T-Mobile (AC-1900) By ASUS Wireless-AC1900 Dual-Band Gigabit Router, AiProtection with Trend Micro for Complete Network Security (Renewed)

This is an excellent dual band router, very fast and very reliable. I've been using a regular Asus RT AC68P for over 1yr with no downtime or other issues. I wanted to get this to replace an existing 2.4Ghz router that I was using to extend my network to cover a deadspot.First, the refurb unit I received looks like new. It was in perfect condition and came with the manual, an ethernet cable and a charger in a plain box. The only difference I could see from my AC68P was the T-Mobile branding on the front.The first thing I did after unpacking was to swap over the firmware to Asus stock following instructions from bayareatechpros (search for ac1900-to-ac68u).I then upgraded to the latest Merlin WRT firmware, first by upgrading to Asus stock 378.xxx, then to Merlin 380.xxx. The intermediate step is necessary because of a change in how Asus has structured the internal partition tables.I now have the router running on the latest Merlin firmware as a Asus RT AC68U. The last thing was to put it into Access Point mode so that I could connect it to my existing network as an extender.The whole process was somewhat time consuming but saved around $100 so was worth it. Another thing to keep in mind that Asus is currently beta testing its new AiMesh tech on a few of their models which will be rolled out to these ones in the near future. When that happens, these T-Mobile refurbs will be the absolute cheapest way to get a proper wifi mesh network with the next cheapest that I could find being more than $100 per node. On top of that you get all the powerful router tech that's already available.Bottom line - I think this is the best deal out there for a dual band router at the moment bar none. To get a more powerful device, you'd need to spend more than 2x the money and would likely see no improvement in your network speeds.4y Edit: I bought an additional one of these and am using both with the newer AIMesh firmware (MerlinWRT) as nodes with my RT-AC68P as the main router. Neither of the T-Mobile units has given me any trouble other than needing to slightly change the firmware upgrade process due to Asus attempting to lock them out. The new process - updated on the same page I reference above - still works to get these onto the latest firmware. Note that this only needs to be done once. After that the internals will register as a stock Asus router and you can use their firmware or aftermarket like Merlin according to your preference.AIMesh works great and makes the nodes extremely easy to deploy and upgrade. Still highly recommended!

The ASUS AC-1900 was an incredible router for most homes unless you had a really large space with thick walls and ceilings. In today's day it would probably still hold its own and do its job pretty well. There are definitely newer options that support more modern Wi-Fi standards and protocols but for the average user this would probably still suffice. If you're looking for the cutting edge router option for your internet setup this isn't the best option for you but for the typical user the price and offering would do just fine. I'm not sure if T-Mobile still refurbs these routers but ASUS probably has stock somewhere.

Ethernet speed is fine, but as a wireless bridge the download speed is atrocious. For reasons unknown in bridge mode speed is throttled to 40 Mbps (all the time regardless of wireless settings). It is the latest firmware and bridge mode seems to be set correctly as I followed the same steps as for my RT-N56U wireless bridge which gives me 160 Mbps download. I'm wondering if this is a HW problem rather than a settings problem. If it is a HW problem I obviously don't want to flash ac68u without knowing if the flash will remedy the problem. I used WiFi Analyzer to determine a 5ghz control channel safe from interference. I tried 20/40/80 bandwidths as well as varying the protocol (N/AC) but have not found any settings that vary the 40 Mbps download speed. Obviously a TM-AC1900 that gives me 25% of the RT-N56U download speed is useless.UPDATE 3/15: One of my routers has a broken radio and a replacement is on the way. If bridge mode works I'll update this review accordingly.UPDATE 3/20: The replacement routers did the trick. Also, let the setup wizard do as much as possible before any tweaks. Now that bridge mode works I'm getting close to the delivered ISP speed of 350 Mbps.UPDATE 3/22: Bridge router drops connection at random. This is quite a nuisance since the TM firmware has no provision for logging into the router and thus it needs to be manually rebooted. Deliberating on whether or not to send it back. The quandry I have is if it drops connections as a TM-AC1900 wouldn't it also drop them after being flashed to RT-AC68U?UPDATE 3/29: I flashed to RT-AC68U because with that firmware one can programmatically reboot the router which isn't possible with TM-AC1900. Don't think I'll need to though because the bridge mode connection is not only faster, but rock solid stable. It hasn't dropped yet since setup after flashing. Also - bridge mode can be configured just fine manually as one may be accustomed to with other Asus routers. None of this wizard nonsense that the TM-AC1900 imposes.