GL-MT300N-V2 (Mango) Wireless Mini Portable VPN Travel Router, Mobile Hotspot in Pocket, WiFi Repeater Bridge, Range Extender, OpenVPN Client, 300Mbps High Performance, 128MB RAM

OK, so this was a quick buy for me as my VPN router at home got config corrupted and I was stuck without VPN. I had read some of the reviews regarding the OpenVPN option on this device being easy to set up and I can honestly say I was sceptical that this tiny little box could delivery what I needed while my VPN router is out for repairs. I was not disappointed, the reviews are 100% correct and VPN setup on this tiny kit was seamless to setup and working perfectly. Packaging: The product packaging was good and everything you need to get started is in the box. What I got in the box: 1 x GL-MT300N-V2 Mini Travel Router 1 x 1 USB Power Cable 1 x RJ-45 Flat Ethernet Cable 1 x User Manual Setup: The tiny router is connected via the its WAN port directly to a LAN port on my BT Hub5 router. The cool thing is that it takes its power via USB so its gets it power directly from the USB port on the back of my BT Hub5 this makes it a very clean and tidy setup. The software is nice and simple and is easy to use and play around with. I downloaded the VyprVPN openvpn config file and uploaded it to the router. Selected my preferred location and connected pretty quickly. The only thing that is missing from this device for me is to be able to disable the VPN to specific devices on the network. At this stage I have to use my BT Hub5 for all my devices that don’t need connecting to the VPN on that network while are other devices that require VPN access now connect to the tiny router. It’s not that much of a big deal over all but it’s nice to be able to manage all network devices on one single router than having devices connected to 2 separate routers which doesn’t helps with network management and network security over all. Performance: I have been using the router for a few weeks now and honestly I have not seen any disconnections or network latency. I have done several network tests after setting it up and I was get accurate speeds that reflect the same speeds I get from my BT Hub5. I actually cant believe this tiny router has such great performance. Once switched over to VyprVPN the speeds test reflect a solid 12Mbps download speed and 7Mbps upload speed needless to say I was very impressed. The VPN speeds are slightly faster that my damaged VPN router which cost me around 150 pounds. If you are using this device just for VPN, this is a all or nothing router, either all devices connected to the tiny router are connected to the VPN or none are connected if the VPN is turned off. Pros: * Good Quality * Easy Setup * Cheap * Fast * Multipurpose * Tiny * Supports OpenVPN Cons: I personally haven’t had any issues with this device. I would have like to be able to manage all my devices on one network, but this more a personal want and not any fault the software or the device. Conclusion: This is an awesome device and I can’t believe what you get for the price. I am not using this router as a travel companion but as temporary VPN router while my router is getting repaired. It’s been a life saver for me and I would highly recommend this router if you are looking for a travel router or a static VPN router at home or even in a small office environments.

There is no doubt that this is a seriously useful piece of kit for such a small amount of money. The features you get for a tiny £20 box are incredible. It may be advertised as a travel router and it works very well as one, but that is just the tip of the iceberg... I use mine mainly at home as an OpenVPN router to push any traffic I need through NordVPN servers. It sits behind my BT SmartHub and connects directly from its WAN socket into one of the BT Hub's LAN sockets via a short ethernet cable and is even powered from the 0.5amp 5volt USB port on the rear of the BT router. It is very easy to setup with NordVPN .ovpn config files from their website. I have tried a few VPN providers but have found Nord to be the best in both value for money (if you pay for 12 months upfront then it is seriously good value) and for the shear number of servers in so many different countries. It is also extremely reliable and fast. It works with GL.iNet products like this one seamlessly. I have also used this router as a WiFi extender/repeater which works extremely well (far better than expected) and also allows you to use Open VPN configs while doing so which is really handy. It is mega useful if you need to use a free hotspot or free hotel wifi connection while traveling and secures your data and gets around website and usage blocks. If you are outside your home country and want to access content restricted by location (like TV or News streaming like BBC iPlayer from the UK) or want to access content at home from a different country then this has you covered by using OpenVPN configs to route you through the country of your choice. It is great for plugging a USB drive into for sharing files securely over your network from it. I have also used the smartphone tethering and 3G/4G modem features which are both a great feature for securely using and/or sharing a mobile data connection. It uses very little power and so with the addition of a USB power bank it makes it easy to have setup anywhere. I have a 10,000mah Juice brick and it keeps it running for several days solidly. If you want to delve deeper into the advanced settings then there are a ton more options, features and plugins already pre-installed and also available to download to upload to and use this device for more advanced and specialist uses. I know that you can open the case and access plenty of other connections for other uses. I think there is even an external antenna socket inside on the PCB that is useable. I did own a previous version/model of a GL.iNet router a couple of years ago and at the time it was unreliable and was prone to crashing and connection issues. I am VERY happy that they have addressed all those issues and every feature I have tried on this model over the past 3 months work perfectly and with the latest firmware all have been resolved 100% and this is now a solid piece of kit that is in my opinion a must have device even if you only use it as a simple travel router. Finally... They have just released the full latest revision of the firmware for these boxes to download and install OTA and I have just let it upgrade to the version 3.011 from 2.xxx and it really improves on everything. It is more streamlined, easier to use and even more feature packed. This has made this £20 box even more powerful and useful. I can't recommend this device highly enough! It will change how you use the internet. It does the job of boxes that can cost you 10x the amount of money just as well.

The stock firmware looked quite slick with an integrated DDNS service & VPN support but as I immediately replaced it with OpenWrt 21.02.2 I can't comment more on that. The unit itself is very nicely put together and tiny. I was quickly able to connect it as a client via the LAN port to a hotel WiFi network and simultaneously run both my secure & DMZ WiFi access point SSIDs through via WireGuard to both of my home & office gateways. The only slight issue I had was it spontaneously rebooting under load but when I stopped using the charger that came with my Samsung A52 phone to power it in favour of a U-Green PD one that seems to be solved. Excellent little gadget and I suspect I'll be buying one of GL-iNet's more powerful dual-band offerings soon. Update: Having obtained a USB power monitor it appears that even with a USB thumb-drive connected and both wifi WAN client & LAN access point active it draws no more that 250mA at 5V. With a Samsung A52 plugged into the USB being charged & acting as the WAN interface this goes up to around 700mA. Updated 2023-03-27 I've been using this router on my travels for a while now and continued to upgrade it to the latest OpenWrt (22.03.3 at present). Even with a GaN USB PSU it still exhibits some instabilities when used as both an access point and a client onto hotel wifi, especially where that wifi is a little sub-par, crashing when changing settings sometimes for example. The wifi phy only supports four simultaneous AP and client configurations which is a little constrained for my purposes but at the price it's still a good device. However I'm planning to upgrade to one of GL.iNet's dual-band devices with uSD & more powerful CPU as soon as I get home.

This item is SMALL - it's about half the size of a cased Raspberry PI, and a bit wider than a box of matches. It has 4 modes, but the default "Router" mode is what I needed. In this mode, this little box creates it's own private WiFi network for my devices. At the same time the box itself is connected to another (public) WiFi network AND an OpenVPN server - giving all of my devices internet access in a really secure way. But the really neat thing is this: because it creates a private WiFi network (instead of just repeating one) nobody else on the public network can stream to my Chromecast. They can't interrupt my programs, or even spy on my YouTube playlist. They aren't on my network at all, this little box just passes my data through their network and that's it. Really cool. I've been running this thing a couple of days and it's working fine. The speed takes a hit of course, since my data is now being passed over two WiFi networks and a VPN server, but it's still very usable and even streaming HD video works. The WiFi signal is rock solid, though it is closer than the public router, my devices stay connected to it happily. It also has an Ethernet port, so my computer can use that instead of a USB WiFi adaptor! So far, very very good. I did have a couple of minor issues to start though... Firstly, the device wouldn't reboot after I first logged in and changed some settings - it just sat on the "rebooting" screen without actually doing anything. I cut the power eventually, and it started up again and has worked perfectly ever since (including rebooting when asked). A little worrying but it worked out fine. Secondly, it wouldn't gain internet access when I first connected it to the external WiFi network. I read a little, and I think it might have been a captive portal problem. I turned off the "DNS Rebinding Attack Protection" and voila it started working. I have since turned that option back on and it's still working. Finally, I noticed that my computer appeared to be leaking DNS requests outside of the VPN, when connected to this device via Ethernet. This problem didn't occur for WiFi devices (including the same computer when connected over WiFi instead!). I poked around and tried the "Override DNS Settings for All Clients" option which instantly fixed the problem. That's about it I think. Oh.. and it's definitely worth mentioning that this device allows you to change it's MAC address, hostname, and SSID all from within the admin panel (though I did have to dig quite deep for some). So if you really need to go the "security through obscurity" route, you can fly pretty far below the radar with this little yellow friend. In conclusion, it's truly a great little device, and for the price it's absolutely unbeatable. Yellow Mango FTW!

Bought to keep me on line when travelling (Hotel Wi-Fi is often quite poor). This is a really handy device which can be used in several different ways (very easily once set up). My primary use case is as a mobile router with WAN provided by a 4G USB modem, although I have also tried it as a wireless repeater (works fine). Getting the USB modem working was not easy but the following may help you if you have similar difficulty. My modem is a Huawei E3372 and it stubbornly refused to work on my first few attempts. I first thought it must be due to insufficient power (the instruction manual warns of high power draw with USB modems and suggests a minimum 2A 5V supply). I tried different USB power supplies which were to the right spec and... Nothing. Then I found a post somewhere (sorry, forgot where) which pointed out something I should have spotted earlier - that the IP addressing range used by the GL.iNet router was the same as that used by the Huawei modem (192.168.8.0/24). This obviously cannot work. The fix is simple. Boot the router without the USB modem present and connect to its UI on 192.168.8.1, then change the LAN IP range to something else (I chose 192.168.12.0/24, for no better reason than that was the range suggested in the post I read). The router UI will subsequently be found at (e.g.) 192.168.12.1. Having done this and restarted the router with the modem attached, the router does not recognise the Huawei device as a 3G/4G modem, but it is recognised - as a tethered device (you can also tether a mobile phone as a WAN connection). Enable the tethered device and you're done - it works perfectly. I hope this helps someone and I do unreservedly recommend this little router - a really useful general purpose router/repeater at a tiny price (and a tiny size too, so it won't take up a lot of space in your bag).

I tested this extensively and on a number of different speed connections here is my findings: Pros: 1. Very compact and portable 2. User interface is dead easy to use 3. Open VPN connections are easy to set up 4. It can create and receive a wide range of network types 5. Works well as a repeater Cons: 1. This is the biggest issue. Maximum WiFi connection speed on VPN is firmly between 5-6 mbps. With a cross over cable you can get close to 7mbps. I used two different ISPs and airVPN as well as ExpressVPN providers. Exact same results. I think the CPU is just unable to handle any faster. 2. The button on the side with no markings seems to do random things from time to time... 3. When you are trying to connect to a new VPN server it drops connection often which is less than desirable from a VPN router Overall it’s a good bit of kit for day to day surfing but anything like gaming is out of the question. If you have more intense needs from your VPN internet I can’t recommend this.

A superb piece of kit I had a specific requirement to monitor our cloud connected house batteries. The vendor unfortunately has a habit of pushing out firmware updates to it's gateway; not telling their customers and often breaking functionality. I setup this as a secondary router on my Lan, enabled its own WiFi on a new subnet and connected the cloud enabled batteries through its own WiFi SSID. I then installed NextDNS as a LUCI service client and I can now see which servers are being used to connect to my batteries, and more importantly when they are pushing out updates. I can also manage those connections myself. The router (I call it Mango) just sits there doing its thing. Its very powerful and amazingly cheap for its functionality. The only drawback is the amount of built in storage, but its not too difficult to plug in a USBA stick, format it as EXT4 and then AI search extending the storage using ExtPool and Overlays. I now have a cheap powerful, multifunctional router with 32GB of bootable storage. Truly an amazing piece of kit if you're into this sort of thing. If your home wifi router; like many others is a stripped down version of what it should be, this mini router can easily be used to create a new SSID for your WiFi which you can more easily control for things like blocking access to marketing telemetry and sites that you don't want your children to access. You can even block sites like Facebook, tiktok & Instagram on a timed schedule, love it! You'll need to use something like NextDNS as a client. All the details are on their site NextDNS.io I couldn't be more impressed

There are some other glowing reviews here and I see why. This may only cost a bit under £20, but it is a very competent route/bridge/extender by any measure. It is sold as a travel router, but it can be used in all sorts of other ways. My main use is to deliver a VPN to multiple devices without them having all to be configured independent;y, and for that it works well. Others have remarked the processing power restricts the speed of the VPN, but as I have never connected on a fast network, I have never noticed it having much effect. Configuring it is easy. You can have it connected to a wireless hot spot, an Ethernet port or you can hang it off your phone as a more performant hot spot than typically built in. I had it running in a couple of minutes, and configuring it for my VPN service took not much more. I will not pretend you need no networking knowledge to set this up, but you really do not need much - if you know what a VPN is, and have ever configured one on another device, doing so on this will probably easier than any other router you have tried: get the .ovpn configuration file (how you do that varies with your service), drag and drop it to the right page on this device's web config page, add your user and password details and it's done. There is even a tiny slider switch you can configure on the outside to switch the VPN on and off if you do not want, or for some reason are not able, to use the web interface. Under the covers, this runs the open source OpenWRT router software pre-installed but with the manufactures own simplified web management interface. As a bit of a geek about such things, I was fully expecting to have to dive under the covers to do what I wanted, but in fact the out of the box interface is really good. I have rolled my sleeves up for fun a few times and played around with standard OpenWRT stuff and it all works exactly as expected. This really is one of those best of both worlds pieces of software that beats that found on routers costing 10 times as much. So what is the catch? Really I have not found one. Obviously from the physical size of this and lack of external aerials you do not expect WiFi that will go for miles and through thick walls - but it is better than I expected. It propagates the signal as well as the router from my ISP, and it happy connects to that router's signal a couple of rooms away. As a physical Ethernet access point/router, it only has two ports which might limit it a bit for some uses (the same manufacturer I note have devices with more ports, but I've not tried them), but for the use case I have that is not an issue at all. I am really happy with this little device - so much so I brought another one.