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Quick review of GL.iNet GL-AXT1800 / Slate AX.

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KGB7

Very Senior Member
I’ve been looking for a new router to replace my 8 year old work horse; Asus AC68U. Originally it was labeled as a T-Mobile Cellular Hot Spot and so immediately converted it in to a fool fledge AC68U. It’s been a great little guy but it was time go.
A week ago I ran in to Slate AX and after a bit of research and the price was incredible for such a small tank, on sale for $92, I bought it.

My first impressions were that I was impressed with such a small little monster in a such a small box! This tank is a tank! The quad core CPU is really fast and runs incredibly efficient on OpenWRT 21 kernel 4. But the company is steam rolling forward with frequent fixes and updates on all their products and they are listening to their customers on their support forum.
They are currently field-testing Beta firmware’s for OpenWRT 24, kernel 7 on 4 of their products and results are positive so far. And when the firmware becomes official, this little router, Slate AX will be incredible, its what many people will want and need in a small package.

GUI is simple, clean and has everything you need, but you also have access to full pledge LUCI -OpenWRT with a click of a button. Adding plug-ins is incredibly simple! From GUI menu you can search for over 1,000 plugins, click on the Install button once you find it and within 3-5 seconds it done! Got back to Openwrt and its there and ready to use!
Absolutely amazing little WIFI 6 router! I want to buy another one just to experiment with.

It has a little FAN to cool the router that activates automatically based on the temperature you get to chose from, between 70C - 90C in 1C increments and the fan works well. I couldn't get the CPU past 5% load (74C with fan off ) on all four cores, while performing 5-6 different task putting this router through its paces, where is my AC68U routers CPU would peg just from a single task.

But nothing is perfect, these little routers have one single flaw, interference with WIFI radios from USB 3.0 Port. I made another write up not long ago, so here is a link.

My final thoughts?? Buy it today, don’t wait for the sale. This router is awesome!
I wasn’t paid or asked to write about this router. I’ve been really excited for the past few days and I just wanted to share it with everyone. 😁
They already have Slate 7 WIFI 7 router that will be announced very soon and its the size of Slate AX. There are no specs yet, but GL.iNet has a picture of it. But my guess its going to be even faster. This is the future of wifi routers and they will only get smaller and faster.

Here is are some stats on GL-AXT1800 / Slate AX WIFI6:
  • Architecture
    ARMv7 Processor rev 4 (v7l)
  • OpenWrt Version
    OpenWrt 21.02-SNAPSHOT r16399+173-c67509efd7
  • Kernel Version
    4.4.60
And I’ve attached a few pictures.




tempImaget00zKC.jpg
tempImage1V7vS3.jpg
 
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Thanks for sharing the experience. Another good price/performance GL.iNet device is GL-MT6000 Flint 2 currently on sale for $134 on Amazon US. I have two GL.iNet devices - GL-AR750S-Ext Slate (travel router, now discontinued) and GL-MT2500A Brume 2 (Gateway). Both pretty decent for the price.
 
I was a beta tester for the GL-AXT1800/Slate 2 and I agree - fantastic travel router, and the stock firmware is more than decent - it's dimensions are a bit more than their other travel oriented devices like the AR750...

As the teardown shows, there is an active fan, but it rarely runs in my experience - I suppose it is because travel router vs a full-time home gateway...

as @Tech9 mentions - the MT6000 is also rather interesting, and under heavy development over in the OpenWRT community...
 
I have some bad news. I had to return the router. The interference between 5Ghz band and USB port would come back much worse after about an hour and that's my second one. I would have to put a lot more copper layers and that might not work. And that would cause 5Ghz to have really low speeds. It couldn't even handle torrents.

I like this router a lot, but two in a row is not a good sign. I don't know if I got it from a bad batch or its a huge design flaw.
 
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Time to try GL-MT6000 perhaps? Still $134 on Amazon US...
 
Time to try GL-MT6000 perhaps? Still $134 on Amazon US...

Yeah, you might be right, but I love the smile size of the Slate AX, and no one else has anything that powerful in a such a small package. I'll wait till Slate 7 gets a couple of reviews or at least official specs.
 
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I picked up MT6000 Flint 2 and its a fantastic router!

No interference of any kind and I can copy files over WIFI to the usb drive that's attached to the router, at 60 MB/s all day long from a 10 year old laptop. It even runs Transmission client really well for torrenting.
 
I’ve only used my as travel routers and have wondered how well they would perform in a home. How much house are you covering and how many devices connect. How’s the performance

My setup is simple, single person with 4 devices, small apartment no issues with coverage. But the cpu can take a beating, i've thrown everything at it at the same time; torrenting on my PC while torrenting on router, moving files from the routers attached usb drive and copy back at the same time and I didn't see CPU go over 7%. Im watching a streaming movie and surfing on the web...all at the same time, with no noticeable hiccups, just smooth sailing.

edit:
And the Signal/Noise compared to Slate AX is 15 - 20dBm lower.
 
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And the Signal/Noise compared to Slate AX is 15 - 20dBm lower.

GL-MT6000 is not in travel routers category. It has much better radios for AIO home router use.

single person with 4 devices

Perhaps only two devices. Don't count the ones self-destructing after you accept the next mission.
 
GL-MT6000 is not in travel routers category. It has much better radios for AIO home router use.



Perhaps only two devices. Don't count the ones self-destructing after you accept the next mission.

Well yeah, there is almost no EMI or RF interference between various components on MT6000, because they are also more spaced out on a PCB. Portable router can be better, but you'll have to throw better components at it and raise the price. But people love it because its portable, it works really well on the go and its cheap.
 
It's a fun device to play with, has vanilla OpenWrt support. Enjoy!
 
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