Cudy-6 WIFI 6 same price
At home my 2 cudy-6 which I built a firmware works very well
If it is for a new purchase you can get the same kind of product with in addition to the USB and which is supported in the "official" snapshots:
Linksys MR8300 going for CAD $100 (USD $79) at Amazon Canada :
Now that really cheap for this quality device !
- 716Mhz Quad-core
- RAM: 512MB; Flash: 256MB
- Dual boot partitions, unbrickable if flashed properly
- AC2200 MU-MIMO Tri-Band Gigabit, 400+867+867 Mbps
- Tri-Band (5 GHz + 5GHz + 2.4 GHz), 2x2 AC
Yes, this MR8300 is good with USB 3.0 port!!!.
For MT7621 chipset, only recommend Xiaomi AC2100 / AC1200, much cheaper (us$3x ~ us$2x).
For N300, Xiaomi-4C is the best on perfermance/price.
If you were to upgrade beyond the 100Mbps package, you'd currently likely need to install the development branch of Openwrt (until the next full release comes out), which has some significant performance improvements.
I'm not aware of any issues with its ADSL, it worked fine for me, however there is reportedly an issue with vectoring support on VDSL, but a fix seems to be close (vectoring not available on my line anyway):-
Also if running a mesh wifi on it on 5ghz radio, you need to uninstall the 5ghz -CT firmware and replace with the non-CT version.
BT HomeHub 5 Type A - Lantiq XWAY VRX268
£20
Easy to Flash also.
3 Likes
To date, only models with WIFI-6: AX, USB-3 and gigabit ports are to be considered as interesting and if possible at a reasonable price
I looked at the characteristics of the Mr8300 that in France you can find 79.99 euros at amazon which seems to correspond
...to you.
Other users with other usecases may find USB3 completely uninteresting, dito for Gigabit and Wifi6.
Apart from that, I wouldn't call 80€ cheap.
2 Likes
Netgear R6700v2 (/6800)
Can get from $20-$50, Mediatek chipset handles a lot in hardware. CPU doesn't break a sweat when this device NATs at a gigabit. MIPS 880mhz cpu is less beefy than ARM devices, but it handles data so well that basically all the CPU power is available for your tasks. This device sold me on Mediatek.
I have two Netgear 6700v2's running as dumb ap's on opposite ends of my home gigabit-wired at the center to my TP-Link Archer A7v5. Each cost ~$40usd all running Openwrt 21.02.1. For wifi-5ghz, I average ~600Mbp/s on the 6700v2 and ~300Mbp/s on the Archer A7v5.
I really dont want the A7v5 and and rather use one of the 6700v2's as my primary, but I cant configure VLANS (vlan filtering) without soft-bricking. Seems the MT6721 chipset on this router use DSA configuration and dont support the older style switch configurations. so its been a dead-end getting vlan tagging working with them. As dumb AP's, they work with multiple vlans, no problem, no config required.
https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/commit/43f0e386d4e79e9014e926d1d9b5e2ff8f1379cb is available within EU for about 90 EUR over at banggood.com 
1 Like
ZBTLINK Z100 AX v01 ( WIFI 6 / AX )
You can find at aliexpress for some 57,67 €
Product is with 3 * LAN + 1 WAN gigabits
Mediatek MT7621 - MT 7915e - MT7905D MT7975D
USB-3
WIFI AX
Serial port
Flash 16M Winbond + 256 M ram
Power 12 volts < 1 A
Interestingly, I followed your advice to get a DIR-860L, I may follow this as well, looks like it it quite capable for the money.
Cheers!
A friend of mine got one, seems to run stable in general and range is certainly better.
I've ordered two myself to compare the Linksys MR8300 ones I have. I think they're mainly interesting because ARM64 is a much better platform (including crypto extensions), SoC development seems to be progressing more than IPQ4*** (which works nice although there are some issues with the ethernet related subsystem) and WAVE 2 11ac should be fine too. The DIR-860L isn't bad (MT7621) but its starting to show its age and interest is declining so I would expect more issues further down the road.
1 Like
Ok, ordered one 870 SEK.
I see it's 280 euros now so definitely NOT a cheap device
Yes, it was on sale briefly.
Gave it a spin today, the included PSU feels really cheap (fire hazard-ish level) so I replaced that another one but other than that it's seems to perform really well. Compared to Linksys MR8300 it seems to have much better performance. I have two connected via WDS between two floors and the Totolink performs about 3 times better than the MR8300 downstairs (~95mbit vs ~270mbit). Hardware crypto also seems to be working although I'm not sure if that also includes the official snapshot images (GCC documentation is a bit unclear about what it enables by default by setting -mcpu=cortex-a53) since I compiled my own image (OpenSSL with all optimization enabled, -O2 instead of -Os for global optimization and lastly enforcing hardware crypto extentions, -march=armv8-a+crc+simd+crypto -mcpu=cortex-a53+crypto vs -mcpu=cortex-a53). Seems to have a very good bang for the buck ratio! =)
Firmware/Image based on commit: https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/commit/dc2da6a23369c8da069321dcfd593a9cf8c993c6
3 Likes
The cheapest I could find is 280$
Not exactly a bargain 
Maybe soon some comparable device coming out that is a bit more affordable
2 Likes