It’s been just about a year since the OpenWRT ONE was announced as a way to get a router that is both well supported by OpenWRT and supports OpenWRT. I’d like to hear what people are actually using it for, where it has lived up to the promise, and even where it may have fallen short.
I'm waiting for open wrt two ... 
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Pretty boring, it is doing duty as AP in my home network, supplying the kids' devices with decent wifi. Powered via PoE... while the SSD I put in there is basically doing nothing (my plan was to use it as my lab AP and for the expected air captures I put an SSD in).
Just works! Much better than my previous ISP supplied router….. it didn’t support ipv6 properly.
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Is OpenWRT ONE missing something in particular?
It depends on the use case:
Doing a detailed comparison between "ONE", "TWO", R4 and R4 Pro would blow up the post…
What makes the ONE very good is the reliable integration of OpenWrt.
You can use it for many projects, but some things at the same time are problematic.
Sadly it lacks some basic ports like RJ45 and SFP… It has only one M.2 slot.
I have two projects running:
-> for both I need 4–6 RJ45 ports
-> one needs SFP for a fibre-optic based ISP
Additionally, I want to choose my Wi-Fi module myself and have a cellular-based backup (RedCap).
-> both at the same time ... needs more efforts than at R4.
Of course these requirements come from the BPI-R4 / BPI-R4 Pro or Turris world.
The ONE puts the focus on reliability:
-> built-in Wi-Fi
-> rock-solid OpenWrt implementation
-> I have to highlight the MMCX antenna ports (not the cheap IPEX) 
It is something for people who want to use the router in a carefully managed context.
Yes and no.
I bought one because I wanted to support the project and there's apparently been enough sold to keep the servers running for several years.
It's a beautiful designed piece of hardware, the choice of either poe or USB C to power is smart.
The serial port being always available allows easy app development and debugging.
ax3000 was a decent choice for the WiFi, 6e is lacklustre and be aka WiFi 7 is still buggy.
As mentioned by @mex778 there's compromises, but as the first ever hardware from the Openwrt project it proves a point that you don't need to customise Openwrt for routers like manufacturers do and it's perfectly capable as is.
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Ok, I am grateful there is an openwrt one for me to even gripe at in the first place. I think they did a pretty good job on it but with that said, there are a few teensy little things I would change if it were up to me.
My only real gripes with the One would be that
- It comes with a mikro bus connector that no one really seems to use. (at least as far as I have searched I haven't found anyone using a mikro bus device on the one that has documented it meaning I believe it seems to have little to no adoption from within the openwrt community)
- It has USB 2.0 instead of 3.x
I would have much rather seen them ditch the mikrobus and put a USB 3.x controller in it's place with 2-4 USB 3.x ports But I am not a hardware designer so I don't even know if this would have even been possible. Perhaps there is a technical reason they didn't add USB 3.x to this device that I am not aware of.
It's really small potatoes first world gripes I have LoL. They are trivial at best.
Overall they did a great job.