Have been an early adopter of this router, as I bought it when it came out in 2020. I came across multiple Asus AX86U issues post march 2022, including dropping of WiFi and frequent and Random Boots, tried all options presented here by others including FW changes to Merlin and Stock, multiple settings changes including using fixed channels etc. Asus support initially came back with an option to repair and they found 2.4ghz broken, I didn't go for that option as the cost to repair was pretty much like buying a new router and reached out to Email to CEO option. it took a while but a nice gentleman - John reached out to me and after looking at open cases in the past offered me a replacement. The replacement has been in place now for over 19days with no reboots on stock firmware. I have not configured any special features like vpn or others yet and have it setup vanilla with some security things like WPS/UDP etc turned off.
Happy to see that replacement was a brand new router in a retail box, of course no warranty on this one as I have run out of warranty while RMA was in process. I want to report this experience here because I was 100% sure that FW updates broke it and insisted that older FW worked fine for me e.g. 386.5_2 and missed out on a warranty replacement while messing with it for over 6 months and living with glitches. I was dead wrong there could be certain hardware failures which are not very indicative of such. A completely dead router or non functioning router is easy to figure out hardware issue but functional routers with glitches like mine are indeed possible, if you feel you have a situation that describes above, do a RMA repair, as Asus has all diagnostics to see what exactly has blown. The router log I have found out with this experience is not a good indicator for hardware failures.
While waiting for this resolution I had configured OPNSense and was using an older Asus AC87U as an access point to drive everything, I plan to use that setup now for all my smart and IOT devices and keep primary computers and key devices on AX86U now until I find time to make OPNSense the main routing device and do VLAN's etc. for segmentation and security.
Also appreciate Asus for making it right, fyi this was my first RMA experience for any Asus product ever and I have used their motherboards, routers etc for 15-20 years now.
Happy to see that replacement was a brand new router in a retail box, of course no warranty on this one as I have run out of warranty while RMA was in process. I want to report this experience here because I was 100% sure that FW updates broke it and insisted that older FW worked fine for me e.g. 386.5_2 and missed out on a warranty replacement while messing with it for over 6 months and living with glitches. I was dead wrong there could be certain hardware failures which are not very indicative of such. A completely dead router or non functioning router is easy to figure out hardware issue but functional routers with glitches like mine are indeed possible, if you feel you have a situation that describes above, do a RMA repair, as Asus has all diagnostics to see what exactly has blown. The router log I have found out with this experience is not a good indicator for hardware failures.
While waiting for this resolution I had configured OPNSense and was using an older Asus AC87U as an access point to drive everything, I plan to use that setup now for all my smart and IOT devices and keep primary computers and key devices on AX86U now until I find time to make OPNSense the main routing device and do VLAN's etc. for segmentation and security.
Also appreciate Asus for making it right, fyi this was my first RMA experience for any Asus product ever and I have used their motherboards, routers etc for 15-20 years now.
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