Page 2 - Physical Look - Hardware
The ASUS ZenWiFi AX Hybrid, also known as the ZenWiFi Hybrid XP4, mesh Wi-Fi system can be purchased with one or two nodes out of the box and does not look like a traditional router. ASUS' branding is minimal yet elegant, and its sleek oval tower design is easy on the eyes and will fit anywhere in your home. A WPS/PLC combination button with a multi-color LED above the ASUS logo of each node is used to indicate its operational status. A solid white light shows everything is working correctly, blue means the node is ready for set up, red means lost connection to the primary node or connection to the internet, and yellow means the signal between the main router and the node is week.
Each ZenWiFi AX Hybrid node is 148mm wide, 71mm deep, and 208mm tall and weighs 665g. Think of them as an enlarged version of the ZenWiFi XD6 All four antennas are built inside the matte white plastic enclosure for a contemporary appearance. Why four antennas, you may ask? The use of multiple antennas for communications has been the foundation of many modern wireless technologies; ranging from short range unlicensed bands such as Wi-Fi to long range licensed bands like 5G cell phone networks. The fundamental principle lies in the fact that multiple antennas allow the designer to enhance performance using beamforming and diversity techniques. Beamforming, in the simplest explanation, allows the wireless signal to be directed towards a certain direction. Diversity exploits multipath -- where a wireless signal can arrive via different paths due to reflection and refraction in the propagation channel -- to enhance the received signal quality. In Wi-Fi 6, spatial multiplexing takes advantage of these different paths between the transmitter and receiver, as limited by the number of antennas and advanced signal processing techniques, so that multiple streams of data can be transmitted within the same frequency band. Multi-user MIMO, otherwise called MU-MIMO, lets multiple antennas from multiple users to communicate with multiple antennas on the router. Obviously, the more antennas on the access point the better, but we are bound by the laws of diminishing returns.
Turning the ASUS ZenWiFi AX Hybrid around, we can take a closer look at the array of ports and buttons. From the left, we have an AC power input, reset pinhole button, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, one Gigabit Ethernet uplink port, and one USB 3.2 Gen 1 port. The AC power input is also used for the power line connection as backhaul, implementing the HomePlug AV2 standard. Other backhaul options include connecting the WAN port on the secondary node to a LAN port on the primary node using Ethernet as well as Wi-Fi. I do not recommend using a wireless backhaul with the ZenWiFi AX Hybrid, since it has a limited amount of wireless bandwidth and can severely impact overall performance. If you plan to use an Ethernet backhaul, you are better off buying the ZenWiFi XD6 instead, as the point of the ZenWiFi AX Hybrid is the power line backhaul.
Each ZenWiFi AX Hybrid node is an AX1800 wireless access point. This means it operates at 574Mbps on the 2.4GHz band via one 40MHz channel with two spatial streams. 1201Mbps of bandwidth on the 5GHz band gives it 1775Mbps total theoretical throughput for its AX1800 designation. The HomePlug AV2 power line standard provides a theoretical bandwidth of 1300Mbps. Meanwhile, both the left and right sides of the ZenWiFi AX Hybrid nodes are ventilated to ensure the 1.2GHz quad-core CPU, 256MB of flash memory, 512MB of RAM, and all the associated electronics stay thermally stable. We will evaluate the performance of this router in just a moment.
Ventilation openings can be seen at the top and bottom of the ASUS ZenWiFi AX Hybrid, where the top is a bit more subtle. A pair of thin rubber feet provide some grip as well as a little bit of extra clearance between the router and your table. A label at the bottom shows information like the serial number, default SSID, and hardware revision. Of course, you are free to change your wireless network name in the web configuration interface, but this will get you going right off the bat if you have no idea what you are looking for.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Hardware
3. Configuration and User Interface
4. Performance Tests
5. Conclusion
