Slate 7

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! :+1:

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. :v:

That's why I'm keeping mine and skipping this one :call_me_hand:

No. Just not sure why you’re so nosey. I was looking forward to the 7 just as an upgrade to my Plus. Why? Just because new things are nice. It’s ok to wish it were smaller in form factor. I don’t 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. :sleeping: But please take your negative attitude somewhere else, no one is trying to steal your secret recipe for shrimp jambalaya. Mkay??

Dude….you’re 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 :wink:

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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 needed… 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 there’s 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 ideal… 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 2.4/5… and MLO would see greater benefit on the 6GHz than the already RF interference prone 2.4GHz… 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. I’ve 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 experience… 2.4GHz isn’t as common, unless you’re running IoT or very old devices. Heck, even my Sonos Roam v1 supports 5GHz. Every hotel I’ve 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 speeds… even the 2.5Gbps Ethernet… 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 ā€˜travel’.

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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.

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Got my Slate 7 yesterday, been using MLO for about 18 hours with wireguard and adguard…repeater mode on top of my own network…so far so good!

Any plans when you will start delivering Slate 7 to Europe/Germany? Or is "America first"?

I'm just wondering because many get Slate 7 now and my order is still pending that has been submitted 04 Mar, 2025 as a "Super Early Bird".

I received my Slate yesterday, and....

okay happy about receiving the new Power-Travel-Router from GL.iNet I wanted to discover the new opportunities that this device offers and it ended in a all night long fiasco:

It started connecting it to my PoE network with Gigabit Type C PoE Splitter (5V 3A)
(which is working perfectly with Berryl AX and Brume 2 even with 2.5GBit/s) - and the router was booting. Due to a IPV6 focused network (my provider IPV4 only with NAT64 which I haven't got - which is not supported by GL-Inet and all most of the other services like SoftwareUpdate (you are on the most "Recent Software" and Goodcloud were not for me via IPV6.....
--> So dear GL.INet support team was it my fault or are your cloud tools already ready for IPV6?

-> So, my next try was to do Tethering - via an iPhone 15Pro - Nothing - no connection. no Security Dialog on iPhone - just a total nothing.
(hm...... did a total Reset..... Still nothing again....)
The reason for this behavior was found later.........

Okay. got the router somehow working with IP6 & ZeroTier, did the firmware update.
(A feature request for the automatic ethernet status track would be adding an "Either" option, so if any IP4 OR IPV6 connection is present the router gets an connected status (currently I always have to reconfigure it to "both" or "IP4")....
Okay some results.

Then I tried set up File Sharing but the USB dongle (perfectly working in Berryl AX & Brume 2) was not detected - neither via USB2 nor via USB3, again nothing
(Feature request:
It would be awesome to be able to format a USB drive with FAT(32)/ EXT3 / NTFS / BTRFs - doing it with OpenWRT CLI is a pain!!
And please confirm that problems with diacritical chars are being solved with FAT / FAT32 .....

For some reason I couldn't even access the LUCI always got a strange Web Access error

Didn't gave up, yet, so I set up a IPV4 network accessible via Ethernet (worked well and WiFi 2,4 GHz.)

To do this I also connected the SLATE 7 to a USBC PD PowerBank with interesting results - the USB-drive was also showing up......, but the for some reason the 2.4 GHz connection had problems to connect.
(it was better when I used USB2 for the usb-Stick.....)
Here I am not 100% sure, but Slate7 seems like to have some interference between 2.4Ghz WiFi and USB3 -- IMO, this needs to be investigated further by the GL.iNet support.

Also curious why the USB drive was working I also tried tethering to iPhone 15 Pro .
And... Security warning showed up and it was working (somehow).
Some results:
Tehering Slate7 <---> iPhone via USB
via a USB3 cable:
103 MBit/s down, 30.5MBit/s up (via Telekom Germany )
101 MBit/s down, 36.1MBit/s up (via O2)
in comparisson assessing a personal hotspot (on the iPhone 15 pro) to the Slate 7
291 MBit/s down, 15,8MBit/s up (via Telekom Germany )
411 MBit/s down, 30.6MBit/s up (via O2)

Just on the iPhone alone I do get
about 300 Bit/s down / 50MBit/s- 100 MBit/s up for Telekom
All done with Okla Speed test App

(The GL-X2000 is around 150 MBit/s downlink some 50 MBit up, but is not usable due to unclear / lacking IPV6 support)

Then I tried to figure out about the Tethering / USB drive problem.
it seems like if you connect the SLATE 7 to its USBC power connector the USB-A port is not functioning. If it is only my unit or it is a general restriction (what I fear) needs to reconfirmed with the GL.iNet Tech support.

The current Slate 7 Tech Spec states for Power Input are 5V/3A, 9V/3A, 12V/2.5A

Next I tried to install Docker - from the package manager in the GLI interface and via LUCI in various ways. No luck.
I tried the "docker run hello-world" to confirming functionality.

Sometimes it was downloading from Docker Hub, but the ... a long wait,
sometimes a reboot of the whole Slate 7!!!,
clicking through the Docker interface in LUCI sometimes an error message like this showed up

To conclude
(and in really really kind words - this product experiences was from another dimension - waste on many hours. hopefully you will improve the product experience & (Beta-) testing )

Here questions to the GL.Inet Support (before deciding how I will proceed)

  • is the USB-A port of a normal SLATE7 "normally" working when 5V /3A power is supplied via USB-C (or do I have a defective device)?
  • How do I get Docker & Docker Compose working on the Slate 7
  • is there radio interference between USB3 and Wifi 2.4GHz in the SLATE 7
  • what about IPV6 support of the Slate 7 and (your other products)
    which features of IPV6 are supported in your current V4.7 firmware and it safe to using it? (like firewall, port forwarding, connection detection......)
  • what is the current state of IPV6 support of your services (Firmware Update, OpenWRT repository, GoodCloud...

Thanks a lot,

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There is a lot to try to take in there.

One portion that seems easier to understand and answer regards power and USB function.

5v/3a only gives 15w.
The slate 7 spec says the router uses less than 18w without USB.
So your 5v/3a is only barely enough to supply the router without USB function. For USB support you need to use a bigger power supply.

The Slate 7 is using less than 2W (booting) to little less than and 4W - 5W idle

Using the power supply with USB-C PD (the Slate "negotiates" 12V) it takes about 10 seconds to activate the USB-A connection (with 5V out)

Using a 5V only USB-C Power source (either from the 3A PoE converter or a normal PowerBank the USB-A connection is no showing any power...

(the router (except USB-A) is functioning normally with a 5V and 12V power supply)

This 10 second USB-A power-up delay is interesting - my hypothesis was that the USB-A power is "generated" from a step down converter from the Voltage-in to the 5V USB-A (so to get the 5V out you would typically need some >5.5V to make it work). The 10second USB-A power up delay is hinting for a more complex scenario...)
So let's hope it's a software bug, but not a hardware design flaw.........


It's disappointing to see that GL.iNet doesn’t appear to be continuing support for the optional OP24 firmware on their Slate 7 devices. At least, I haven’t found any OP24 firmware available for it. Does anyone have more information on this?

I can only compare it with Flint 1, qualcomm is very slow for main OpenWrt, this is due to qualcomm being slow, and there also various problems with supporting qualcomm propetairy functions like NSS offloading, Mediatek is often faster supported because one of the core devs has tights with Mediatek.

Maybe since a year flint 1 is actually supported or a PR is present.

In the time before there was a different project called openwifi/wlanap but this is not pure OpenWrt but that one often supports qualcomm better on higher versions of OpenWrt.

Though I wonder if they are going to do this... Since alot of gl firmware also for mediatek still gets build on the OEM soc SDK.

It will not be a true op24 fork for a longer time, but it could be a wlanap one.

Flint already are based on it