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The ASUS Lyra Trio box is attractively illustrated, providing a reassuring sense of a premium product.
Apart from the three units and their respective power supplies, you get both continental European and UK plug adapters. There's also an Ethernet cable for hooking the Lyra Trio up to your broadband.
Even though the triangular arches are actually home to the 3×3 antenna configuration, they are still much more interesting in design terms than most mesh WiFi units. They won't be innocuous around the house, but if you have a reasonably modern decor they will fit in quite nicely.
ASUS's design isn't quite Dyson, but the white plastic with light blue beneath the triangular arches' arms is far from ugly as routing devices go. You will need to be discreet with the wiring, though. The air vents perhaps break the sleek look, but are essential to keeping the circuitry cool.
Each unit has two LAN ports alongside the power input. One is ostensibly for the WAN broadband connection, but this is only when the unit is acting as the primary one that provides this connectivity. The other two units that are acting as satellites can offer both their Gigabit Ethernet ports to wired devices, which will be handy for distributing your LAN and Internet around multiple rooms in the house to desktop PCs.
However, there's no USB port for attaching a printer, storage device or secondary mobile data dongle, which could be a drawback if you want to share a media collection over your network.
The button for manual pairing is subtly hidden underneath, as is the reset button, which you will need an unfurled paperclip to operate.
Overall, the design and physical features of the Lyra Trio units are minimalist, although this is usually the case for most dedicated mesh WiFi setups. Next, we turn to the configuration and administration features to find out if these are minimalist too, or more involved.
