ASUS Lyra Voice Wireless AC2200 Tri-Band Mesh Wi-Fi Router and Bluetooth Speaker, Black

Device was supposed to be tri-band, but it never worked at all for some devices (e.g. multiple Kindles could never connect, but could see and connect to other APs). Spent hours on the phone with support to convince them there was even an issue. After numerous attempts working with support to get it working it would only boot up to the "solid purple" rescue mode or flashing red. When I could finally get an RMA, I was going to have to pay for the shipping for their defective product. It has been a while, but I think it was something on the order of $30 for the shipping label, and I would most likely be getting a refurb back as well. Decided it was not worth it at the time.I didn't have a computer with an ethernet port to try a firmware recovery at the time, but recently rediscovered this device when cleaning out a closet and tried to do the firmware recovery method. Ethernet port doesn't work at all either. Complete/worthless brick. Between the defective product, support, and charging for shipping on a defective replacement, I would not recommend ASUS products in general.

I already had an ASUS RT-AC68P router, and have loved the performance, quality, and ease-of-use so I naturally trusted the Lyra Voice to be a viable option when seeking a mesh wifi solution. For the price, I not only received AC2200 performance wifi, but Alexa functionality, wired ports, and a decent sounding speaker to play my music through if needed. My ASUS router is upstairs and clear on the other side of the house (2200sq ft) from my gaming console and laptop I use in my basement. Due to this, 5ghz connection was worthless, and the 2ghz connection was spotty. I resorted to running an ethernet cable from my router all the way to my gaming console. That took care of my gaming, but my laptop wifi was still suffering. I ran the wired connection to the Lyra Voice, and the LAN output back to my console. The ASUS router app was already installed on my phone so I opened it and setup was a breeze as soon as the Lyra booted up. Within 5 minutes or so I had 5ghz wifi to my laptop and in every corner of my home without dropping the signal. The Alexa functionality works the same as my Tap. Even though the bass and volume is disappointing compared to the Tap and a smaller name-brand pill-style bluetooth speaker I own, I would have still bought this unit for all of it's other features for the price. For this reason, it retains a 5 star rating. A perfect match for an ASUS router or as a wifi extender.

This router works throughout the house without using any extender (2000 sq ft) both upstairs and in the basement. My wife likes listening to music as she works so it is great for her. I found out though, when setting it up, it was NOT plug-n-play! I read the other reviews and realized I might have to take some time to get it set up. I called tech support for Alexa/Amazon and spoke to 4-5 different people before one of them finally told me they were not trained on this device and to call ASUS (the manufacturer). I lost about 6 hours of my life on hold and speaking to tech support before they told me they could not help. Fortunately, the next day the router/Alexa began working on its own!! So far, so good...

I bought three of these to create a WiFi mesh in my house. The WiFi mesh part never worked very well. It was okay for a fixed-point connection, but when moving around the house with either a cell phone or iPad connected via WiFi, the connection would fail when I got to a place where it should have transitioned from one mesh connection to the other. ASUS replaced three of these boxes as the ethernet port on each one failed. That was a requirement for me, because the path from my main router to the downstairs Lyra was too far for any reliable WiFi connection. I really needed ethernet backhaul, and the Lyra Voice never supplied that.Now the last of the three has failed. It's out of warranty and won't be replaced.

Already having an Asus RT-AC5300 and a RT-AC68W, I wanted to set up an AiMesh network. I also have a bunch of Alexa speakers so the Lyra Voice seemed to be a natural choice. It's a AC2200 router, an Alexa and bluetooth enabled stereo speaker, what can beat that.The good thing about this device as a router is that wifi range is not bad. Upon setting up the AiMesh network, I could see a few of my wifi devices immediately registered on this router, instead of my main router. I checked the upload/download speed on one of my connected computers, not bad either. The speaker is also not bad. While it lacks a little bit on the low range, the sound is balanced overall, not bad for it's size. I asked Alexa to play music on it and it's stereo, while my echos and echo dots are not.Now the bad part. First of all Asus has been very slow rolling out firmware. When I bought the device, many key Alexa functions were not supported, such as announcement and drop-ins, Multi-room music, etc. After a few months, announcement and drop-ins became supported, but as of this writing, MRM is still not supported, and Asus hasn't been updating the firmware since September of 2019.If I can live with limited functions of Alexa on this device, now is the part I can't live with: it brings down my entire network, wired and wifi altogether, and I haven't figured out the reason why. At first I thought my main router was not working, I reset it, didn't help, then I called FiOS CS, a lady was very patient, helping me reset the FiOS modem etc, didn't help. Then I found Alexa on the Lyra voice was not responding, so I restarted the device, then my network was back. Then this happened again and again, every time I had to turn the Lyra Voice off and then on again, and the issue goes away. Now I decided to shelf the device maybe until Asus releases the next firmware update and see if the issue is fixed.