ASUS ZenWiFi Pro XT12 (2 Pack) - AX11000 Wi-Fi Mesh System: up to 557 Square Metres of Coverage, Security Functions, Parental Controls and Two 2.5G Ethernet Ports

Product Information

And there are even more similarities, as you’ll note in the hardware specifications below. Hardware specifications: ZenWiFi Pro XT12 vs ZenWiFi Pro ET12 Each node has four Ethernet ports: 2.5GbE WAN, 2.5GbE LAN and dual 1GbE LAN. The later can be aggregated for a 2GbE connection which is great for attaching things like NAS boxes. Each node also has WPS and reset buttons, plus a power switch. Note that there are no USB ports. 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. 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 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.

Optimized memory utilization and fixed an occasional server error when registering DDNS with an app. Hardware specifications: ZenWiFi Pro ET12 vs ZenWi-Fi ET8 ZenWiFi Pro XT12 vs ET12: The third Wi-Fi band changes everything 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.

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. 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. Guest WiFi: Create a guest network with a WiFi schedule and access rights to control when and how guests can use the network. ZenWiFi Pro XT12 vs ZenWiFi Pro ET12: You must turn them on and look at the front lights to know which is which. Technically, we’re supposed to be able to use the XT12 and ET12 hardware together in a single mesh system, per the way AiMesh works. And eventually, that likely will be the case. The message I got when adding the ZenWiFi Pro XT12 to my GT-AXE16000 Wi-Fi 6E (or the ZenWiFi Pro ET12). While this might change, it’s not a good idea to mix Wi-Fi standards in a mesh system, anyway.

If you only need a single unit, my take is the ET12’s support for the 6GHz band is more valuable than the XT12’s support for UNII-4 (or the fact it has a second 5GHz band). But either will do just fine and you’ll save some dough going with the XT12. 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.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! The ZenWiFi Pro XT12 is a traditional Tri-band with an additional 5GHz band (the 5GHz-2). So it has 2.4GHz and two 5GHz bands (5GHz-1 and 5GHz-2).

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. 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. The main XT12 unit is located next to the Router and the node XT12 unit is located between Locations 1 and 2. QoS settings are extensive and can ensure that anything from web conferencing, through video streaming to gaming can be prioritised on various devices. 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.

What Is the ASUS ZenWiFi Pro XT12 WiFi6 Tri-Band Mesh System?

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. 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. 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. 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. Be noted: This is an early stage beta, there might be bugs. This version can be downgraded via web GUI only. 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) 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. The 2.4GHz band offers excellent range and broad compatibility, and the 5GHz band provides higher performance, but both are increasingly crowded with devices and can be prone to interference. The WiFi 6 technologies on the ZenWiFi Pro XT12 can alleviate congestion when it’s managing a network of compatible WiFi 6 devices. Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) allows the router to communicate with multiple devices simultaneously by dividing slices of the frequency spectrum into sub-channels. OFDMA is complemented by multi-user, multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO), which uses multiple transmit and receive antennas so that the router can talk to many devices at the same time.This is one of the top routers from Asus, promising speeds of up to 11,000 Mbps, and 6,000 sq ft of coverage with just two nodes. Impressive? Only if you read the fine print. The unit offers Tri-Band connectivity, including 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz-1 and 5Ghz-2, and 2.5G multi-gig ports for high speed direct connection from either node, optimal for NAS systems, gaming or just about any workflow demanding the fastest connection possible. And all three combined offer the magical 11,000 Mbps, of 4,804 Mbps each for 5Ghz, and 1,148 Mbps for 2Ghz. Still, for many, the XT12 will be cheaper than a full, business-class Cisco Meraki deployment but, if you’re weighing up that as an option, don’t forget to factor-in on-going support costs as part of the total cost of ownership (aka TCO).