The slight size difference doesn't matter to me; I will gladly buy it. Do you know when they are planning to launch it?
Since the beta is running, I would assume mid-Q2
You just like to complain just to complain? Got it! 
Slate AX has more than enough processing power for VPN and won't even take advantage of any of hotels or coffee shops wifi speeds. Some people just have nothing better to do but complain. 
That's why I'm keeping mine and skipping this one 
No. Just not sure why youāre so nosey. I was looking forward to the 7 just as an upgrade to my Plus. Why? Just because new things are nice. Itās ok to wish it were smaller in form factor. I donāt know how that really affects your life. Keep your AX and mind your own business.
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Ok Mr Grumpy pants, have a cup of hot chocolate and take a nap. 
But please take your negative attitude somewhere else, no one is trying to steal your secret recipe for shrimp jambalaya. Mkay??
Dudeā¦.youāre the fruitloop. Off you go.
I'm curious what's the performance uplift of the Slate 7 over the Slate AX. The latter can do ~550Mbps over Wireguard, which is very impressive (given the context of travel routers).
And given the Slate 7 name is developed on the Qualcomm platform, would there be a possibility of a Beryl 7 with the Mediatek platform? That would also be an interesting prospect 
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I feel like the current AX (Slate and Beryl) models are peak in terms of performance and utility. If this had a SDR that would allow for the radio to be changed to take advantage of 6GHz e.g enabling 5GHz and 6GHz (or 2.4 GHz and 5GHz) when neededā¦ I would spring for the new Slate 7. Having 5/6GHz would allow for the AP to connect over 5GHz and rebroadcast at 6GHz without the 50% penalty in performance (for the 6GHz devices). I realize most hotels and places are slow to adopt 6GHz, but thereās a lot of clients that can use the new spectrum.
All of the 2.4/5GHz only devices rocking BE seem like a waste to me. 160MHz wide on the 5GHz is less than idealā¦ and if a device is new enough to support BE, it would benefit from the 6GHz band; more than the slightly higher QAM of BE on 2.4/5ā¦ and MLO would see greater benefit on the 6GHz than the already RF interference prone 2.4GHzā¦ 160/320MHz on the 6GHz would be much better in terms of quality link.
6E devices are very common now, at least in the US. Iāve rolled out 6E enterprise wide at my work, and all machines within the last 3 years support the 6GHz spectrum. 5/6GHz is about even usage in my experienceā¦ 2.4GHz isnāt as common, unless youāre running IoT or very old devices. Heck, even my Sonos Roam v1 supports 5GHz. Every hotel Iāve stayed at in the last 6+ years has 5GHz..
Hope they have plans to release a tri-band Travel Router soon; or at least one that has a SDR for user choice.
Anyway, all my opinion. To each their own. Slate 7 might have better CPU, BE, and likely faster peak VPN speedsā¦ even the 2.5Gbps Ethernetā¦ still seems overkill without much real-world gain compared to the models currently available. Dual 2.5Gbps fills a certain niche; but likely unrelated to ātravelā.
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Thanks for the nce summary as I was just wondering what Wi-Fi 7 benefits this device brings to the table seeing that it does not offer 6GHz support.
Getting back to you a bit late, but my NanoPi R5S running mainline OpenWRT is working great for me. It's nice and small and doesn't get very hot. Of course you don't get the GLi GUI with a NanoPi, but I'm using it in a role where that makes sense, which also happens to be wired-only networking, no wifi. I still use a Beryl AX for home wifi and a Slate AX or Slate Plus for travel usage, all of them with an always-on Wireguard VPN.
So when do we expect the Super Early Bird preorders to ship within the USA? Think it said it should be early April in one of the emails? Hoping to do some initial testing on the road at a hotel in Dallas on April 7th!