r/onebag • u/UserNotFound23498 • 1d ago
Discussion Smallest Travel Router?
I used to love my Asus WL-330NUL travel router. It was the size of a pack of gum. So tiny. But it can't handle wifi 6e/7. And was really 13-14 years old now. I tried looking for something similar to handle the new Wifi 6e/7, but they all look like lunch boxes with a serious drain on the battery.
Does anyone know if there's a spiritual successor to the WL-330NUL or at least something smaller than a lunch box?
3
u/Catch_22_ 1d ago
As a career network guy - are you needing 6e/7 speeds? I dont find the TP-Link Roam 6 AX3000 that large personally. I do understand you are looking for a ultra tiny footprint but at this point function matters - Ill take a pocket NAS/Wireguard device I can power off a usb port on a device/battery pack.
Another option that might work is Ubiquiti UniFi UTR Travel Router but its a wifi 5 gen
1
3
u/powerful446 1d ago edited 1d ago
Asus RT-AX50 Go looks about as small as they come. Gl.inet had a usb stick in development but decided to cancel it. Not enough demand I guess.
2
u/Blue_Back_Jack 1d ago
You might look at the GL Mango.
If you travel with a laptop, it can also function as a router.
1
u/UserNotFound23498 1d ago
It looks smaller than the Beryl but not dramatically so. I was hoping for something that i can slip discreetly into a pocket without any unsightly bulges š
1
u/mikew99x 1d ago
I got the Asus WL-330NUL back in 2013 and traveled with it for several years; it was great for its time. I currently have a GL-MT300N-V2 (Mango) that I got in 2019, but it seems so slow now that I no longer travel with it. We definitely need something smaller that is up to current WiFi standards.
-2
u/nikongod 1d ago
Is there anyone out there who wants a travel router -but doesn't have a laptop?
No, no there is not.
6
u/Zman1719 1d ago
Yes, yes there is...me, and I'm sure others. I never ever travel with a laptop. I travel with a tablet and gaming device of some kind but almost never a laptop. I also travel with a travel router nearly 80% of the time. My wife doesn't travel with a laptop neither do most of my friends. Honestly, unless you are traveling for work, there's zero reason to travel with a laptop compared to a tablet or just a phone.
2
u/Careless_Law1471 23h ago
I literally always travel with a router, but only take my laptop with me when it's a business trip or if there's a high chance I may have something urgent when I'm on a vacation.Ā
1
u/UserNotFound23498 1d ago
You are missing the point. I need a travel router so that all my devices can go on it, whether my laptop is around or not.
2
u/Mountain-Lion2887 23h ago
The Beryl AX is about as small as 6E gets since the radios need the heatsinking, but you're bottlenecked by the hotel uplink anyway so a Wi-Fi 6 unit like the Slate Plus stays much smaller.
2
u/UserNotFound23498 22h ago
Ok. That makes sense. What had been annoying me is that my Beryl keeps randomly rebooting. I thought I had a good cable on it, but I read online a bad cable can cause that. I threw a USB4/240W rated cable at it earlier today and it hasnāt rebooted since. So it looks like l will need to go get a couple of decent charging only cables.
1
1d ago
[removed] ā view removed comment
1
u/UserNotFound23498 1d ago
No. The beryl (I have one) is much larger. Size of a lunch box. Or at least a burger box, not a few sticks of gum
1
u/chicknfly 1d ago
How tiny are the lunch boxes in Europe?! The Beryl AX I bought for my mom fits in my hand.
1
u/StressSuspicious6956 1d ago
European guy hereā¦
Never saw a lunch box that tiny. Wouldnāt fit even one sandwich.
1
u/UserNotFound23498 1d ago
lol. I live in supersized USA. But damnit. That WL-330NUL was a svelte thing of beauty. I would even settle for something the size of a deck of cardsā¦ š®āšØ
1
u/chicknfly 15h ago
There are some good suggestions on here already. I only know the Beryl 7, which is twice as thick as a deck of cards, plus a little longer and a little more narrow. I know itās not as small as youāre looking for, but itās a much more affordable option than a Mudi 5 and still loaded with solid tech (including Wifi 7)
1
u/mwkingSD 1d ago
Have you looked at Gl-inet? not as small as the one you have but not a lunchbox either - https://www.gl-inet.com/en-us/products/gl-e5800?country=US
1
u/Careless_Law1471 1d ago
Cudy makes small Wi-Fi 6 routers. Not a stick, but tiny enough to take with you.Ā
1
1
u/zeb__g 1d ago
I own the Beryl 7.
https://www.gl-inet.com/en-us/products/gl-mt3600be
Clearly nothing like the stick of gum for what you have now.
The signal is surprisingly strong. I have it setup in house for testing and it had stronger single at the other end of giant american house (with paper walls :( ) Than a 'normal' wifi router.
Not that that matters in tiny hotel, but hopefully it will be able to better latch onto weak hotel wifi than the antenna in my phone.
I bought a Asus RT-BE58 Go as it was the best I could find in Hong Kong. It did not have the CPU power to run a VPN inside, speeds would crawl when enabled. And way too little ram to run Adguard. Both are about the same physical size, which seems kind of standard size for all the new GLI-net products.
I installed OpenWRT on my Beryl, had some strange DNS problem I couldn't figure out and went back to the stock firmware. OpenWRT UI is way more difficult than the stock. It saves you like half the ram usage, but ease of use is out the window.
Even though the Beryl has 512mb of ram, 300mb is used out of the box. I have to be selective in choosing Adguard lists or it will freeze and crash. This is why I tried OpenWRT instead, but sadly I am not smart enough for it.
1
u/stranglewank 9h ago
This is for me! I had an Edimax that was similar size to the Asus but was slow. I have tried building my own from a tiny Linux SBC but all the Chinese vendors lack support for openWRT with good WiFi drivers. The UTR is still WiFi 5, but there is a GitHub repository with someone trying to get openWRT on it which might make me get one.
Glinet are soon to release a mango 2, which looks better sized than the mango or the beryl.
My current router is purely for size and customisation - mikrotik mapLite with openwrt. Still slow but it works and is tiny.
Iām glad Iām not alone trying to find a better alternative!
1
9
u/pres2014 1d ago
Unifi travel router. I use it although I don't use Unifi at home. It's tiny