what is currently broken on asus BE routers?

[conflictednetworks]

Just wanting to get a feel for for the current run of ASUS BE generation of routers.

At the end of 2024/early 2025 there seemed to be a lot of rampant issues with the BE class of routers from dropped connections, inconsistent behaviour, poor range, security vulnerabilities and even constant reboots.

Now that we're getting into 2026 is the general consensus here that Asus has ironed out essentially most of the major kinds in their routers? I know tech9 here mentioned that the QOS capabilities are broken still but historically has ASUS addressed major breaks like this in a timely manner?

I've pushed the Asus wifi 7 upgrade narrative to a few folks (including convincing myself to go asus but then jumped ship to go ui) and so far they've been happy with their AIO routers but I want to solicit other's general feedback on the current state of asus BE routers and whether they can be endorsed or should be avoided. The price differences between a BE vs and AX doesn't seem that bad even though my understanding of ASUS BE gear is still part of the release 1 spec.

Your insights would be appreciated.

 

[Ripshod]

I can safely say that, excepting an ssd failure, several misconfiguration errors and failing to reset the router I've had no problems.
Only thing I know that's actually broken across the wifi 7 range is adaptive QoS.

 

[conflictednetworks]

that's good to know. Not sure if qos is really important for those that I suggested buy an asus product. They have relatively lightweight needs compared to my own. They've always been a solid staple for me in the past sans the regular reboots my old asus 86U needed every so often.

 

[aaronwt]

I only had issues with the BE92U router. Once I copied the settings file to a BE96U, everything was rock solid with eight SSIDs and 70+ Wi-Fi devices. Even with MLO in use, it has been solid now for five weeks. While the BE92U units I had were nothing but a PITA, and nowhere near reliable.

Although, a week and a half ago I did reset things and input everything from scratch. But that was mainly because the old settings file made the BE96U think there was a BE92U node missing. While I'm using a BE96U as a node.

 

[conflictednetworks]

I still have the BE96U I bought during the holiday shopping period but I pretty much pit the Asus BE96U against the ubiquiti cloud gateway fiber + 2 u7 pro wall APs and they have their pros and cons. The asus was truly an impressive AIO with range reaching very very far at pretty wild speeds. While I've mostly made up my mind on which Wifi system I'm going to return in the next 3 days that I had to ask the question to the general community. I've used ASUS routers for ages but one thing that comes to mind (from the old wifi5 router days) is that I had to reboot mine at least once every 3-4 weeks as the wifi would bog down. Even the 96u I thought was a keeper, but I found it would randomly drop the 2.4 ghz wifi every 8-10 days or so. Just the other week the 5ghz stopped letting clients join. In its defence (for the5Ghz issue), I made some changes to the config and didn't reboot it but should I even need to do that? I didn't quite understand why the 2.4 ghz would randomly drop out momentarily for a few minutes but it was concerning (thought not overly critical). Our extended family all wanted wifi upgrades (all of us were on wifi 5) so asus was my first suggestion until someone recommended me to go ubiquiti in my particular setup. I'm happy with either system but for future reference I don't want to make recommendations on things to friends and family if there persistent problems with asus equipment. Thankfully it doesn't seem like there is.

 

[jzchen]

Typically WiFi setting changes will at least "reboot" the WiFi part to enforce the changes when you click Apply or Save...

 

[Tech9]

recommendations on things to friends and family

If you have larger space to cover, wired infrastructure and good enough budget - go multi-AP SMB gear. The business market is less tolerant to issues and you'll get better quality software and hardware, very likely longer support, better expandability options, easier upgrades. Multiple APs will offer higher aggregate throughput with more efficient spectrum utilization, better balanced links to clients, will support greater number of wireless clients. Some controller based systems employ clever roaming technics with clients tracking and dynamic individual radios power adjustment. If you have the option - go with Qualcomm hardware. It has better support upstream and is more open-source. Next comes... surprise, MediaTek. Excellent capabilities hardware on fair price and with good support. Popular SMB systems also offer network planning tools with heatmaps. When used properly the expectations are close to real results.

 

[conflictednetworks]

Typically WiFi setting changes will at least "reboot" the WiFi part to enforce the changes when you click Apply or Save...

yep that's what I would assume (and experienced) but maybe it was a fluke but the 5ghz stopped allowing clients to join. It didn't drop existing ones which was odd. The 2.4 Ghz one is the mystery. I'll do a bit more testing over the next few days to see if I can replicate it.

 

[conflictednetworks]

If you have larger space to cover, wired infrastructure and good enough budget - go multi-AP SMB gear. The business market is less tolerant to issues and you'll get better quality software and hardware, very likely longer support, better expandability options, easier upgrades. Multiple APs will offer higher aggregate throughput with more efficient spectrum utilization, better balanced links to clients, will support greater number of wireless clients. Some controller based systems employ clever roaming technics with clients tracking and dynamic individual radios power adjustment. If you have the option - go with Qualcomm hardware. It has better support upstream and is more open-source. Next comes... surprise, MediaTek. Excellent capabilities hardware on fair price and with good support. Popular SMB systems also offer network planning tools with heatmaps. When used properly the expectations are close to real results.

agreed! I'm actually toying with an old unifi ac-lr ap that I'm wirelessly meshing in my garage for fun and the ease of making it work and have it just work is amazing for such an old AP. While I still do like Asus gear that for my home, to your point the multi ap route lets me pinpoint dead spots and then deploy more AP's as required. I mean, ASUS has their Ai Mesh but back when I tried to use their meshing with the Asus AC86U that the experience were less than ideal and didn't work all that great. The unifi designer was instrumental in helping me figure out where to place my APs and the best part is - ZERO issues placing the wall APs. All the hardwiring was already there from the builder. I was watching some videos on TP link's SMB solutions and it seems compelling if not better value than than Unifi BUT being Chinese owned I am a tad bit leery on covert state surveillance.

 

[Poul Bak]

I only had issues with the BE92U router. Once I copied the settings file to a BE96U, everything was rock solid with eight SSIDs and 70+ Wi-Fi devices. Even with MLO in use, it has been solid now for five weeks. While the BE92U units I had were nothing but a PITA, and nowhere near reliable.

Don't buy a Fiat 500 car if you have 10 kids you need to transport, buy a bus.
If you buy a Fiat 500 and complain about it, it's your fault, not the car.

 

[jksmurf]

Don't buy a Fiat 500 car if you have 10 kids you need to transport, buy a bus.
If you buy a Fiat 500 and complain about it, it's your fault, not the car.

Or just take them in 3 groups of 3 plus 1... .

 

[Tech9]

There are duds from every manufacturer and generation hardware. What I read about RT-BE92U is like deja vu about RT-AX68U. The fact there are few hardware revisions RT-BE92U already may indicate issues ASUS is trying to address. The issues may be software, hardware or supply chain related, we don't know. They'll either fix it at some point, either the model will be short lived like RT-AX68U. When you see 20+ pages model specific discussion on ASUS-centric forum like SNB Forums - read what people say and decide accordingly. Low price on sale based decisions are often wrong.

When recommending hardware to someone else it's not the brand, but the application that matters. When ASUS had firmware issues with ZenWiFi XT8 and folks around were hunting for good working firmware in AiMesh configuration... I purchased one unit for a friend of mine. Not because I don't like him, but because they needed a single unit. AiMesh was the issue, not the hardware. This unit still works trouble-free to this date with Auto upgrade enabled. If they needed 2x units I would recommend something else very likely from different vendor. Sticking to one vendor is limiting choices.

 

[aaronwt]

Don't buy a Fiat 500 car if you have 10 kids you need to transport, buy a bus.
If you buy a Fiat 500 and complain about it, it's your fault, not the car.

No. It had nothing to do with the amount of devices. Even with only a dozen IoT devices connected, there were still major issues where they kept dropping off. From multiple BE92U units I tried. Heck, I could go back to my ancient Asus router (RT-N56U) from fifteen years ago, with many dozens of Wifi devices on it, and it would be rock solid. I had over 100 devices, wired and wireless, connected to my Rt-N56U router at one point and it was still rock solid.

The BE92U was the first Asus router I've used that was terrible. Every other Asus router I've used, since 2010, has been rock solid. No matter how many devices were connected to it.

 

[Jeje2]

Still can't connect our Nedis Smartlife smoke detectors to Asus RT-BE86U router. (Worked fine on my RT-AX86U)
All other Asus Smartlife smart plugs and other IoT, like Ecowitt, LG, Shelly, ... working fine