi-Fi standards: Wi-Fi 7 | Wi-Fi 6E| UNII-4 (5.9GHz) | Wi-Fi 6 | What is Wi-Fi? | Wi-Fi antennas (dBi) | Wi-Fi broadcasting/signal power (dBm)

Our Wi-Fi connection speed using an iPhone 13 Pro Max and MacBook Pro M1 Max next to the main node/router was around 700 Mbps, which is pretty much standard for the many systems we’ve tested. However, when we connected to the second node, we noticed that the speeds dropped by just 25-30%, compared to the 40-60% on the other mesh systems. This was measured on the 5Ghz-1 band exclusively. Meanwhile, devices on the 2.4Ghz will give you more distance in coverage, but far less speeds. Adding to the ranks is the new router /mesh Wi-Fi system from ASUS, the ZenWiFi Pro XT12, or XT12, because it’s 2022 and brands still feel the need to label their products in memory friendly ways. As a WiFi 6E router, the ZenWiFi Pro ET12 offers all the congestion-alleviating technologies of WiFi 6 with access to the wide-open spectrum of the 6GHz band as the cherry on top. To open a new frontier of wireless networking, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted access to the 6GHz band. Because the congestion-management and latency-reducing features of WiFi 6 are mandatory for devices compatible with this spectrum, they’ll enjoy low interference and top-end performance when they’re connected to a network managed by the ET12. You can buy either or none no matter your situation and the world will keep spinning for the foreseeable future. The main XT12 unit is located next to the Router and the node XT12 unit is located between Locations 1 and 2.

How Well Does it Perform?

The ZenWiFi Pro XT12 is traditional Tri-band hardware. As such, it works great in a fully wireless mesh setup. You should get it if you live in a large home and are too lazy to run network cables. ASUS ZenWiFi Pro XT12 includes ASUS RangeBoost Plus — the latest, most powerful version of RangeBoost — which improves coverage for all WiFi devices including legacy devices. In combination with ASUS RF technology and other exclusive ASUS technologies, RangeBoost Plus dramatically improves WiFi signal range and coverage by up to 38% [i] . The two-node configuration supplied should be sufficient for coverage up to approximately 6000 square feet. Coverage can be extended even further for larger homes using any ASUS AiMesh-compatible router. Futuristic design Guest WiFi: Create a guest network with a WiFi schedule and access rights to control when and how guests can use the network.