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.

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.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.

On the other hand, as a Wi-Fi 6E device, the Zen Wi-Fi Pro ET12 has a 2.4GHz band, a 5GHz band, and a 6GHz band. 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). 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 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.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. You shouldn’t have to choose between fast WiFi and eye-catching aesthetics. With their sophisticated design, the ZenWiFi Pro ET12 and XT12 will complement the style of your home. Their professional finish, parallel lines, and vertical orientation calls to mind the practical elegance of modern skyscrapers. Transparent material on the top gives an inside look at the omnidirectional antennas beneath. These routers don’t hide what they are. Their unique design uses the right balance of engineering and elegance to announce that these are no ordinary mesh WiFi routers. 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. Guest WiFi: Create a guest network with a WiFi schedule and access rights to control when and how guests can use the network. 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)

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. ZenWiFi Pro XT12 vs ZenWiFi Pro ET12: You must turn them on and look at the front lights to know which is which. 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). 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.QoS settings are extensive and can ensure that anything from web conferencing, through video streaming to gaming can be prioritised on various devices. 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. 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.

Ultimately, the features on offer make the XT12 feel like a souped-up consumer router with SMB-friendly features, which is no bad thing. In some ways it’s like a consumer-friendly Draytek router – a brand that is all about no-nonsense SMB Wi-Fi without the bells, whistles or performance boosts found here. But we’ll have to wait and see whether that’s enough for SMBs to actually use it as the foundation of their core network though – that level of adoption tends to take years of trust to develop. 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! Optimized memory utilization and fixed an occasional server error when registering DDNS with an app. 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.

Set Up and Features

You can buy either or none no matter your situation and the world will keep spinning for the foreseeable future. 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 And there are even more similarities, as you’ll note in the hardware specifications below. Hardware specifications: ZenWiFi Pro XT12 vs ZenWiFi Pro ET12 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. 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.