40 euros top new if possible
42,90 € but no dual band
I don't think you can get something better for 40 Euros.
I would go for a GL-AR300M-Ext if you want detachable antennas. It had both NAND and NOR and you can quite easily ignore the NAND and use the standard LEDE release (just a small easy config to make it boot NOR all the time. Flash is a doddle from the factory installed Openwrt LUCI or using the uboot GUI. Rock solid and stable with excellent wifi power output and sensitivity.
If detachable antennas and a lan ethernet port are not important you can get the AR300M-Lite at a much lower price. Slight problem comes with the lower price in that you will have to use imagebuilder to make an image with wifi turned on as it does not have a lan port to connect to to switch the wifi on. Dead easy to do though and a good start to get used to making your own images.
Both models have 16Mb NOR, 128MB ram and USB with all hardware supported in LEDE.
AND both available on Amazon Prime ie stocked in Europe.
Do you have to have external antennas? If not, I picked up a Linksys EA4500 for $15USD last week (needed a power supply, I picked one from my box of power supplies), 128MB/128MB memory/flash, gigabit ethernet, 1x USB2 port, dual band wireless, the only thing its missing from your list is external antennas, but it has had as good or better coverage than the TPLink WDR-3500 that it replaced.
Specs: https://lede-project.org/toh/hwdata/linksys/linksys_ea4500_v1
Version 2 of the EA4500 had 2x USB2 ports.
Aaron Z
I'm interested in the ea4500. I picked up an ea3500 for $20 on ebay before I realized the 4500 existed. I figured 64MB ROM would be plenty, but after flashing lede on there I have onliy 9MB free. This came as a bit of a shock because even after liberal use of extra flash for the backup kernel partition, uboot, bad blocks, etc, I figured I'd have at least 32MB free. can you attest to the amount of free storage space after flashing lede on the ea4500? Those are also real cheap and might be worth another $20. I've heard they run hot and might need some heatsink mods, but that's no biggie.
Increase some budget
Perhaps rt-ac58u will be a better choice!
rt-ac58u should also be available in Europe
Yes, rt-ac58u seems to me a bit too expensive.
But as you and quazardous put it, Xiaomi Mi Router 3 does have a problem
In fact I have a router with the same SOC as the Xiaomi Mi Router 3 (all with MT7620 SOCs)
This router's wireless is almost unusable on LEDE17.01.4
It seems that some reports claim that these problems existed already two years ago
I also have a router that uses the MT7621 solution
LEDE does not have its wireless driver
But fortunately these two routers are my reward for investing in finance
I did not spend even a dollar on them
So taking into account the difficult to buy Linksys EA4500 in France
Adding some budget to buy rt-ac58u may indeed be a better option
At least LEDE can really work on rt-ac58u
And rt-ac58u cheaper than wrt1200ac😜
Try snapshots.
MT76 got a lot better than it was over a year ago
In fact, I have been in the source code to compile a new LEDE
But nothing fundamentally improved😭
@aczlan, in your experience does the EA4500 qualify as easy-to-flash? I see a bunch of threads about sysupgrade failure; sounds like some users are having to return to factory ROM before they can upgrade? I'm considering getting an EA4500 myself, based on the nice specs/nice price, but just hoping to confirm the "easy" part.
I dont remember having to do anything special to flash it. I think I installed whatever was the trunk version at the time, then updated to 17.01.4 when it came out.
Its been a solid device, no issues with instability or freezing up (wish I could say the same about the Nanostations that I was trying to do a WDS bridge with, I ended up going back to the stock firmware on them).
Aaron Z
1 Like
TP-Link TL-WR841N is definitely BS... WIFI is not stable even with native firmware
You can find it at 100+ euros....
What about the little brother Rt-ac51u ? around 50 euros ? 16m flash 64mb RAM seams not bad ?
https://wikidevi.com/wiki/ASUS_RT-AC51U
The MT7620A used by the AC51U is awful.
Openwrt does not support 2.4Ghz wireless modules used in this SOC.
Almost catastrophic unavailability You can't connect to a routed 2.4Ghz WIFI.
Although I don't own the RT-AC51U, I have another router that uses the MT7620A. He has already tortured me for half a year.
But some firmware using proprietary drivers works fine on the MT7620A, but those firmware are often not DIY.
What are you talking about?
MT7620A is fully supported and works really well
1 Like
That's great.
But at least after I built the image again today, I still can't connect to the 2.4Ghz WIFI provided by the SOC.
Tue Sep 18 16:41:47 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: authenticated
Tue Sep 18 16:41:47 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 1)
Tue Sep 18 16:41:47 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-CONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:41:47 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPDISCOVER(br-lan) 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:41:47 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPOFFER(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:41:47 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPREQUEST(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:41:47 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPACK(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 android-e00a4dfe55ec944c
Tue Sep 18 16:41:51 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-DISCONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:01 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: authenticated
Tue Sep 18 16:42:01 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 1)
Tue Sep 18 16:42:01 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-CONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:01 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPDISCOVER(br-lan) 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:01 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPOFFER(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:01 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPREQUEST(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:01 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPACK(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 android-e00a4dfe55ec944c
Tue Sep 18 16:42:04 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-DISCONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:09 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: authenticated
Tue Sep 18 16:42:09 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 1)
Tue Sep 18 16:42:09 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-CONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:09 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPDISCOVER(br-lan) 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:09 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPOFFER(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:09 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPREQUEST(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:09 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPACK(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 android-e00a4dfe55ec944c
Tue Sep 18 16:42:13 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-DISCONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:23 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: authenticated
Tue Sep 18 16:42:23 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 1)
Tue Sep 18 16:42:23 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-CONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:23 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPDISCOVER(br-lan) 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:23 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPOFFER(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:23 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPREQUEST(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:23 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPACK(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 android-e00a4dfe55ec944c
Tue Sep 18 16:42:26 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-DISCONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:32 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: authenticated
Tue Sep 18 16:42:32 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 1)
Tue Sep 18 16:42:32 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-CONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:32 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPDISCOVER(br-lan) 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:32 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPOFFER(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:32 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPREQUEST(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:32 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPACK(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 android-e00a4dfe55ec944c
Tue Sep 18 16:42:36 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-DISCONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:37 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: authenticated
Tue Sep 18 16:42:37 2018 daemon.info hostapd: wlan1: STA 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 1)
Tue Sep 18 16:42:37 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-CONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:37 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPDISCOVER(br-lan) 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:37 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPOFFER(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:37 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPREQUEST(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
Tue Sep 18 16:42:37 2018 daemon.info dnsmasq-dhcp[2443]: DHCPACK(br-lan) 192.168.1.115 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88 android-e00a4dfe55ec944c
Tue Sep 18 16:42:41 2018 daemon.notice hostapd: wlan1: AP-STA-DISCONNECTED 44:80:eb:cb:e5:88
AP-STA-DISCONNECTED 
That is really weird, as 2.4GHz worked fine on my Xiaomi Mini
This may mean that half of the ASUS_RT-AC51U purchased by @quazardous will work properly and half of the possibilities will make him give up using 2.4Ghz WIFI. In the worst case, 5Ghz WIFI can be used, nor is it bad?
Although the MT7620A does not work on the Phicomm K2.
But I didn't spend a penny for Phicomm K2.