What's your favorite enthusiast LEDE/OpenWrt device?

Netgear R7800 all the way!

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Plenty of choice for 8/64MBmin, Gbit, dualband wifi, 2 cores: https://lede-project.org/toh/views/toh_available_864?dataflt%5BEthernet+100M+ports_%7E%5D=-&dataflt%5BWLAN+5.0GHz%7E%5D=a&dataflt%5BCPU+cores_*%7E%5D=2

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MT7621 platforms > Atheros by far, ZBT and D-Link DIR-860L are usually quite cheap. You also have the Afoundry router if you live in UK/US.

The last time I read MT7621 had sqm bugs.
Is it fixed?
I want to try a cheap china made MT7621 router having been on the mips platform for a long time

sqm works fine on my DIR-860l boxes at least

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You might find relevant discussion in this thread:

MT7621 platforms > Atheros by far, ZBT and D-Link DIR-860L are usually quite cheap. You also have the Afoundry router if you live in UK/US.

I was not able to find any MT7621 with powerful hardware like the Netgear R7800.

You would always and in every case recommend the device over TP-Link Archer C2600?

Of course the price is higher, but let's assume for a while that I can handle that.

Do you happen to remember, what were the exact differences? The price of the ZyXEL and the Netgear are quite equal here.

At least R7800 is very easy to flash, and has a good u-boot TFTP recovery mode.

R7800 is additionally much more enthusiastically supported here and has wider user base.

I have R7800 and I am happy, so I am naturally biased :wink:

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You would always and in every case recommend the device over TP-Link Archer C2600?

I used to buy a lot of TP-Link gear. But there was a period where what I was buying would not allow the install of OpenWRT. It was a purposeful decision by TP-Link related to USA regulation stuff (but TP-Link was not required to lock people out; they did it anyways). Anyways, I don't buy TP-Link anymore. I dislike the company now because of the problems I had.

Do I recommend the Netgear R7800 over the Archer C2600? Yes. The R7800 is getting lots of attention and work on it. TP-Link I'm sour on. But the R7800 has better CPU and more Flash MB. If money is an issue, I would buy the ZyXEL NBG6817. I really like the Linksys WRT models but not for wireless, it is a real shame the wireless has so many problems.

Do you happen to remember, what were the exact differences? The price of the ZyXEL and the Netgear are quite equal here.

I think they have the same exact hardware. The only difference is the external looks and design of how the hardware is stacked on the inside (I guess). the ZyXEL is less expensive in USA (consistently) than the R7800 on Amazon.com by $30. The ZyXEL doesn't have as many external lights as the R7800 but LEDE can't work all the R7800 lights anyway.

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Obviously MIPS won't compare to ARM unless the ARM SoC is really old :slight_smile:

Actually when we compare the 2 architectures we need to compare products of the same generations.
Most of the MIPs cores we see are decades old IP cores it is really not fair to compare to the newer ARMv7 or ARM64 architectures

Hai ;-),

i working at the moment on the Hauppauge Broadway.
I'am not a Hacker.
See here:

https://www.digital-eliteboard.com/threads/pctv-broadway.202684/page-7#post-3231095

I have trouble with the HD-S2 USB Stick.

Enthusiast Device? Would have to be the Linksys WRT series. 2 years plus and there are still issues...!!

...the only feature I miss the cheap routers, e.g. TP-Link TL-WR1043ND, is hardware supported VPN (/OpenVPN).
Any models?

Xiaomi Mini :wink: Costs $20 and outperforms $100+ devices

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But the Ethernet ports are only 100 Mbps, at least according to the wiki.

It runs openwrt even though it has a mediatek chipset?

what about Linksys EA8500? is it good?

With the latest snapshot builds, yes - testing a EA8500 with this recent build now:

LEDE Reboot SNAPSHOT r4589-cb2a391 / LuCI Master (git-17.194.28316-2224714)

Just flashed this week (7/20), so only up for 2 days so far, no issues.

Depending on the Board Rev., flashing without header pins for the Serial TTL -> USB cable is a bit challenging though.

The 17.01.2 release build did not run well on this unit, it locked up.

I would use the 4.9 current snapshot build:
http://downloads.lede-project.org/snapshots/targets/ipq806x/generic/

which includes all the excellent work done by the kind folks in this thread:

Still new to all this, so ..

The hardware is good, radio range is excellent / just shy of the WRT1900ACS, but you'll need to crack the case open to flash, and possibly fabricate a header pin adapter as well - the older EA8500 boards have header pins, the later board Revs. do not.

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