If anyone doesn't care who makes the router and doesn't care about the extra ASUS firmware control, nor finer tuning from Merlin, Netgear RAX50 and TPLINK AX73 are the hardware equivalents. AX73 is usually on sale for a great price. rax50 is also on sale at BB for the same $230.
Both are top performers. Of these alternates, Netgear will have more timely firmware updates, TPLINK only updates if they really have to. The AX73 did surprisingly get a firmware update last month.
