GL.iNet GL-SFT1200 (Opal) Secure Travel WiFi Router, AC1200 Dual Band Gigabit Ethernet Wireless Network, IPv6 USB 2.0, Repeater Bridge Access Point Mode, Router for Public Use, Easy Setup with Guide

I originally bought this GL.iNet GL-SFT1200 travel router for a trip to Mexico, and it worked perfectly. Now that I'm back, I've found it incredibly useful at work. Our office Wi-Fi is notoriously congested, but there are plenty of Ethernet ports available. This little router lets me create my own private Wi-Fi network using the wired connection, bypassing the crowded office network and giving me much more stable and faster speeds. It's compact, easy to set up, and has become an essential part of my daily work setup.

The router performance is about the same as the Tenda AC1200 AC8 it replaced. It does that with MUCH smaller antenna and only two of them compared with 4 antennae of the AC8. Prepare for very small fonts in the start up instructions! I did have an issue and needed to go online to the site for clarification. Possibly due to language differences there was confusion as to which password to enter into the router once it rebooted. Either the new router password or the host password. That was resolved and the router has run smoothly since 12/11/24. It was setup in our house but it will be transferred to an office environment shortly where its host and password will again be changed before it settles into service at that location. Based on its performance we ordered three more.This router was approved for use by our national organization. We also bought the carry cases for them as Amazon offered a case designed for this router. We do need a case to protect the router when not in use. If you use "WISP" mode to connect to the host wirelessly this router does not have one. Its equivalent mode is "Repeater" and it works the same as WISP as it connects to the host and on to the Internet in our case. We have not used the router in any other mode, however we expect that it will meet our expectations. There are two LAN and one WAN port along with a 2.0 USB port. With its small size we may use a switch for allowing access to other devices. A four port switch device is very light and won't interfere with portability this router affords. The color blends in very well with our office surroundings. The AC8 was only offered in black or white colors and with 4 large antennae it did not blend in very well. Packing it for travel or storage was very annoying. This Opal router works well and has side benefits. The antennae design worked well in a TP-Link access point we used several years ago. The Internet speed test we ran did not differ very much from the AC8 design so we expect about the same performance from this smaller unit as compared to the larger Tenda AC8 design. I also bought one for our house. A nice touch was the power supply and cord. Both match the unit color and the plug has a unique design. The cord is a flat design that FOLDS very nice within itself. I am NOT going to purchase round cords any longer. When one coils (folds) this cord just follow the contours that you see when you first look at the unit in the box. You can then fold it back into the same size. I took a photo of it so I could refold it correctly and it DID! A nice small package without using an elastic. Its funny how the little things add up to a nice design. The Gli folks have a nice design throughout the product. Even the box design is very well done. BTW the route unit takes up about 1/2 the box and the cord and power supply take up the other half. The router is in a soft sleeve and one will realize it is only 1/2 of the box size. The plug of the power cord will need a 10 second assembly.It seems to be a universal plug that allows the unit to adapt to US, EU and other electrical systems. The contacts assembly are separate from the remainder of the cord assembly. The instructions indicate how to connect the contacts to assemble it to the cord unit by aligning the contact unit with the cord unit and then clicking the two into place with a slight twist of the wrist. Sounds complicated BUT it is like aligning an aspirin bottle top with the bottle edge and slightly twisting the top on. The U.S. model has a standard U.S. plug contacts. The units going to the EU probably have the EU type contact assembly. Slick!We do not need speed greater than the AC1200 standard right now. However, if we need more speed or more features the GLi company will be the first place we will look. GLi put a lot of thought into their design and it makes me confident that their electronics are designed with the same care and detail.

Overall this is a handy device and an awesome value for the price. The hardware is lightweight, compact, and very easy to travel with. I bought the device primary to use as a travel NAS device, as I had loaded up multimedia on a 5TB USB hard drive that I wanted to share across multiple devices (tablets, phones, VR headset, etc.). It's impressive that this device is so configurable, virtually as comprehensive as my much more expensive Netgear Orbi home network gear.You need to be technically savvy in order to get the most of out of this device, though. As an engineer I actually think that it's pretty cool that this little $35 device has Open WRT installed, has SSH access, and has a whole bunch of settings you can tweak to exactly configure this router for your home or travel network. But I wouldn't buy this expecting complete plug-and-play usability except for the most basic features (sharing an internet connection). If you are technically adept and patient this won't be an issue, just be forewarned.NOTE that many of the advertised features are only available in the 3.x version of the firmware, such as file sharing and DLNA support. The router comes shipped with the 4.x version, which according the GL.iNet forums, had many of the features removed in the 4.x release in order to preserve disk space. So you will actually need to downgrade the device in order to get back the preinstalled functionality restored. The good news is that the user forums are actually quite active and the company and other users have been very responsive in answering various technical support questions. Technically, some of the removed functionality can be reinstalled on the 4.x firmware, but after some experimentation I could never get it quite right, so I decided that the downgrade route was a better option. On 3.x, the device works flawlessly and handily supported my use case with zero issues - it mounted the 5TB HDD fine, provided it enough power, and the SAMBA file sharing support was very stable.