Huawei Router X2 Pro Goes on Sale: Why Router Design Is Becoming Increasingly Important in the AI Era

Huawei Router X2 Pro Goes on Sale: Why Router Design Is Becoming Increasingly Important in the AI Era

Tianxing 2 hours ago. Routers have become the bridge between AI hardware.

On the afternoon of October 28, Huawei released the Router X2 series. The X2 Pro single router is 588 yuan, and the dual-router set is 1,108 yuan; the X2 standard edition single router is 478 yuan, and the set is 888 yuan.

Huawei Router X2 Pro Set

Image source: Huawei

In terms of hardware configuration, the Huawei X2 Pro uses a combination of the Lingxiao 760 series chip and 4 high-performance signal amplifiers, and supports NearLink and Wi-Fi 7+ networks. But in Leitech's view, compared with the configuration, the appearance of this router is more worthy of our attention.

Unlike the common router shapes with "flailing claws," Huawei this time has styled the X2 Pro to look like a "book": the product has no exposed antennas, and even the indicator lights use a hidden panel design, allowing the router to blend perfectly into inconspicuous places such as bookshelves and coffee tables.

Interestingly, this is actually not the first time Huawei has made a router into a decoration. In 2025, Huawei launched what may be the "best-looking" router on the market—the X3 Pro, or the "Sunshine on Golden Mountain" router. At the time, this router won countless fans with its outstanding appearance and even became the "Router of the Year" in the minds of many Leitech editors.

Image source: Huawei

First there was "Sunshine on Golden Mountain," and now there is the "book router." It can be said that when it comes to router appearance design, Huawei's aesthetic sense has surpassed that of most competitors. But then again, why did Huawei choose to differentiate itself on "appearance"? Or, to put it another way, why are these artistic router products "looking less and less like routers"? Routers finally have "design"

In Leitech's view, this router "transformation" is the result of three different factors working together.

First is the improvement in consumers' consumption awareness. More than a decade ago, mainstream consumers had very limited understanding of router products. Objectively speaking, this situation was also related to the obscure technical names of Wi-Fi technology (802.11a/b/g/n/ac). Since consumers could not figure out the technical specifications of routers, and merchants deliberately kept things vague, consumers at the time could only choose routers in the most "simple" way: the longer and more numerous the antennas, the better the signal.

It can be said that this consumer psychology directly influenced the router shape design thinking for the next decade or more, and all kinds of flailing "octopus" routers were almost the direct result of this consumption concept. For a long time, some brands would put a few plastic "antennas" on routers that did not actually carry wiring, in order to enhance the product's "competitiveness." It was not until around 2020, when the sudden demand for working from home ignited the router market, that everyone finally let go of their obsession with the number of router antennas.

Second is the progress of wireless technology itself. It cannot be denied that some high-end routers do need "flailing" shapes to meet extreme wireless radio frequency requirements, but with the advancement of wireless technology, built-in antenna solutions can fully meet the performance needs of most home users for routers.

Even in the view of manufacturers, rather than having consumers "adjust the antennas" themselves, built-in antenna solutions are actually more suitable for most users' usage scenarios. A few years ago, when Xiaolei attended the new product launch event of a globally leading high-end router brand, the product manager mentioned that "the fixed antenna array we measured in the lab is actually better than the antenna array consumers casually arrange."

Image source: Netgear

As for the third point, it may seem a bit far-fetched: Leitech believes that the "change in routers' identity and usage habits" is the driving force behind routers abandoning flailing shapes and beginning to take the "artistic route."

In the past, we pursued "one router covering the whole house." But in the IoT era, the explosion of IoT devices has created demand for routers' "device capacity," and wireless Mesh technology (wireless networking technology) has also begun to reach mass consumers. Thanks to Mesh technology, a single router's signal coverage is no longer the first consideration when we buy a router. Even if there are more rooms, we just need to add a few more Mesh nodes.

But these extra Mesh nodes mean that we cannot casually stuff the router in a corner as we did before. Precisely because we need to place the router in an unobstructed and conspicuous place, we have begun to consider the router's "appearance design," and products such as "Sunshine on Golden Mountain" and the "book router" have finally ushered in their own "artistic router" era. In the AI era, routers are no longer only responsible for the network

Of course, looking at the broader market, there are not many brands that truly create routers with the idea of "artistic routers" like Huawei does, and the vast majority of router products still use relatively neutral appearances. Even with hidden antenna designs, we can tell at a glance that it is a router. Even within Huawei's own router product lineup, the X2 Pro and X3 Pro can be regarded as "outliers."

But in Leitech's view, in the future there will inevitably be more and more router products beginning to take this "artistic router" route. The shapes of these new-era routers may not be as radical as "Sunshine on Golden Mountain," but they will definitely abandon the "highly aggressive" shapes of the past and be built with a more neutral design language that can better blend into home life.

The reason is simple: in 2026, what routers "route" is no longer just simple network data. Five years ago, the main function of a router was still to serve as a bridge between the external internet and the connected devices at home, forwarding data from external networks such as the optical modem to computers, phones, TVs, and other devices, and then sending the corresponding data packets out to the external network.

But in the AIoT era, demand for router "intranet routing" has surged, and a large number of AIoT devices have begun transmitting AI requests and commands laterally at the intranet level. This entirely new AI intranet working condition has also driven the transformation of routers from the demand side.

Image source: Leitech

Take the most common AI camera today as an example. As an important component of AI visual perception, the AI camera is the "senses" of an AI Agent. But obviously, we cannot stuff a complete visual learning algorithm into the camera. After all, the camera's limited hardware performance is already stretched to maintain the night-vision ISP and object tracking; running a complete visual large model on it is unrealistic from any perspective—performance, power consumption, or cost.

Since the large model cannot run on the device side, and we do not want to send the video from our home to cloud servers, then placing an "AI node" with a certain amount of computing power at home (such as an AI NAS) becomes a better solution: the AI camera, as a perception device, forwards the perceived information through the router to the AI node; after the AI node makes a decision, it forwards the decision through the router to other AI hardware, which then responds.

To some extent, the router at this point is like the "smart gateway" that arrived early in the IoT era; precisely because of this, routers in the AIoT era must also, like the smart gateways of those years, step into the foreground and come to a place where various AIoT devices can connect stably. That's right—the "octopus" routers of the past can indeed also handle this job. But from the perspective of furniture aesthetics, artistic routers with less "aggressive" shapes, such as the Huawei X2 Pro and X3 Pro, are clearly better able to win over consumers. Is it time to change routers now?

What is certain is that, with the development of the AIoT concept, future routers will take on more and more functions, and may even integrate richer sensors and interactive hardware, becoming the first gateway for whole-home AIoT. Take the Huawei X2 Pro as an example: Huawei mentions that this router supports NearLink technology. Although we still do not know exactly which NearLink protocol the X2 Pro supports, Leitech believes that the four technical protocols of NearLink are very likely to "gather" on Huawei AI routers in the future, making AI routers the "perception frontier" of AI Agents.

But the question is: is it necessary for us, at this point in 2026, to rush to be the first to use "future-oriented" AI routers? Judging from the current situation, Leitech believes the answer is no.

If you just want a good-looking, understated, and easy-to-use router, then the Huawei X2 Pro is certainly worth considering. Setting aside future AIoT capabilities, the Huawei X2 Pro itself is also a router with a suitable price and sufficiently excellent hardware.

But if you want to prepare in 2026 for "2030 whole-home AI," then that is clearly too hasty. Global chip production capacity constraints mean that brands will find it difficult to package truly "full-perception" sensors and chips into routers at a reasonable price. Moreover, NearLink 3.0, Bluetooth 6.0, and Wi-Fi technologies still have variables; preparing in advance for the AIoT of two years later is as wasteful as preparing for so-called "L3 autonomous driving" in the L2 assisted driving era.

Image source: Leitech

What's more, the concept of AIoT edge computing (home computing power nodes) itself has not yet fully taken shape, and various industries are still polishing the final form of AIoT edge computing. Laying the foundation for the future too early may instead limit the upper limit of future technological development.

In 2026, the development of AI technology has already surpassed everyone's imagination, and no one dares to say exactly what changes the industry will surely see five years from now. "Consuming ahead of time" in 2026 for 2030 is, in Leitech's view, actually not wise.

Although consuming ahead of time is not advisable, looking at it from another angle, the emergence of the Huawei X2 Pro has indeed set an example, from the perspective of an industry participant, for routers in the future AIoT era. Considering the upcoming Double 11, if you plan to change to a better-looking and more usable router for your home, setting other things aside, the Huawei X2 Pro is indeed a good choice.

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