Raspberry Pi 4/5 Gigabit Travel Router Kit (AC1300Mbps USB 3.0 WiFi, OpenVPN/Wireguard VPN Client, OpenWrt, AdGuard Home) [Raspberry Pi NOT Included]

I was going back and forward between purchasing this or an axt1800 “travel router” that cost over 100. Since this was a third of the price and advertised faster Wireguard speeds I thought it would be worth a try. Has exceeded my expectations. The built-in Adguard is solid and VPN works very fast. Also, if you’ve ever used OpenWrt before you’ll appreciate how easy this makes it. The app GUI makes such a big difference, haven’t had to touch LuCI or SSH once.

Garbage don't do what it says.

Did not work at first. Downloaded a new Raspberry Pi4 image from the website, flashed card and rebooted with monitor connected. The setup process went to completion. Started up and waited a while. Still not able to connect using app on my phone. Later checked available wifi networks on my pc (raspi5) saw the PiFi there and was able to connect. Still not able to connect with phone app, but my phone is old. Tried using a Chuwi tablet, installed app, worked first time! Connected to PiFi and did setup, changed passwords etc. Now very happy (hope it continues). So have some devices connected using 5G, speed seems good When it is working it is excellent, but it is unreliable, needs rebooting every few days

First of all, this is insane! It was very easy and straightforward to get it set up on the pi (hardest part was inserting the SD card). My AXT1800 router that I spent over 200 on struggles to even reach 100Mbps with VPN enabled and regular Pi with openwrt maxes out at under 90mbps. I’m now getting around 495mbps over wireless on WireGuard with Mullvad. Fantastic boost in performance and a lot easier to configure.

There are a few options for a pi travel router that I'm aware of. And why even use a pi to make a travel router when there are plenty of off the shelf items? Probably because you have an extra Pi4 or Pi5 laying around and maybe even an extra wifi dongle as well and you figure you can make use of some equipment and save some money. Then you look at options like RaspAP and OpenWRT and you're looking at a decent amount of work to get the right drivers and setup and troubleshooting - a time investment that some might and enjoy. But you personally just don't have the time to sacrifice. You look to perhaps purchase another wifi dongle that is compatible with the available software options and that also has driver support and then stumble across this PiFi. $35 for basically a wifi dongle with a chipset that would probably cost $10-15 for a comparable dongle (we don't know for sure - they don't actually publish the chipset anywhere, but guessing based on the specs)? $35 is maybe a little steep - but look what you get in return. An out-of-the-box setup that's supposed to be plug and play. No driver support to deal with. No manual setup. Just rip and run. Plug it in and download the app and you're up and running. How much is your time worth? An extra $25 to maybe save hundreds of dollars in time is a great bargain. If it works. Then you actually get the PiFi. Follow the setup. Plugin the dongle and the SD card. Plug in the ethernet cable to your network. Power it up. Connect to the PiFi access point. Start up the android app. Just follow the instructions from there. The the PiFi app just sits there. And acts like you're not connected. But you are connected. Ok, this probably happened to someone before. Let's go to their website and get some support. What's this? No guidance or support? Sort through the "community" to try to find an answer among a massive amount of support issues others are having? I guess this "plug and play time saver" option isn't what you thought it would be. The problem is that with the other options like RaspAP and OpenWRT, problems are all eventually fixable. With PiFi, there's really nothing to fix. The app doesn't recognize that you're connected to the network you're supposed to be connected to? That's all folks. I'm sure some people don't have the same problems. Networks are complicated. That's why I gave it 2 stars. But my experience was 1 star. It doesn't work. There's no way to fix it. To fix it, I'd have to spend the time I thought I was going to save by wading through possibly countless hours of community posts or post my own problem. This time sink is due to a stunning lack of support for the PiFi. Lastly, PiFi is not transparent about the chipset of their dongle, so I can't even press it into use somewhere else. It's PiFi or bust. It's a one trick pony and it's pretty bad at its one trick. At least in my experience.