Best Router device for openwrt 2025

I am completely new to OpenWRT/Pi-hole and need a recommendation for a device that could run OpenWRT/Pi-hole on it to replace my current router. I’m not even sure if I used the correct wording in this sentence, lol.

I have checked:

I need recommendations for devices to get some hands-on experience. And please explain the advantages of the devices you recommend a bit. There are indeed a lot of options listed on the internet, but not enough reasons are provided.

  • I need Pi-hole because I want local DNS, but I guess OpenWRT could do the job as well.
  • My current router does not support changing the DNS server.
  • I need a simple substitute.
  • I need good performance because it might need to connect to about 15 devices (though I have no idea what good performance means in terms of a router).
  • So I guess a device with at least 256MB of RAM is needed.
  • No limitation on price as long as it is not excessively expensive.

  • Users should consider multi-core, ARM-based (or x86_64/AMD64) devices for mid-range and higher applications. (From https://openwrt.org/toh/recommended/_routers)

Thanks for your help in advance!

  • Max@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 months ago

    I quite like my dynalink wrx36. It’s quad core ARM with 1GB of ram, and supports WiFi 6. Sadly it appears to no longer be available, but it wasn’t very expensive (like $80 or $90 when I bought it).

    I think a lot of the openwrt wiki recommended routers page is massively out of date. Or at least it was when I was searching two years ago.

    I wanted something that could actually saturate a 1Gb link, which my previous archer a7 really struggled to do, I think because of the CPU limitations. It also got annoying having to choose openwrt packages with the very limited ram.

    The top two comments on the reddit thread you linked seem correct. The MT6000 seems good in light of the dynalink being gone, but it’s recently expensive at $150 or more