ASUS Lyra Voice: Who is it good for?
ASUS Lyra Voice is an excellent choice for the following types of users:
Pros and cons
Here are the things we like about ASUS Lyra Voice: There are also some downsides:
Do not use the initial firmware. Upgrade the firmware, as it offers new Alexa features, fixed bugs, and improvements to the user experience you get The performance on the 2.4 GHz wireless band is not impressive It has no USB port
Verdict
ASUS Lyra Voice is an ambitious device that tries to combine the best of many worlds: wireless routers, mesh WiFi systems, virtual assistants, and Bluetooth speakers. While it is not the best at any of these roles, it is one of the very few devices on the market that manages to do all of them surprisingly well. It makes for an interesting device, with many benefits, at a price point that is not for everyone. If you can afford it, it makes for an exciting experience that you rarely find elsewhere.
Unboxing the ASUS Lyra Voice wireless router
When you open it, you immediately see the Lyra Voice. It looks beautiful, like a smart home device, not a typical router. Many users are going to appreciate its design. Inside the box, you find the following items: the Lyra Voice, the power adapter, one CAT5e Ethernet cable, the user guide, and the warranty. The packaging used for the ASUS Lyra Voice is elegant and straightforward. The unboxing is a pleasant experience and, inside the box, you find what you need to get started.
Hardware specifications and design
The Lyra Voice is an exciting engineering experiment because it is one of the first devices for smart homes that can play all of the following roles: To provide users with so many features, including the Alexa smart assistant, ASUS Lyra Voice is powered by a quad-core Qualcomm IPQ4019 processor, running at 717 MHz. It also has 512 MB of RAM and 256 MB of storage for the firmware. The Lyra Voice is capable of offering 2x2 MU-MIMO wireless transfers, using the Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac Wave 2) standard. On the back of the Lyra Voice, there are only two 1 Gbps Ethernet ports, and one of them is used to connect it to the internet. There’s also the power jack, and a button for turning on and off the Lyra Voice. The Lyra Voice is also a dual-stereo Bluetooth speaker. It features passive radiators and bass reflex ports to extend resonance of low-frequency sound. It also has the DTS surround sound technology that enhances the spaciousness of the sound. The hardware specifications and the feature set of the ASUS Lyra Voice are quite impressive.
Setting up and using the ASUS Lyra Voice wireless router
The initial setup of the ASUS Lyra Voice can be done using a web browser on your computer or the ASUS router app for smartphones and tablets. We went on the web browser route, and the process was the same as on other ASUS wireless routers. The administration interface on the Lyra Voice is the same as on other ASUS wireless routers. All the settings are split into logical sections, and finding your way is easy. You can configure everything that matters in detail, and advanced users are going to appreciate this fact. The firmware is available in 25 languages, and the user documentation is accessible and well built. One neat trick is to move the mouse cursor over a setting that you do not understand, and a question mark is shown. Click on the question mark, and you see information explaining that setting. The dual-stereo Bluetooth speaker on the Lyra Voice is powerful without being too loud. One feature that we liked is that it isn’t too bass-heavy, as some Bluetooth speakers tend to be. It offers an enjoyable musical experience, even though it is not the best you can get, at least not when compared to premium Bluetooth speakers. If you are curious to hear the Lyra Voice in action, listen to this track below. One thing that we did not like is that the boot process on the Lyra Voice takes a few minutes. Even though the hardware is powerful, the plethora of features takes quite a bit of time to load. The switch on the back of the Lyra Voice seems like it is for turning the DTS surround sound on and off. However, that is the power switch for the Lyra Voice itself. Unless you read the user manual, this isn’t obvious, and you may accidentally stop the Lyra Voice as we did. 🙂 We connected more than a dozen devices to the network managed by ASUS Lyra Voice, including a desktop PC, laptops, one tablet, several smartphones, one wireless printer, two smart plugs, one smart bulb, an intelligent robot vacuum cleaner, and an Xbox One console. We noticed that, from time to time, some mobile network clients get randomly disconnected from the internet, for brief periods, even though they report being connected to the WiFi. This is a bug that should be fixed in future firmware updates. The speed of the WiFi network managed by ASUS Lyra Voice is excellen,t on the 5 GHz band. Also, the variability of wireless transfers on this band is within normal parameters. For a better perspective, look at the diagram below, showing how data was downloaded from one computer to another, through WiFi, in a room separated from the router by one wall, with no direct line of sight to it. On the 2.4 GHz band though, the WiFi performance is underwhelming, as you are going to see on the next page of this review. If you want to see the details about the wireless performance of ASUS Lyra Voice, and all the features that it has to offer, go to the next page of this review.