Slate AX vs Slate Plus

Technical Support for Routers
1

Hi,

I had a Beryl for a short time about 18 months ago but it kept having weird errors where it couldn’t connect at all to hotel wifi. Despite trying to get help from this community as well as Glinet support, we couldn’t pinpoint the issue & I had to return it. I never did get it working.

I’m looking to try again. I’d like a unit that I can use in addition to my primary router at home to run as a VPN connected device as well as for use when traveling to hotels and Airbnbs to make overall connections easier.

I’ve searched the forums & didn’t see a comparison between the two (which surprised me) and I have, of course, looked at the comparison chart but other than MU-MIMO and MicroSD slot, there weren’t any other differences listed. The other primary difference I noticed comparing the two product pages was DFS on the Slate AX.

I’m just wondering what the benefits are for the Slate AX vs Slate Plus. There is a modest price difference right now but not to where AX is unaffordable. I know this community is incredible at knowing the intricacies of these units and I’m curious if there are things that could be easily overlooked that make the Slate AX a better choice. I’d love to know any other benefits of chipset, longevity, compatibility, etc. Are both compatible with vanilla OpenWRT (if needed), or are there any other similar things I should know?

Thanks so much in advance! Any info would be amazing. : D

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I had a Slate AX (before I gave it to my son for his condo) and I still have a Slate Plus. Except for being a bit larger, heavier and maybe using more power, my opinion is that the Slate AX is superior is every way over the Slate Plus.

Both routers were released only this year and run Firmware 4. The Slate AX being released a few months earlier, the firmware may be a bit more mature after some releases. It is hard to gauge longevity when they are both so new. I recommend sticking with the GL.iNet firmware as there will be new releases for these new products, which should have all the functionality you need, based on your post. Otherwise, you will be on your own with vanilla OpenWRT.

I do not work for and I am not directly associated with GL.iNet

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Neither is compatible with literal vanilla OpenWRT, but you can. Build a relatively clean build for both using the gl-infra-builder. The Plus will probably get true OpenWRT support first.

Aside from the size and weight, the AX is clearly the better hardware. There are a ton of Wireguard stans around here, but the ability to do 150mpbs on OpenVPN is pretty game changing from a travel router perspective. You don’t get that on the Plus (though you can get 30-40, and possibly more with the upcoming dco feature in 2.6)

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