I have the Amplifi Alien. It works well for everything I have experienced in about a year.
An important point is extending the range via any of Ubiquiti’s mesh-specific products reduces the overall throughput, because the Alien steps down its protocol to accommodate the older WiFi technology of the mesh products. To extend the range of an Alien, Ubiquiti recommends adding a second Alien. Considering how well the single Alien works, I imagine two would create a very powerful system. The problem is buying a full second Alien is expensive.
A welcome feature is a built-in VPN, intended to allow accessing the Internet via the security of your home Alien from any Internet access point. Unfortunately this only works for iOS, while my primary use is in macOS.
Looking further at the Alien website, they do have a WiFi-6 mesh AP. But it comes only in a kit with the router, and the mesh is hardware locked to that specific router. Can’t add more mesh. If the router dies, so does the mesh.
I’m using the XT8, and I did not find it at a lower price than the others you mentioned. I’m finding it is much more pleasant and flexible to configure than the Orbi mesh system I replaced, and it has been rock-solid since I installed it in June. I believe I got more than I paid for, and from the end-user perspective my own spouse (who is also change-sensitive) did not notice. She does listen politely when I start babbling about how much better our WiFi is now.
I also bought the Asus recently when it recently dropped down quite a bit in price on Amazon. I haven’t installed it yet but it’s worth a note to say it is Wirecutter’s upgrade pick (over the others mentioned above) as the best mesh router.
That was the same recommendation I followed. Sometimes Wirecutter is a bit off, but in this case I couldn’t be happier with their pick. (And definitely would go with the XT8 as it is a three-radio WiFi transceiver; since my backhaul is over Ethernet I’ve made the second 5 Ghz radio available to my devices and they’re taking advantage of it.)
