Howdy. A bit of background. I travel a lot and am looking for a fast wireless device that I can use away from home. Fast WiFi is important because I’m often transferring 10’s or~100Gigs between local devices and. Looking for AX1800 grade or better.
Also looking for relatively small, portable, integrated plug, robust antennas (or internal antennas!) as this is gonna get tossed in a bag regularly.
I currently have a few net gear EX6150v2’s that work decently well but the wireless could be faster and the antennas break.
Is the subject currently the best option in this category? Not requiring a separate power brick or any cables of any kind is basically essential for me. A single small(ish) device I can toss in a bag is the prime criteria.
Thanks. I’m aware of GLInet. Not aware they had an AX3000 box. It may be an option but I need an extra brick and USB cable. This one is power hungry too I think so I’m not sure my multicharger can handle it, my laptop and my phone at the same time. Anyway I added it to the short list. Will investigate it a bit more.
The Beryl AX is definitely a very good option, especially if you need VPN as well. I use it a lot. However, it's a bit picky if it comes to USB chargers and USB cables too. So yes, you should cross check this before you travel but in the end, it's not a big deal and quite cheap to use an extra USB charger (e.g. the one that comes with the router) or to buy another multcharger.
I do use VPN but not a ton of bandwidth. My openwrt config broadcasts two SSID’s. One routes all traffic through the VPN and the other just goes out on the internet (but also routes .localnet traffic through the VPN). The other VPN endpoint has 15MBit max upload and my EX6150 can max that..
Locking at the hardware of the EX6150 I would assume that the Beryl AX is much faster in every way. From what I read it also should fullfill your other requirements quite well. I was also looking for a AX travel router and the Beryl AX was the best I could find a few month ago. Generally, the amount of WiFi 6 travel routers still seems to be quite limited.
You can fold in the antennas. I wouldn't put it into a suitcase without any extra protection (like a simple plastic bag) because I would be afraid that the antennas fold out but as long as they are folded in they will not break. OpenWrt 23.05.0 is possible as well but the GL.iNet firmware is based on OpenWrt, contains Luci and is quite helpful when it comes to VPN configurations. So I wouldn't replace it on the client side.
My routing situation with the two SSIDs and VLANs ends up being fairly complex. I know GLInet’s firmware overlay sometimes monkeys with some of the settings and what I have now works perfectly and reliably.
Maybe I try the GLInet FW…. But if I have trouble I want to be able to use openwrt directly.
Got it. In case you are able to order it from the GL.iNet EU store you can try to use the discount code MT3KYOFF. According to a German special discount site that should reduce the price to only €78,12
I don't have Beryl AX, but I do have Beryl which is almost same thing, it's always in my suitcase and I travel many times in a year, the antenna itself aren't that easy to be flipped out inside suitcase.
5V3A I won't say this is power hungry, I have Beryl which is previous generation and also using 5V3A, most multi port chargers will work (USB-C with PD supports 5V3A, also some chargers with QC 3.0 has this output as well, and in my normal use case without plugging USB stuff a normal 5V2.4A charger works). But using multi port charger you have to be aware of power cut off when plug/unplug devices from charger if yours is GaN because it will perform a dynamic rearrangement which causes a power cut off, when I travel with Beryl I either bring a dedicated 5V3A charger with it, or use it with some multi port chargers that are not GaN type.
I also think both devices have more or less the same antenna design and I also didn't claim that they are easy to break but I prefer to better be save than sorry and putting it in a plastic bag is not a big effort from my perspective.
From my experience the Beryl AX runs stable with smaller power supplies also. According to GL.iNet the device itself needs less then 8W. I think they mainly need the 15W power supply because of the USB port that also need to be able to support external devices with enough energy.