First, the hardware itself is really nice. Compact, powerful (for a consumer router), seems to have a solid build quality. Second, for what you are getting they really could charge nearly double the asking price and it would still be worth it ... if they would keep their firmware up to date.
I had plans to downsize my router for RV use as I travel and this unit would have been perfect I think. I am currently using a 6-year old mini pc I built with pfSense. Since I would soon have to rebuild the mini with a more modern CPU that supports AES-NI for newer versions, I thought I would kill 2 birds and just get a compact low-power router that could use open source firmware.
At the time of this review, the latest version of stock firmware for this device was based on 2.5 year old (very outdated) OpenWRT. The latest version of stock firmware from GL-INet's site is still based on v15.x from early 2016. The current version of OpenWRT at the time this review was written is v18.06.1 (summer 2018).
While I suspect/hope GL-Inet has plugged any serious security holes in their ancient OpenWRT implementation, I cannot be sure, so I decided to install the latest generic/vanilla OpenWRT build for this router from OpenWRT's official site
(releases/18.06.1/targets/ipq40xx/generic/glinet_gl-b1300-squashfs-sysupgrade.bin).
Since "upgrading" to official OpenWRT from the stock UI doesn't work, I setup a TFTP server @ 192.168.2.1, changed the name of the official OpenWRT file to "lede-gl-b1300.bin", set permissions on the file, connected directly to the B1300 and booted it up. It loaded the official OpenWRT without any issues. Great! The whole process took less than 5 minutes.
Unfortunately, that's where the good times ended. The device seemed to lockup a few times in the first couple of hours of testing. I was getting slower download speeds than I am use to - with the official OpenWRT firmware I was seeing about 250-ish Mb/s, where I usually see ~350 Mb/s. It refused to complete any install of additional software from the repository from the Luci UI. Lastly, after installing additional packages via SSH, the UI would not properly integrate any of the new components, even after a device reboot.
I reinstalled the stock firmware but did not experience the same issues. So I thought maybe I had a corrupted installer for OpenWRT. I repeated the whole process including downloading a fresh copy, restarted the TFTP server, booted the router - same thing ... vanilla OpenWRT installed without issue.
Unfortunately, I ran into the same problems when trying to install or configure additional software. I suppose it could have been a bad build, but I think someone else would have caught that by now since its been available for a few months. It could have been a hardware issue, though it would seem that the stock firmware would have issues if that were the case. Maybe that just leaves user error ...
After a couple of days of fussing around with it, I decided to return it and just spend the additional money needed for a compact pfSense travel router. So disappointing! I wanted this to work so bad. Like I said, the hardware is nice and the GL-Inet firmware had no issues and you can easily access the OpenWRT UI by clicking "Advanced" in the top right corner, I just don't trust the old version of OpenWRT it's based on.
| Brand | GL.iNET |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | GL Technologies |
| RAM | 256 MB |
| Wireless Type | 5.8 GHz Radio Frequency, 802.11a/b/g/n, 2.4 GHz Radio Frequency |
| Voltage | 5 Volts |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Manufacturer | GL Technologies |
| Item model number | GL-B1300 |
| Package Dimensions | 13.72 x 13.72 x 8.89 cm; 170 Grams |
| ASIN | B079FJKZV8 |
