I'm looking for an openwrt( DAWN) capable access point with at least WiFi 6.
[Edit: I remembered Wifi6 and 6E the wrong way around, don't really need 6GHz for now)
The budget is $100au
Which will exactly fit the currently reduced openwrt one, does it make for a decent accespoint?
How does it compare to a Flint 2 or a Ubiquiti access point in kinda the same category?
What other devices come to mind?
Availability is sadly kinda an issue too, given that this is an Australia based project.
You have to distinguish between wifi 6 (2.4+5 GHz concurrent dual-band) and wifi 6e (2.4+5+6 GHz concurrent tri-band).
For wifi 6, your budget is realistic - probably even considering Australian prices.
For wifi 6e, it is not - you'd have to triple-quadruple your budget for that and choose from less than a handful of options. 6 GHz support is expensive, in the sense that it requires a third wlan card - and that vendors reserve this feature for their high-end devices (400 EUR +/-).
Cheers, yeah I rememberd 6E the wrong way around, should have asked a search engine to double check.
For now 6GHz is is overkill for the spot.
I honestly care only about WiFi 6+ and 5ghz but do need some form of 2.4ghz for some cheap crappy IoT device I can't talk my housemates out of using.
So I'm mainly curious about recommendations about reach and how relevant the amount of bands and Antennas is and general experiences with devices.
The spot is rural and for practical cases should have no real wifi neighbours.
Aka what's the accespoint you would recommend to someone who needs an accespoint in the workshop and another one in a shipping container turned guest accommodation both spots that need decent throughput for a handful of devices in a hot humid dirt road dusty environment.
So definitely nothing like the china plastic that comes with the broadband providers that will just crash and reboot all summer long if you just look at it.
So basically I'm dreaming of a flint 2 but they are double the available budget ...
Then I found the openwrt one and really like the idea behind it but can't find anything on the lines of a wifi review or how well it would do for my usecase.
Or maybe something completely else that hasn't shown up on my radar yet
I have been very happy with my Flint 2 so far. I haven't used the other options you mentioned. So I can't speak about stability of software etc.
But on a pure feature level the openwrt one seems to have less flash, ram, fewer CPU cores and fewer ethernet ports than the Flint 2. It wouldn't work for my use case, I would need a separate managed switch if I used it. The OpenWRT One also only has USB 2, not USB 3 (which would be useful if you want to run a NAS on the device as well, not something I have tried).
To my eye the Flint 2 seems like a strictly better deal (if you can get them for similar amount of money, and if we ignore the aspect of supporting OpenWRT development financially, and since you have a strict budget I would personally ignore that aspect).
I should also add that the Flint 2 is often on sale, at least here in Europe, and in the US too as I understand it. I don't know about AU though. It seems likely it will be on sale soon again given that the Flint 3 has been shown off at CES.
However, if you don't want this as your router, just an access point the pros and cons might end up different. Especially if there is a large price difference.
Well given that I have a nanopi r4s as main router and just need a bunch of dumb but openwrt capable access points, I don't really care about the router spec's given that the bottleneck should be the wifi.
Except if it's so weak that a few clients and high temperatures and DAWN running is enough to stress the hardware
If I've been writing garbeld mess, excusee tirednes ...
Dtee ya all tomorrow
I saw that probably the Asus RT-AX53 (or RT-AX1800S) and Netgear WAX206 is roughly 100-110 AU$ (WAX206 better here), there seems to have Cudy WR3000/RE3000 which is less than AU$100 but not sure legit or not.