Per Asus, the GT-BE98 Pro will get AFC sometimes this year via firmware supposedly. Nope, still not great time to mix but if you do, make sure you use the latest firmware and turn off MLO and the combo will likely work well. Be aware of the fact Wi-Fi 7 has little tolerance for legacy clients (Wi-Fi 5 and older) and set up your SSIDs’ security accordingly.

Yes. That’s generally how MLO works. Thanks for the input, Thom.

I’m running the BE98 Pro on (latest current public firmware as of today 05-15-20204) 3.0.0.6.102_34491, ET12 on 3.0.0.4.388_24542, and GT-AXE16000 on 3.0.0.4.388_24329. I am able to use all bands on all devices as part of Smart Connect.

However, each device is limited to its own native SSID broadcast count limit. In other words, the mesh nodes can’t do as many SSIDs for things like guest networks (with MLO) as the BE98 pro. That said, they are all able to utilize all their bands for the same SSID and at least 1 additional. MLO can be even be used on the BE98 Pro as part of a MESH network while the other other devices don’t support MLO but are broadcasting the same SSID on all bands

IDK if this is a firmware change, but I suspect it is. It may be worth going in to see if you can update firmware and set up a 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz-1, 5 GHz-2, 6 GHz-1, and 6 GHz-2 configuration (if it didn’t happen automatically) if you’re interested in that.

The BQ16 is not avaible yet, Z. You can wait for that or you can get two GT-BE98 Pro units or one and another RT-BE96U and build an AiMesh system out of them. Good luck!

Thanks for your articles; they’re detailed and really narrow down the technical specs/capabilities which is what I appreciate a lot.
I’m way overdue for a router upgrade, and since it’s being a while, I want to get the latest and hopefully it’ll be relevant for at least several years. Our house is setup in a way that I’d need a 2nd AP otherwise reception at one end is pretty crappy. So I’ve been looking at the Asus GT-BE98-Pro, but since my current routers are netgear, I would need a different ASUS to act as the 2nd AP (with wired backhaul). Given that, I was wondering how the ZenWifi BQ16 would fare given it comes with a pair out of the box? I do work from home and require good (wifi) latency for some of my work, but it doesn’t need to be “online fighting game” level of latency. Would you recommend BE98 and another Asus as AP (and if so which would you recommend)? Or would the BQ16 be a good option as well (I noticed you haven’t done that review in depth, wondering what your thoughts for that are as well)?

Thanks!
Z

👍

Thank you, I really appreciate that

Generally, Scott, all Asus routers are mesh units. They all support AiMesh. But you’ll find purpose-built Wi-Fi 7 hardware from Asus in a matter of months. I’d stay away from Netgear. You can start with the GT-BE98 Pro now. It alone might be enough but you can also keep using the current AP with it.