Thursday, January 9th 2025
GL.iNet Shows Off Upcoming Wi-Fi 7 Routers at CES 2025
Most of you might be familiar with GL.iNet as a manufacturer of cheap travel routers intended to share a hotel Wi-Fi connection with, but the company has expanded to more capable devices over the past couple of years and it's Flint 2 Wi-Fi 6 router has been a popular option, especially as it runs a fork of OpenWRT, but native support for OpenWRT is in the late stages of development. At CES the company was showing its upcoming Flint 3 router—also known as the GL-BE9300—although unfortunately we weren't given any more specs than the company has already shared in terms of what hardware is under the hood, this is as far as we're aware, the first time the Flint 3 has been publicly shown. That said, the model number suggests this should be a tri-band router that will most likely deliver up to 5760 Mbps on the 6 GHz band, 2880 Mbps on the 5 GHz band and finally 574 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band. This somewhat disappointingly suggests that the router could be limited to a 2x2 antenna configuration on all three bands, if 320 MHz channel width is supported on the 6 GHz band. In terms of announced features, the Flint 3 is said to come with multi-WAN support that can do failover or load balancing, VPN client and server support and at least a pair of 2.5 Gbps LAN/WAN ports carried over from the Flint 2.
Also on display was the Slate 7 or GL-BE3600 which is GL.iNet's first Wi-Fi 7 travel router. This is most likely a 2x2 dual-band 2.4 and 5 GHz router with speeds of up to 2882 Mbps for the 5 GHz band and 688 Mbps for the 2.4 GHz band. It too will offer VPN support and this is GL.iNet's first small form factor router with dual 2.5 Gbps ports. It is powered via a 12 Volt USB-C port and it has a USB 3.0 that can most likely be used for data sharing or a USB data dongle. The Slate 7 also appears to have a small LCD around the front that can generate QR codes to make it easier to connect to it. Finally GL.iNet showed off a new product range with the Comet—or GL-RM1 if you prefer—which the company refers to as an "open-source remote KVM". This connects to your PC or laptop via HDMI and USB to enable the KVM part and then the Ethernet port of the device is connected to your network to allow you to remotely access the computer. This is being touted as failsafe means of being able to access a system remotely, be it a PC, server or any other device with and HDMI port, although some precautions would have to be taken against the system losing power. It's a neat solution that isn't easy to DIY and hopefully it'll be priced reasonably, like most of GL.iNets products. All three products are expected to launch later this year.
Also on display was the Slate 7 or GL-BE3600 which is GL.iNet's first Wi-Fi 7 travel router. This is most likely a 2x2 dual-band 2.4 and 5 GHz router with speeds of up to 2882 Mbps for the 5 GHz band and 688 Mbps for the 2.4 GHz band. It too will offer VPN support and this is GL.iNet's first small form factor router with dual 2.5 Gbps ports. It is powered via a 12 Volt USB-C port and it has a USB 3.0 that can most likely be used for data sharing or a USB data dongle. The Slate 7 also appears to have a small LCD around the front that can generate QR codes to make it easier to connect to it. Finally GL.iNet showed off a new product range with the Comet—or GL-RM1 if you prefer—which the company refers to as an "open-source remote KVM". This connects to your PC or laptop via HDMI and USB to enable the KVM part and then the Ethernet port of the device is connected to your network to allow you to remotely access the computer. This is being touted as failsafe means of being able to access a system remotely, be it a PC, server or any other device with and HDMI port, although some precautions would have to be taken against the system losing power. It's a neat solution that isn't easy to DIY and hopefully it'll be priced reasonably, like most of GL.iNets products. All three products are expected to launch later this year.
Comments on GL.iNet Shows Off Upcoming Wi-Fi 7 Routers at CES 2025
There are no comments yet.