ASUS Router Review: Connecting Many Devices with Wi-Fi 6E Capability

I'm going to have a bunch of devices connected to this one, a bunch connected to that one, and I'm gonna use a dedicated wireless backhaul between them. That's cool. That's great. But it means more hops, which means more latency for any device that is connected through the second access point.

What you can also do is create a dedicated wired backhaul between them, which is a lot closer to what you would do in a commercial environment. So you can actually get full speed on every wireless device (Linus tapping devices) that is connected to either of them. Pretty sick.

Speaking of hardware, each of these units has a two-gigahertz quad-core ARM V8 processor inside. Like that's the thing is really the main benefit of a product like this is going to be connecting many devices. ASUS sent over internal shots of it. That is so cool. There's some other software features to talk about.

Obviously, it uses ASUS' extremely robust web UI and they've got a cool VPN feature that allows you to VPN through your own home internet connection, no matter where you are, which means you don't have to even trust a VPN company with your data, and ASUS would have no access to it, which is pretty cool.

And my laptop just booted up. Let's see. Do I have a Wi-Fi 6E chipset in here? (Linus grunting) Hello? Yeah, I'm just Wi-Fi six, not Wi-Fi 6E. And that's something to note, if you wanna take advantage of Wi-Fi 6E, so the actual six-gigahertz band you're gonna need a device that was built from the ground up for it. It's not just a firmware that you can flash onto your old Wi-Fi six devices, but that's a feature not a bug. 'Cause like I said before, it means that your Wi-Fi 6E devices will not be sharing any of that air time with older legacy devices.

Man, 6E is gonna be just such a godsend for people living that apartment life. Like you don't probably realize how much your neighbors just having a bunch of wireless gear kicking around is affecting not just the throughput, but most importantly the latency of your wireless gear and the consistency of your connection.

So if you're trying to do something like stream video I would expect to be able to do it at least until 6E gets super crowded. Though that should take a really long time. I mean we get seven more, 160-megahertz channels. Like, that's freaking insane.

Well, hey, in the meantime, why don't we get this powered up? What's their setup process like? Oh cute. It's got like RGB lights in the top. Check that out. Oh wow. Okay. It does not look like it's flickering like that in person. Okay. WAN goes here (cable clicking). I don't know Andy do you wanna come with me? Our internet box is over here. Hey boys.

Hello! Uh, is this the longest cable we got? Yeah. I just have to hit that Telus box. (man laughing) Yeah, right there. Gosh. Darn it. Okay. Well let's make the trek again. And I ran out. This one is even shorter. Okay. It's coupler time.

Can I help you? Oh good, yes. Um, I need a coupler for ethernet. Oh boy. Yes. I know that's not best practice. I might have given them all to Dan. I don't know. I would never. (bag crinkling) Always gotta keep some goodies for myself.

Back, back! Back I say! Clearly some hounding is going on. Back I say! Do you want your data back or what? Jake's working on the vault recovery still, actually it's going really well. Massive shout out Wendell, by the way. From level one techs.

What are the odds this is gonna work? Hundred percent. One hundred percent? Yeah, I don't think so Andy. Come on. Come on, come on, come on! Oh perfect. It works. Never use admin and password please, guys. Do as I say, not as I do. Login password is too weak. Oh wait. It still let me do it.

(Linus chuckling) That'd be great if a guy just like popped outta the bottom and was like //

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- This is not what I expected.- Hold on, hold on, hold on.Let me go a little closer to you.Okay, when you talk,you gotta face me Linus.- Oh, sorry Brandon. Sorry Brandon.The uploads finallysuffering a little bit.We've got three walls between us now.Like what?Do you wanna see my Wi-Fi?Obsolete.At least that's the goal.ASUS sponsored this videoand we're gonna be taking our first lookat the ZenWiFi Pro ET12.The first empirical proof that I've seenthat Wi-Fi has completelyjumped the shark.That's right my friends.This is a 900 US dollar wireless router.Well actually there's two units,wireless solution for handling anythingfrom a bungalowall the way to a 6,000square foot residence,with just these twoadmittedly very attractivebase stations.(plastic crinkles)$900.- Yeah.- How could you justify that?- It looks so cool.- Oh my God. Are those the antennas?- Yep!- Wow.Okay, that's kind of cool.Also there's a lot of tech inside them.This is insane.I mean part of the reasonthat it costs so muchhas gotta be that they effectivelyjust ship you two of them.Here do you see these antennas Andy?Antennae.I can tell you part of thereason for the high priceis that they literallyship you two of them.Can you buy it at one?Oh, it's a two pack.That's the ET12, is the two pack.Two pack is alive. You saw it here first.(Jono laughing)- Oh my God.- It's an older meme, it's an older meme.Taken from us too young.I think we can all agree on that.All right, before we explainwhy you might need two of these,let's talk about whyone of these base unitsmight be worth about 450 U.S. dollars,starting at the back.For wired technology,right out of the gate,it's better than youraverage wireless routerhaving two 2.5 gig ethernet ports.This is gonna be greatif you've got a greater thangigabit internet connection,which I just got installed at my house,two and a half gig internet inbound.Or if you have a couple of key clientsthat might need to run atgreater than gigabit speed.Say for example if youhad your main computerthat you use as an editingstation in your home office,and a high speed NAS that you useto store high resolutionpictures or high bit rate video.It's got a couple more gigabit ports,all the usual, power in, WPS.On and off?Does that just enable anddisable like the whole unit?Other than that, it'sgot a nice aesthetic,which I guess is cool.And of course it is jam packed fullof the latest wireless technologies.So this isn't just Wi-Fi 6.This is Wi-Fi 6E andthat's a really big dealbecause while it's more ofan evolutionary step forward,it's built on the samefundamentals as Wi-Fi 6,for you the end user,it could actually be a bigger upgradecompared to going from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6.When we went from 5 to 6,the biggest benefits werein households with many connected devices,whether that's a lot of users,or whether that's a lot ofIoT devices, smart locks,smart blinds, all of that kind of stuff.Because it allowed much more efficient useof the available spectrum.It also adds new security featuresand all that kind of good stuff,but where Wi-Fi 6E changes the gameis it's actually adding more spectrum.That's right.Six gigahertz is finally here.So we've had tri-band routers before.2.4 and then in most cases,dual five gigahertz bands,but this tri-band router is2.4, five, and six gigahertz.And what's cool about six gigahertzis not only will it never becluttered up by legacy devices.So this is entirely fresh spectrumfor those new devices to communicate on.But it's also way widerthan what we had beforein the first place, which isn't to saythat it doesn't comewith some disadvantages.Because the frequency is even higherthan what we had before,yes, you might see areally nice speed benefiton a supported client,though admittedly there aren't many yet,you could easily see throughput in excessof one gigabit per second,and even to multiple clients.This features a four by four designon both the five gigahertzand six gigahertz bands,but it does come with a drawback.So remember how five gigahertz didn't havethe same kind of rangein penetration powerof 2.4 gigahertz 'causethe frequency is higher?Well, six gigahertz is higher again.So you're gonna get thatlightning fast speedand lower latency,but it will come at somecost in terms of range.And I think really that(routers thudding)is where a lot of the value addof a package like this comes in.ASUS is acknowledgingthat the kind of personbuying a premium wirelessaccess point like this onemay want that kind of speedacross their entire domicileor I mean realistically youcould use a product like thisin a small business ifyou really wanted to.And that's what makesthis product really cool.So because both of them have dualtwo and a half gigabit ports,what you can do is youcan actually configure ita number of ways.You could say okay, hey, I want my modemto plug into this one andI'm gonna put this overat the other side of myhouse and I'm going to havea bunch of devices connected to this one,a bunch connected to this one,and I'm gonna use adedicated wireless back haulbetween them.That's cool. That's great.But it means more hops,which means more latency for any devicesthat are connected throughthe second access point.What you can also do is createa dedicated wired back haulbetween them, which is a lotcloser to what you would doin a commercial environment.So you can actually get full speedon every wireless device(Linus tapping devices)that is connected to either of them.Pretty sick.Speaking of hardware, each of these unitshas a two gigahertz quad-coreARM V8 processor inside.Like that's the thing isreally the main benefitof a product like this is gonnabe connecting many devices.ASUS sent over internal shots of it.That is so cool.There's some other softwarefeatures to talk about.Obviously it uses ASUS'extremely robust web UIand they've got a cool VPNfeature that allows youto VPN through your ownhome internet connection,no matter where you are,which means you don't have to even trusta VPN company with your dataand ASUS would have no accessto it, which is pretty cool.And my laptop just booted up. Let's see.Do I have a Wi-Fi 6E chipset in here?(Linus grunting)Hello? Yeah, I'm justWi-Fi six, not Wi-Fi 6E.And that's something to note,if you wanna take advantageof Wi-Fi 6E, so theactual six gigahertz bandyou're gonna need a device that was builtfrom the ground up for it.It's not just a firmwarethat you can flashonto your old Wi-Fi six devices,but that's a feature not a bug.'Cause like I said before,it means that your Wi-Fi 6E deviceswill not be sharing any of that airtimewith older legacy devices.Man, 6E is gonna be just such a godsendfor people living that apartment life.- Oh yeah.- Like you don't probably realizehow much your neighbors justhaving a bunch of wirelessgear kicking aroundis affecting not just thethroughput, but most importantlythe latency of your wirelessgear and the consistencyof your connection.So if you're trying to dosomething like stream videoI would expect to beable to do it at leastuntil 6E gets super crowded.Though that should takea really long time.I mean we get seven more,160 megahertz channels.Like, that's fricking insane.Well, hey, in the meantime,why don't we get this powered up?What's their setup process like? Oh cute.It's got like RGB lights in the top.Check that out. Oh wow.Okay. It does not look likeit's flickering like thatin person.Okay. WAN goes here.(cable clicking)I don't know Andy doyou wanna come with me?Our internet box is over here.Hey boys.- Hello!- Uh is this the longest cable we got?Yeah. I just have to hit that Telus box.(man laughing)Yeah, right there.Gosh. Darn it.Okay. Where's our longest cable then?Oh, that?- Yeah, it's the best one we got.- Oh that does not looklonger than what I have.- All the otherones are at your house.- Yes.(men laughing)Okay. Well let's make the trek again.And I ran out. This one is even shorter.Okay. It's coupler time.- Can I help you?- Oh good, yes.Um, I need a coupler for ethernet.- Oh boy.- Yes. I know that's not best practice.- I might have giventhem all to Dan. I don't know.I would never.- Yes!(bag crinkling)- Always gotta keepsome goodies for myself.- I haven't hounded himabout his shelf in a while.- Back, back!- Clearly some hounding is.- Back I say!Do you want your data back or what?- Jake's working on thevault recovery still,actually it's going really well.Massive shout out Wendell, by the way.From level one techs.(cable clicking)What are the odds this is gonna work?- Hundred percent.- One hundred percent?Yeah I don't think so Andy.- Coin flip.- Come on. Come on, comeon, come on, come on!Oh perfect. It works.Never use admin and password please, guys.Do as I say, not as I do.Login password is too weak.Oh wait. It still let me do it.(Linus chuckling)That'd be great.If a guy just like poppedoutta the bottom and was like\"weak\"! Apparently out ofthe box it's configuredfor six gigahertz back haul,which makes a ton of sense.Most people go wirelessbecause they don't wanna runwires through their home.But if it was me, man, I wouldfind a way to run that wirebecause your Wi-Fi experienceis gonna be fricking amazing.Although you wouldn't haveto do it immediately, right?Like you could run six gigahertz back haulfor now while you don't have any devicesthat can connect to it anyway.And then you can run your wire later,once you actually feel likeyou need the extra speed.Oh there it is.Extra-slow showed up first. How ironic.Well, why don't we start with 2.4?This is a gigabit internet connection.So, make of that what you will.Obviously this is not themost scientific way todo a wireless speed test, but,in fact I'm probably even too close to it.Hi YouTube.It should be noted we havea ton of RF junk in here.So if there's anywherethat I would expect thisnew six gigahertz band tomake a difference, itwould be in this office.Yeah. Linus Fast is not showing up here.Linus Slow is pretty fast. So that's cool.Dang. All right then.Just shy of 800 megabitdown. Looking at around.Wow. Just wow. Okay.So Linus Slow, pretty fast.I'm confused though.I don't know why I can'tsee Linus Fast here.I'm gonna see if there's anyfirmware updates or anything.That's as good a timeas any to poke aroundASUS' dashboard here.So they've got their A.I.mesh, which allows you touse multiple ASUS routersas a mesh Wi-Fi system.It's really cool.It's a really neat way to bringforward your older devicesand still get use out of them.Especially if you have a larger home.Their AI protection,blocking malicious sites,and cool stuff like that.Their parental controls were not amazinglast time we tried them.Really good analysis tools though.You can see traffic and clientsand what apps are being usedand stuff like that on your home network.Especially if you have afamily that can be very useful.Firmware update, here we go.Okay. Let's check. It'sthe latest version.Hold on a second.I'm gonna double checkand make sure this isactually a 6E client then.Wi-Fi 6E AX211.Linus Fast, not here.Well I'm not gonna lie.I am at a total loss here guys.Okay. Yeah. I can't, I can't connect.It's been a month duringwhich time we figured outthere are some issuesaround Wi-Fi 6E, 6 gigahertzand Canada.So, um, magic!We are now connected at six gigahertzand I am ready to do myspeed test. By the way,while this is running,shout out, Rosstine.It's a bit of a belated happy birthday,but in my defense, this video was delayedby factors that wereoutside of my control.Fortunately, nothing aboutthis internet is delayed.That is gigabit freaking speedsover wireless ladies and gentlemen.Look, I'll prove it. I'mgonna unplug this wire.Oh my God, it's dead.Oh my God, this pagehas so many ads on it.The point is, look ma no wires!I want Wi-Fi 6E all to myself.I mean, I guess that's the point isn't it?You don't have to share.This is crazy.Like full line gigabit speeds, just about.Wirelessly.Man, I wanna change the server.There's, man what's thatreally good one locally?Yeah, no, Urbanfibre's not better today.I mean, I can go a little further away'cause I'm imagining sixgigahertz isn't narrow.I'm not gonna do that great.Oh crap.I mean it's not super scientific.We're gonna have a lab for that soon.Here do you wanna showhow far away we are?- How many bananas is it?- Boy! Oh bananas.They're not a measure of distance.They're a measure of size, Jono,and you can check themout on LTTstore.com.Anyway, the point is we'regonna kinda, I don't know.Let's go on the otherside of a wall, you know?Let's see.Is it gonna just completelyget annihilated by one wall?Nope. Okay. Well let's gofind another wall then.Oh, okay. This is not what I expected.Uh, we are now have a good,solid couple of walls between usand we are still doing nearly900 megabit per second.Uh, Brandon, can you navigate this?We're going on a littlevoyage of discovery here.- Okay. When youtalk, you gotta face me Linus.- Oh, sorry Brandon. Sorry, Brandon.I'm going behind the set.Okay. All right.We got three walls and we finally dropped.Oh, okay, it's still.- Linus, face me.- Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.Okay. This is also better than I was,I was hoping to showthat it would like suckafter a bit 'cause likesix gigahertz or whatever.Yeah. That's the uploadsfinally suffering a little bit.We've got three walls between us now.But that download though. Like, what?You good Brandon? Do you need help?Do you need help, Brandon?- I'm good, I'm good, I'm good.- Hi Andy.- Hello.- Do you wanna see my Wi-Fi?- Your Wi-Fi?- It's Wi-Fi 6E and it's really fast.It's like way over onthe short circuit set.- Who needs cable?- Well, okay.No, there's still a value to wire. Stop.(man laughing)He knows better.- Face me, Linus.Sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm goingall the way to the thing.Oh, Hey 'sup Dan.- Hey.- Look at this guy he'slike, oh, I'm working.Okay. Did we finally lose it?We finally lost it.That's pretty darn good.Just like we lost thissponsorship with ASUSnow that we're showing itfailing at the end of the video.Haha. Just kidding.Thanks ASUS for sponsoring this video.You can check out the ET12at the link down below,and subscribe to Short Circuit.\n"