GL.iNet GL-B1300 (Convexa-B) Home AC Gigabit VPN Router, 400Mbps(2.4GHz)+867Mbps(5GHz) High Speed, DDR3L 256MB RAM/32MB Flash ROM, OpenWrt Pre-Installed, Wi-Fi Networking, Power Adapter Included

I love this device but I must say that this router may not be an easy setup for the non-technical folk. Follow the instructions and remember that Google is your friend. I never trust any wifi that’s not my own; so when I visited a particular hotel I made sure I had this router with me. For me, the initial setup was a breeze. Once you get around the hotel’s captive portal (Welcome Screen) to connect to the wifi you’re basically done. The great thing is that once you connect once and create your personal network all other devices can connect without having to go through the captive portal process.

I take it a step further to enable the VPN feature so that I know my data is kept confidential. I’ve tested it and so far it’s been steady with no speed degradation. My advice to anyone who has connected this router but later is having trouble reconnecting it to public or captive portal wifi; make sure the VPN is turned off and try again. So far the router is working great for me and I’m happy I invested in my privacy, security, and peace of mind.

I bought two of these routers a few weeks ago and love them.

The main things I was looking for in a router was a lot of features and support for the new wireguard VPN. This router is nice because it has an easy interface for supporting OpenVPN for a ton of VPN providers. But OpenVPN is not as fast as wireguard which is almost 4 times faster.

Gl-inet has not completed their custom easy wireguard interface yet but their support has been outstanding in helping me setup and test wireguard via the command line. Most router companies are not as responsive (timely) nor as helpful.

Pros
– runs open source open-wrt
– has a custom beginners interface for basic routing & OpenVPN
– has the advanced interface into the open-wrt
– size is quite compact and the unit weighs very little so one will travel with me
– performance is great for the price
– easily mesh the units together for greater coverage

Cons
– could do with better or more documentation (though any issues I encountered were answered by the support team)
– wireless range of a single unit is not as good as the big router name brands (but then again you are paying almost 50% less; see comment about mesh under Pros which extends the range)

Summary: for me these easily do the job that I bought them for!

I wanted an OpenWrt (LuCi) router as an upgrade to my Motorola Smart AC1900 because I need to configure a more sophisticated Guest LAN. I didn’t need a mesh router because I only needed to reach a maximum 60ft. radius. I started with the lower-end GL.iNet routers but they all were at least 15% slower than my old Motorola Smart AC1900 and none of them worked properly with my Azulle Quantum PC-Stick (Win10) attached to my TV. Only the GL.iNet GL-B1300 (Convexa-B) worked properly with the PC-Stick and matched the Motorola Smart AC1900 download speed. It seems the GL-B1300’s Qualcomm Atheros IPQ4028 SoC WiFi chipset works very well with the Azulle Quantum PC-Stick.

Details:
I have tried the following four additional GL.iNet routers and only the GL.iNet GL-B1300 (Convexa-B) was able to provide general 2.4G and 5G WiFi bandwidth comparable to my old Motorola Smart AC1900 router within a radius of 50ft (even after the latest GL.iNet firmware updates).

GL.iNet GL-SF1200 (4 antennas)
GL.iNet GL-MT1300 (Beryl)
GL.iNet GL-A1300 (Slate Plus)
GL.iNet GL-SFT1200 (Opal)

A particular showstopper problem was that the above four routers could not connect with the Azulle Quantum PC-Stick (HDMI Win10) with more than 2.5Mb download data rate and yet they all supported 6Mb upload (my maximum cable upload speed). Only the GL-B1300 (Convexa-B) was able to connect to the PC-Stick at 30Mb download (same as my old Motorola Smart AC1900)

Cons:
1) The GL.iNet GL-B1300 does not transmit a large radius WiFi signal below the horizontal plane (i.e. you will have problems connecting on the lower floor unless you are directly underneath). However the 2.4G signal strength might improve by up to 20% (RSSI dBm) on the lower floor if the router is appropriately rotated 90-degrees on the vertical axis. Slightly inclining the router will also improve the 5G signal strength on the lower floor. This may provide just enough signal strength on lower floors to connect to the SSID using a reduced data bandwidth. This also means you may have issues pairing with a subordinate mesh router on a lower floor unless it is positioned below the master router. (Note mesh subordinates will not support the GUEST LAN if subordinate is custom configured via LuCi to connect to the master via Ethernet back-haul rather than the router’s default “mesh” pairing button which uses WiFi. See GL.iNet Support Forum for details.)

2) The 5G WiFi occasionally drops out and all 5G clients need to reconnect to 5G or fail-over to 2.4G. I have not seen this random dropout on 2.4G. The router brings 5G WiFi back up automatically. This happens about 4 time a day. So far this problem has not become a showstopper and I only experience a momentary jitter of my streaming video or “WiFi Calling” phone call. The LuCi System Log error message is:

wlan: [25093:E:ANY] [soc1] FWLOG: [107759081] WAL_DBGID_TX_BA_SETUP

There already is a GL.iNet Support entry for this problem since 8/2022 but as of 2/2023 there is no posted solution.

Pros:
1) Of the five GL.iNet routers I have tried to use, this is the only one that has 5G and 2.4G bandwidth comparable to Motorola Smart AC1900 router within a 50ft radius. All of the other ones were at least 15% slower.

2) If I really need to improve signal strength on a lower floor, I can easily get additional GL.iNet GL-B1300 WiFi connected mesh routers as subordinates and have a truly seamless and user friendly network.

3) Unlike the four other GL.iNet routers, the GL-B1300 hardware platform is still directly supported by OpenWrt.org (as of 2/2023) and so the latest opensource updates can be installed if you don’t trust, or don’t want to wait for, GL.iNet OEM builds. (I have not tried this. See posts by other reviewers who have.)

The Stock firmware is an old version of OpenWRT and very limited.

I needed multi-wan (mwan) and wifi client. Neither work well on the stock. You can’t setup a wpa wifi client.

The device is supported by OpenWrt, so I flashed the latest version. No problem: tethering; wifi client; wireguard; custom ttl; and multi ethernet wan. The wifi is fast. The ethernet wan ports are fast. You can set the firewall ttl. Wireguard is fast. The device is a quad core. So all is good.

Some abnormalities:
o The hardware has the stock wan port really mapped to switch port 2. So set it off on all ports and use 3 for the wan2.
o On all OpenWrt routers I’ve tried, I could not get a stable config of multi wifi clients. I could get one working but not two at the same time.

My use case is seasonal residence (no broadband); wifi; fire tv youtube tv, netflix ′ security cameras; alarm system; raspberry pi linux server. I monitor the property from home.

For Internet: I have T-Mobile home internet(WAN with unlimited data) and also a cheap grandfathered Sprint mifi hotspot plan with a public IP address as a backup. Plus I’m experimenting with load balancing another mifi hotspot WAN.
I can use the public ip or wireguard to get remote lan access. Also use remote desktop to raspberry server for things I can’t do from home.

So I use OpenWRT for mwan, load balancing, tethering, wireguard, & custom TTL. The device handles it great.