Interesting device but the switch is always missing but nice suggestion !.
By far the best bang for your buck is RPi4 + 8 port managed switch from TP-Link or ZyXEL + EAP225 from TP-Link. Total cost is less than $200 and the value you get is way more than any $200 all-in-one router.
yes, but you can buy a managed poe switch and poe high performance ap and place them where need wifi performance 
or use some openwrt router as managed switch + ap if You have already one, so last problem is 3.5" hdd - what size and use for what?
Check protectili boxes super powerful under 200 which should definitely run openwrt
QOTOM have great units also.
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Isn’t QOTOM the same box ? I think protectili comes with coreboot while qotom is just brand that manufactures it or something like that not exactly sure but I would very much prefer coreboot if I was buying one ...
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They aren't the same device or company as far as I can tell. There are minor differences such as the protecli has a console port as opposed to qotom which only includes a serial vga port. I originally ordered a protectli 4 port vault but amazon tagged my order as lost or stolen after the fifth day so I was redunded the full amount; then purchased a 4 port qotom. It was over a $100 in savings and performs very well with some tweaks! I'm very happy now. One thing to keep in mind is the 20-smp-tune hotplug script will null any manual cpu irq settings. Grab a copy of Finnix live usb and use ethtool -p to identify the ports order.
Not bad... only issue (for some) might be that one's J1900 processor that doesn't have AES-NI support, which would boost encryption (VPN, etc).
Another one, Zotac CI329, is in a similar price range. Barebone is a bit cheaper, but you need that DDR4 ram stick, if you don't have one. A little more than the Qotom if you buy it with 4Gb of ram and a 64Gb SSD and Win 10 in there. More power (N4100), AES hardware support, 2.5" drive slot, just 2 ethernet ports. Ah, you're probably going to want an external switch anyway...
I have been happy with the younger (now extinct) brother, the CI327. dlakelan is responsible for that, 
from back on some older threads on x86 boxes for OpenWrt. We were all waiting for the CI329 to come out. The Zotac's have a nice feature of being able to boot from their SD card socket, which makes for quick changing of firmwares. I've been lazily using this for the past year or more, should get off my behind and finally commit to putting something on that 64Gb SSD that came with it!
dlakelan has got the cheapest idea with the Rpi4...
Actually the Banana PI R2 seem to be a good point of start even does not have the AC Wireless support. It haves him case and haves a mini PCIe for further upgrades. Only i haves some doubt for reliability in time. How long can it last?
I have been looking for the same the past week. I was looking at the Netgear NightHawk X10. Has quad core 64bit with 1GB of ram and uses qualcomm NICs. However, no openwrt support. I was looking at helping with development but i cannot find any tech specs from the chipset vendors website. They are making contrib's on the upstream kernel though.
I currently have a Linksys WRT32X. It bogs down to 50% or higher CPU usage when transferring files via CIFS.
There is almost no hardware information about this SOC and even less support for it in mainline linux. It's fast, but there is virtually no hope for getting this supported on OpenWrt (and it's kind of a one-off design, so little hope to get help from/ for other devices using the same SOC).
ipq807x would have a better chance to meet the requirements and get OpenWrt support.
The same chipset in the NightHawk is being used in some storage array's. The NightHawk is running Linux but I do not know if its DDWRT or some other custom solution.
This is what is in the latest mainline kernel:
| arch/arm64/boot/dts/amazon/alpine-v2-evp.dts: | model = "Annapurna Labs Alpine v2 EVP"; |
|---|---|
| arch/arm64/boot/dts/amazon/alpine-v2.dtsi: | model = "Annapurna Labs Alpine v2"; |
| arch/arm64/boot/dts/amazon/alpine-v3-evp.dts: | model = "Amazon's Annapurna Labs Alpine v3 Evaluation Platform (EVP)"; |
| arch/arm64/boot/dts/amazon/alpine-v3.dtsi: | model = "Amazon's Annapurna Labs Alpine v3"; |
Yes, but the hardware coverage submitted to the mainline kernel is extremely incomplete (e.g. not much more than serial console access, no networking, no nothing).
Yeah the networking may be an add on since its using Qualcomm networking per the devwiki:
DDWRT has beta builds:
I am not a fan of DDWRT.
I'm not saying that it's impossible (and the hardware certainly is fast), but it will involve considerable efforts for basically a single device - more than for other, similarly capable platforms.
How about a PC Engines APU4D2 or APU4D4? There's no switch inside, but you'd get 4 independent GE ports you can gather into a bridge. It has 2 or 4 GB RAM and a decent quad core x86 CPU with AES-NI. Though I have no idea about the price in the US, but in the EU you can get even the bigger one with a case and PSU around 160-170€.
or
For this latest board, is it not possible to load OpenWrt on the SD and boot without beating too much?
Those PC Engines boards look sexy. I was looking at some of the Mini PC motherboards for gaming. One has two coax connectors out the back for antenna's. But, those mini-pc's are expensive. Like around $700 without CPU. Thanks for tip on PC Engines.
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When using cards of this type you should be sure that they are supported in the future as well. Furthermore, there is little propagation and consequently little feedback between users. But they are certainly attractive.