Asus UK supply issues and Chinese Imports?

[Locoblade]

Does anyone know if anything untoward is happening with the supply of Asus routers to retailers in the UK at the moment? I ask because Amazon are out of stock on both the AC86 and AC66_B1 (I got the last one) with orders now showing as "Usually delivered within 1-2 Months", plus they only have a few AC68's left. On top of that the AC86 is out of stock at every the other competitively priced retailer and the few that do have stock are asking significantly inflated prices at least £30-40 above the Amazon price.

Following on from that are there any regional differences in hardware between European and Chinese versions of the AC86 as they're significantly cheaper on Gearbest and actually in stock. Obviously the power plug would be different but other than that are there any gotchas?

 

[ColinTaylor]

I've been wondering the same thing. Amazon seems to be particularly effected, more so than the likes of Currys, etc. But maybe the volume of Amazon's trade make it more obvious. The same situation happened with the RT-AC68U over a year ago. It seems to be effecting various electrical items.

 

[Murtaza12]

Does anyone know if anything untoward is happening with the supply of Asus routers to retailers in the UK at the moment? I ask because Amazon are out of stock on both the AC86 and AC66_B1 (I got the last one) with orders now showing as "Usually delivered within 1-2 Months", plus they only have a few AC68's left. On top of that the AC86 is out of stock at every the other competitively priced retailer and the few that do have stock are asking significantly inflated prices at least £30-40 above the Amazon price.

Following on from that are there any regional differences in hardware between European and Chinese versions of the AC86 as they're significantly cheaper on Gearbest and actually in stock. Obviously the power plug would be different but other than that are there any gotchas?

There probably will be regional differences.

I ordered an RT-AC3200 and it's a Japanese import, it works perfectly fine and all, but the choice of 5 GHz channels are very limited probably due to region restrictions.

Compared to my old (dead) RT-AC66U, which was a US import, most of the 5 GHz channels were available and detected by my Samsung phone. Whereas the 5G channels on the AC3200 aren't picked up by any Android phones at all.