GL.iNet - Spitz Plus (GL-X2000)

Gl-Inet x3000 amazing for our use case on the road/vanlife .. x2000 might be enough if you don’t fancy 5G ..

To be clear, the latest and good router models are the Beryl **AX** and the Slate **AX** (and Slate 7). You don't want to buy a Beryl or Slate Plus unless your budget is extremely tight. You will have a much better experience on these newer models and obviously longer support life. We have cellular routers as well, which take physical SIMs. These would be the Spitz Plus, Spitz AX, Puli AX, etc. You are correct, if your dorm already has bad Wi-Fi, then repeating the network with another router is not going to do you any good. In fact it'll be worse. An affordable option would be the Spitz Plus that I mentioned which is 4G LTE only and small enough to travel with as well. If you are willing to spend more you can get the bigger brother, Spitz AX which will give you **5G** and thus faster speeds.

The page at the gl.inet store has a USB-C PD to barrel connector adapter cable available for $1, if that helps. I think it uses 12V power so it might also be possible to find something on Amazon with the right barrel connector that let you power it from a lighter socket in a car without the USB-C inefficiency. I like things with external antennas, they are often more likely to actually work well.

I set up a wire guard VPN on my gli.net router in under 5 minutes and it works great

Gli.Net are great units

If your apartment is not huge, a Gli.net brand router is what you’re looking for. Prices are decent, various speed options and vpn on board. I use one as a travel router for hotels

Ehh. I guess, but it took me less than 10 minutes to setup Wireguard server on my Cloud Max gateway, and then pass the credentials over to my gli.net. I have no doubt that the ubiquity travel router is easier to setup, but we’re talking about shaving off a few minutes compared to gli.net

Exactly. Don't waste money on these shitty consumer routers. The only decent ones are from gl.inet that come with openwrt. If you need more, look into opnsense on something like qotom or other minipc, mikrotik, ubiquity and separate access points.

Poor performance, very poor routing performance. And overpriced.