My ISP router is quite limited. I can´t even change the DNS servers and can only set bridge mode via telnet.
I want to get a new router and start only using the ISP one as modem.
I already had Flint 2 in my radar for a while. I really like the Adguard Home integration.
Now with Flint 3 coming in, I am in doubt. They seem quite similar.
One thing I noticed is the power consumption is a lot lower in Flint 2. This is really important for me, as I will need to keep my ISP router in bridge mode, and I am already running a 24h NUC server and a NAS. I want to keep energy consumption at minimum. Also Flint 2 has 6 more 1 port which might be handy.
Wifi 7 would be more of a future proof thing, honestly. My current ISP router is still running on Wi-Fi 5, so Wi-Fi 6 from Flint 2 would already be an improvement. And I don´t have any devices capable of wifi 7
More 2.5G ports could nice. I could eventually connect my NUC and NAS to them, while on Flint 2 I only have one 2.5 port. Still my main network is still running on 1G, so the gains would be limited.
Is there any breataking feature of Flint 3 I am missing that would be a much better choice than Flint 2?
Flint3:
Has 5*2.5G network ports and supports dual WAN settings.
WiFi7, supports 2.4G-5G-6G triple-band aggregation
Power consumption Without USB Load: <25W / With USB Load: <37.2W
It is mainly aimed at users who have terminal devices that support WiFi7 and want to use 6GHz ultra-high-speed network.
I think that replacing Flint3 will not be a big improvement for you at present, your usage environment has some restrictions, and using Flint2 is enough (Flint2 has 6 network ports, which is indeed more convenient).
I also use a nuc with the flint 2 via the 2.5gbps port it works great👍
You can if that is necessary use these small Ubiquiti network switches like the flex mini for expanding network ports, note if you want vlan support you need a controller which is primarily a headace but you can configure this also on the nuc, you only need to ensure mongodb can run on the nuc OS which i had a little issues with on proxmox, on the other hand you can also simplify it by using a docker container with binded directories to your main system.
The only issue you can make, is the switching capacity of these switches, i use this small switch before the Zyxsl GS1900-24E so if my 24 port switch shouts alot of traffic it can crush my small flex switch making management inaccessible but that is just a after thought🫤
for Flint 3 i see no reason to upgrade yet, only if that was for wifi, for vpn utilisation it will be a downgrade due to slower cpu + the power usage.