My wife is in China. I was wondering if there was a good device worth bringing back with her vs buying here (Canada), for price and/or availability reason.
Besides a good lasting OpenWrt support as much as it can be predicted, I would prioritize wifi perfs (range and bandwidth), preferably 2 Ethernet ports. I have no idea what you can get for how much these days, my last purchase was a Tp-Link 1900 (no, not ac, the v1).
I run the routing, Adguard and a Samba server (with an external hard drive).
I think that Cudy and GL.Inet are readily available in China, and the same hardware worldwide. You can probably find Xiaomi (Mi) really cheap there but they are difficult to install and a lot of unannounced internal changes.
TP-Link was infamous for making stripped down Chinese domestic versions with less memory that could not run OpenWrt.
Most wifi routers are made in China and distribution is global. I was in Shenzhen not too long ago and considered visiting Huaqiangbei to buy hardware, but it wasn’t worth the effort. If your wife speaks Chinese, she can buy things on Taobao for somwhat less than the prices on Aliexpress or Amazon.
