I think it's an entirely acceptable solution for non-technical users who don't know how or cannot be bothered to improve the scenario. Personally I would never run Asus/Netgear/Zyxel/etc's all-in-one router firmware on the network's edge. Probably not even on the inside of the network.
Well depending on how you roll, I've had 2 routers - inside/outside. Guest network, IoTs, etc on the outside. Computers, Phones, Printers on the inside. Don't currently - but I also don't have many IoTs currently. Will probably return to this at some point but moved and haven't went out of my way to set it up "fancy" like.
But realistically, it's definitely better for the "masses" to have stuff that just takes care of itself. Grandma don't know how to update router firmware and people like that are why stuff like Apple's "appliance" model is better than Androids more hands on approach.
Even some of us software developers get tired of managing all of these devices. I am not opposed to “appliances“, nor do I view it in someway diminishes my or anyone else’s elite status because we don’t want to manage and optimize eight computers for life.
I do prefer Android for streaming devices, there’s just too much value added from using Android there. But I use an iPhone because I just want my phone to work. And I limit my desktop computer count to exactly one. For networking, I use Asus Merlin. I don’t use it for its flexibility or features, just for the stability which this recent news confirmed was a good idea. The only special features I even use are an OpenVPN server, and secure DNS over TLS to cover my devices that don’t support DNS over HTTPS.
