Can all OpenWrt access points on the table of hardware act as travel routers?

Hardware Questions and Recommendations
1

A travel router has the capability to connect to an existing Wi-Fi network and create its own secure network.

I was wondering if I can use any of devices on OpenWrt's Table Of Hardware that you select the Device Type "Wifi AP" checkbox and all those devices once flashed with OpenWrt can connect to the existing Wi-FI network and create its own secure separate network?

Can the same also be done for the device type "Wifi Router" checkbox and "single board computer" checkbox?

I want to make sure that if I don't go with a travel router due to cheaper and better specs for the access point and "Wifi Router" category especially, I won't be making the wrong purchase.

2

everything that got (preferrably) at least two radios.
single radio device will work too, but then the throughput is cut in half, since one radio is STA and AP at the same time.

3

It is worth noting that many single radio devices will work, but not all and there's a big caveat (beyond the performance angle that @frollic mentioned).

  • Single radio devices must use the same radio for STA (client) mode and AP mode. In addition to the performance hit, it is important to be aware of the fact that the AP mode cannot start if it is unable to connect to the upstream network because the STA mode channel needs to be determined first. This can cause your wifi to be inaccessible, and thus an annoying situation for traveling where the upstream network wis not guaranteed from location to location. There is a simple solution, though -- the Travelmate package which is designed to attempt to connect to the upstream networks you specify in a list and then eventually gracefully fail and disable sta mode so that the AP mode can come up.
  • Devices that have very low end chipsets -- for example, all generations of the Raspberry Pi -- will not support simultaneous STA.+ AP mode operation. This means that they cannot be used as a travel router without the use of additional radios. This is a function of the radio chipset itself. And, since many of these low end chipsets are really poor on the performance side (range, speed, multi-client capabilities), these devices are always discouraged in the context of any wifi AP use cases. But they are especially poor choices for travel routers because of the need for USB wifi dongles and the like.
4

Likewise mwlwifi is not really made for STA mode at all (beyond all its other problems).

5

From my quick searching, "mwlwifi" is a driver of sorts. On the Table Of Hardware Data Page some devices use the "mwlwifi" for WLAN driver. Does that mean if I'm trying to buy a OpenWrt device to connect wirelessly to the current wifi network I should avoid any device that uses that driver?

6

Yes, those devices would be pretty old by now anyway.

7

Is there a way to tell which devices on the Table Of Hardware contain 2 or more radios? Do all the travel routers contain at least 2?

8

If you filter using the 5.0GHz column, you'll find devices that have 802.11n/wifi4 (n). You should probably be looking for wifi5 (ac) or above, of course. It's plausible that some of those devices lack a 2.4G radio (based on what I see in the table), but I'm not sure if that's real (they should be in the minority, though).

No. But essentially all recent ones supporting 802.11ac (wifi5) or later will have at least 2.