I'm having trouble choosing between two of these routers:
ASUS RT-AC1300UHP (77USD)
Xiaomi Redmi AC2100 (35USD)
My main use cases are:
SQM on a 80/60Mbps link.
Central WiFi router for a medium sized one-story home. I need decent coverage for most of the house, as the house plan doesn't have ethernet cabling, so I can't easily expand with more AP.
WireGuard server. I don't need super decent bandwidth here, just good enough so I can browse the Internet outside of the house.
IPv6 WAN (not sure if it matters but I've read that some devices can't?).
Here's what I know about each of these devices:
Asus:
Weird VLAN configuration. I can live with this though, as stock configuration would serve me well.
The WiFi chipset is weaker than that of the Xiaomi in theory, however there's decent(?) driver support. As far as I know the ath10k driver have airtime fairness, which should help a lot with bufferbloat over wifi.
Lacks HW offloading, not that it matters much as I won't saturate the router with my current link, and that SQM doesn't work with it. But it's still a point of consideration for future-proofing if I ever upgrade my link to greater speed.
Seems to require a custom firmware to unleash full potential (crypto cores, good wifi calibration, etc.), at least from what I'm seeing for the Linksys EA6530v3, which is a router using the same ipq4018 SoC.
Seems to not have a good way to debrick without a serial cable.
Xiaomi:
The mt76 driver is far from decent. I've read stories of how it crashes and how the range is terrible, but this information might be outdated.
The SoC is weaker than that of the Asus. However this SoC does have HW offloading support.
The installation method is complicated and require an exploit that might be patched by Xiaomi in the future.
Have a built-in recovery system based on TFTP and can have a custom bootloader flashed. I've backed up a copy of the current firmware which should still contain the exploit as a safeguard.
The wireless hardware is supposedly superior compared to the Asus, however I'm not really confident about the software side.
Price/perf wise the Xiaomi is obviously on top of the race, however I'm being tipped off to the Asus due to the potential problems with the wifi on the Xiaomi due to the mt76 driver. Can someone let me know how well this driver work and whether it gives off decent coverage? I plan to use both wireless channels if that matters.
128 MB RAM for a dual-ath10k{,-ct} device are insufficient. IPQ40xx is a solid SOC with decent wireless capabilities (and I'd rate it higher than mt7621a+mt7603e+mt7615e), but the RT-AC58U should not be considered as an option, basically all other devcies using this SOC come with twice its RAM (and they need it).
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Yes, kmod-ath10k-smallbuffers mitigates this a bit, still, ipq40xx devices with less than 256 MB RAM should not be considered or bought.
I appreciate the advice though. Does it make a difference that the Xiaomi can do 4x4 MU-MIMO compared to the Asus 2x2? I know that there aren't any 4x4 (as if there's any clients with that) or even 3x3 capable device in my house, but at least from what I've seen in SnB rankings, a 4x4 capable router provides better bandwidth and coverage even if the client is 2x2 since the hardware is just better.
O.k., that wasn't apparent to me - but that doesn't imply that it would be supported by OpenWrt at the moment (it should be trivial to add, but it will still require someone with the hardware to actually do it).
If you compare apples with apples, as in QCA/ ath10k{,-ct} 2x2:2 vs 3x3:3 vs 4x4:4 and have the same number of streams supported at both ends of the connection, then you will see an according progression between the variants (not linear, but still noticable). Even 2x2 clients can profit from a higher stream AP (better throughput over the range, Mu-MIMO allowing better concurrency), but those are of course limited to their stated throughput (but they are more likely to meet expectations under difficult circumstances). However if you compare against different hardware/ drivers, it's much harder to come up with meaningful advice or results, as the hardware/ driver quality do play a significant role (as well as interoperability with the STA).
To my knowledge, mt7603e has always been rather picky in noisy environments and mt7615e support is still considered to be rather 'new'...
Disclaimer: I have practical experience with ipq8065 and ipq4019, just as well as qca4019, qca9880, qca9886 and qca9984 - I did not have practical exposure to mt7621a or devices covered by mt76 so far (only late model rt2x00 ones).