After 5 years with the R7800, I am looking to replace it with an AX capable device. Due to the physical layout of the rooms, I am using an AC tri-band repeater for covering a part of the area. I am using batman-adv over 802.11s to separate VLANs (i.e. IoT & "trusted" LAN) with separate SSIDs for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.
While the R7800 has mostly worked fine so far, I'd prefer to go with a truly OSS driver for my next device, so I'm looking mostly at Mediatek/filogic right now (but would be open to alternatives if I missed something), specifically the GL.iNet GL-MT6000 and the Asus TUF-AX6000. On paper, the GL-MT6000 has the better HW specs regarding RAM and flash, but the TUF-AX6000 has more antennas. I am not sure if either fact is relevant for real-world performance. Furthermore, there are some concerns regarding 2.4 GHz performance of the GL.iNet in its device thread and my past experience with GL.iNet has been somewhat mixed.
I currently have an asymmetric 500/50 Mb/s WAN connection, but I might upgrade that to 1000/100 Mb/s in the future. What I've gleaned from the device threads, neither one should have issues with running SQM for those speeds.
Did I miss anything? Any reason to choose one or the other? Purchase price would be practically identical for both (~150 Euros).
Your options would be the ones I'd be looking at as well, which of those to prefer depends on the small little (technical) details and probably 1:1 experience with them (so in the absence of that, probably roll of a dice).
Keep in mind that at least the GL-MT6000 is still very, very fresh on the market, probably a bit too fresh for neutral feedback (honeymoon phase still going on), that's not to discourage you from this device - just that it's probably harder to get reliable feedback.
FWITW, I went with the TUF-AX6000 because of a cashback promotion dropping the price to ~125 Euros. (It arrived on the same day that the GL-MT6000 was finally available with shipping from Europe instead of China )
Flashing from the horrendous stock interface was a breeze and it works well so far, though I got one suspicious reboot so far (on a custom main build with WED enabled, so I can't really blame the HW). Adapting my configuration to DSA was a bit of a learning curve, but I figured it out. Honestly, I wouldn't know what to do with the extra RAM and flash in the GL-MT6000 - I've got more than half free even on the Asus. (Note: This really is just a router and AP for me, I've got other devices for Docker and other services.)
It's been a while since I linked to that 2.4GHz issue, so here's an update.
If you're using devices that support WiFi 6 (802.11ax) then 5GHz and 2.4GHz is great on the GL-MT6000. However, if you connect a device to the 2.4GHz radio that'll use 802.11n (width at 40MHz or 20MHz) then you won't get more than 100Mbps when you perform a speed test online.
I don't know if the slower speeds have got something to do with the driver, calibration data or the hardware. But GL.iNet have said that they're looking into it and I'm sure an OpenWrt developer with the technical expertise could too.
WED is enabled in the GL-MT6000's stock firmware and it's rock solid too.
The extra RAM and storage space is great for docker images and future proofing the device a little. Plus large adblock lists, I guess? But if you're not going to use docker on the router and you think 512MB is enough RAM then the TUF-AX6000 is a really good option. And I'd assume the TUF-AX6000 can deliver more than 100Mbps over 2.4GHz (using N mode), since it's using different WLAN hardware.
I don't think I've ever gotten more than 100 Mbps actual throughput on 2.4 GHz speed test in N mode even with 40 MHz bandwidth (on the R7800). I just checked with an iPhone 13 and the TUF-AX6000, I only get around 50 Mbps net throughput, but that's with two SSIDs on the same radio (the second SSID has a pretty constant 54 Mbps load from various IoT devices).
At close range I can get about 83Mbps with the GL-MT6000, while some others on GL.iNets forums can get slightly less or slightly more. But most of them say that their older routers (e.g. GL-MT3000 and GL-AR750S-Ext) can get over 100Mbps and they're able to prove it.
I find the 2.4GHz range to be mediocre at best, so maybe that's a factor, but it could also be that people are comparing closed source proprietary drivers against the open source mt76 driver. And the mt76 driver isn't known to perform amazingly with everything.
Some Apple products do seem to perform poorly in general, although that issue should of been resolved for 5GHz yesterday.
)