Also this might sound petty but I think the 8 giant antennas on the sides of the BPI box looks rediculous, I prefer the more traditional look of the MT6000, and yea it also has 2x2.5G.
Only thing I'm not a fan of with the MT6000 is the side USB 3.0 port (reminds me of R7800). I'm going to connect a USB 3.0 2TB SSD for a Samba share (PC and Shield TV for movies), I greatly prefer all the cables in the back like my WRT32X has.
I still feel like the preorder price of $109 is a steal for this.
Absolutely. I would have ordered it, but I needed one now, so I had no choice. I'm a bit concerned about the Power consumption... the BPi draws 4.3W in idle without SFP Modules and I'm pretty sure the MT6000 will draw a lot more because of the non-optional 2.5GB ports... we'll see.
For everyone thinking of buying the BPi-R3 vs MT6000, it is pretty similar - the differences include:
The microSD Option is a Killer feature to me. No wearout or tinkering with odd flash procedures. Flash the image, once it works do a dd dump and if it fails, just put in another microsd...
There is also a pretty good article about the BPI here, you can buy a KIT version for 170 bucks, which is ready to use (including case, antennas, pigtails). I ordered one and put in a 60x60x10mm aluminium block for cooling with some cooling paste over all chips (without any mount). Fitted and held pretty well, but the pigtails were almost to short - had to fiddle around until I got it working and the order was reversed (0-3 => 3-0).
So far it is pretty stable and fast, these SFP modules from aliexpress should fit.
There are issues with some device versions on Wifi while serial is attached, but I did not need this anyway. Without serial attached everything seems to work
I would not go back
You deleted your post but it seemed that you did not like the BPi-R3. Could you tell me why? Is it a technical issue or is it just the "Design" of the product.
ASUS TUF-AX6000 seems very similar to this router (if not the same). The SoC is Filogic 830 too. I believe there's only minor differences with LAN switches (GL.iNet uses Realtek). ASUS is a harware that's already available for almost a year. Since few days ago, you don't need to use any serial ports for flashing TUF-AX6000 anymore.
Knowing a history of GL.iNet company, they always provided routers that are not really compatible with up to date OpenWRT, even though they claim so. Not sure about GL-MT600 though.
Because sometimes they are using SoC with no Linux upstream support, but for those with Linux upstream support usually they can have official OpenWrt without much issues (easy to flash), the MT6000 is also one of the supported model (though it's still in snapshot). In contrast Asus has too many Broadcom based routers, and you need to spend more efforts to flash a custom firmware.
The only thing that makes me thing 2x before buying it is the size. I would love something with the size of R3-Mini
Unfortunately, the r3-mini so far has no support and seeing by the banana pi forum thread they have some problems with r3 mini 
If you want your home or small office router to run silent, cool and reliable in all environment temperature conditions up to 35° C you would prefer a good passive cooling solution and a classic form factor, not the smallest possible size, active fan cooling, thermal and electrical design at the limits.
Smallest possible size would be more important for a mobile router. These mobile routers should not be made of the highest available performance SoCs with 2 GHz ARMv8 quad core. Size, power consumption, thermals, battery run time, cost.
Hi everyone. Also pre-ordered my Flint 2 and excited to receive it.
Anyone here know what the flashing procedure for OpenWRT will be exactly? As I understand, we can simply do it via u-boot? If so that's great news.
What will it take for this to go from snapshot to being supported in releases?
Thanks
You have two choices
Flash the OpenWRT uboot (Loosing WebGUI), then flash OpenWRT full image file after flashing uboot.
Flash using GL-iNets Uboot and flash the Sysupgrade file instead of full version.
In EU pre-order store the item ships from Germany. Good deal to save on vat
I don't think this is true. Have a look at Flint and see the tag Flint 2 does not have at the moment.
Ahhrhrh you are right
Just pre-ordered 2 of them at EUR 206.
Is there a "better" method between the two you mention?
Just wondering as I pre ordered one as well and I plan to use it as my main router upon arrival. With two dumb AP's (wax202 and wax206)
As far as I know no. Only then two options
GL.iNet GL-MT6000 supported in SNAPSHOT
Hmmm quite some download options, not sure where to upload what. Hope there will be a device page soon to follow installations instructions...
Sorry,but how Flash the OpenWRT uboot
It will then reboot into openwrt.
As for Flash the OpenWRT uboot part, thats a choice its not required at all.
It is worked! Thanks