Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased the ZenWifi AX after reading the positive reviews, and a 7 year history with ASUS routers, creating a mesh network with a GT ROG AC5300 & an RT-AC86U. The intent was to use the Zenwifi Routers as the primary router and a Wireless backhaul mesh node with the GT ROG AC5300 as an Ethernet backhaul device. With previous routers, the setup was completed in less than 15 minutes, with the ZenWifi it was an hour, as I had the wireless back haul node connect at 2.4GHz, forcing me to restore the units to factory default and restart twice. The routers updated top the latest firmware during the initial power on configuration for the router node, and after connection for Mesh Node, ensuring that all nodes were at the latest version. The firmware for all three units was updated within a few days of the initial configuration. Living with the Zenwifi In operation the WiFi clients would connect to nodes, in a strange fashion, not a big deal, except the majority of the WiFi clients always connected to the main router. I have Wemo power switches controlled through the Apple Home APP, they were continually disconnecting from the nodes making home control painful. I had tablets and phones disconnect from the network, initially thought to be the ISP, or perhaps some other reason, the performance also seemed slow given the 400Mbps connection. Things improved each time the main router was rebooted, a favorite technique to reconnect the Wemo devices, but quickly deteriorated. A change from Quad 9 DNS to Cloudflare DNS improved the throughput but not the disconnects, with the mesh node showing a disconnect from the router, signified by a the LED flashing blue. I also saw the Wireless Mesh Node connect to the GT ROG AC5300, which is physically further away from the router node, which all seemed strange. I then looked at the top of the primary router and saw that the surface finish was delaminating from the case underneath, see the attached images, which lead me to the conclusion that this router was not up to the job it was being asked to do, no doubt not helped by the majority of the devices being connected to it. I set up a call with ASUS service, missed the first call, setup a second call and the agent asked me for a description of the issue, and then asked me to send lost of logs, configuration files and a wireless case document. After two weeks of back and forth with daily emails and more information, I asked about the delamination, and was asked if I had dropped the unit, so I sent lots of pictures that showed no damage and was told that if I had damaged the unit I would have to pay for the repair. This was to much, and as I was approaching the end of the return window I setup a return, Amazon support Called me to try and resolve my problem, but as I explained the issue and shared the 8 ASUS case numbers assigned to my Dialouge, my return was quickly approved. It takes a long time to build trust and two weeks to destroy that trust. I will never buy another ASUS router, or in fact any ASUS products.