GL.iNet GL-SFT1200 Opal AC1200 Dual Band Travel Router OpenWrt VPN | AC1200 dual band Wi-Fi, 300 Mbps 2.4 GHz plus 867 Mbps 5 GHz for streaming and browsing on the go

If you’re looking for a portable router that packs a serious punch, the GL-iNet travel router is hard to beat. I personally use it to provide router-level VPN across all devices in my home, including smart TVs and other networked devices, and it works flawlessly. Setup is quick and straightforward. Power it on, connect via Wi-Fi or Ethernet, and enter the router’s IP in your browser. The admin panel is extremely intuitive, making it easy to configure VPN settings, connect to networks, manage devices, or adjust firewall and port options. Even complex routing setups are simple to manage thanks to the clear interface and helpful documentation. The router supports both OpenVPN and WireGuard, but from my experience its real strength is getting full network-level VPN without having to configure individual devices. The physical VPN switch on the side is a clever feature, letting you toggle the VPN on or off instantly. And if I need to travel, it’s incredibly convenient—compact and foldable enough to carry in a bag. I can take it abroad and set it up in hotels or other networks to create my own secure Wi-Fi, piggybacking off the existing router or Ethernet connections. This makes accessing a safe VPN on all my devices easy, even when away from home. Overall, this is a small, portable router that delivers full-featured, router-level VPN at home, with an incredibly user-friendly admin panel, strong Wi-Fi, and excellent support. For the price, it’s hard to find a better option. Highly recommended.

The Bottom Line: If you travel internationally or just hate annoying hotel login pages, this tiny box is a must-have. It’s small, fast, and makes public networks actually secure. Why it’s a travel essential: International Reliable: I’ve used this across France and Wales with zero connectivity issues. It handles different network types like a pro. VPN Champ: The standout feature. I set it up to tunnel back to my home network—perfect for keeping my data private and accessing my home streaming services while abroad. Pocket-Sized: It’s barely larger than a pack of cards. It fits in my tech pouch without a second thought. USB-C Powered: I’ve even run it off a power bank when a wall socket wasn't handy. The Real-World Experience: The setup is intuitive. Instead of connecting five different devices to a new Wi-Fi every time I move locations, I just connect the Opal to the local network, and all my gear stays connected to the router. It saves so much time. The Verdict: A game-changer for digital nomads or anyone visiting family abroad. It’s significantly more stable and secure than using a phone hotspot.

small and light little device. Setup is pretty easy. you have choices, 1. repeater (connect to you existing wifi), 2. Ethernet connect to you router (mine changed to modem), 3. tethering (connect to a hotspot) and 4. which can be use dwith a mdoem dongle and a sim. My main router is vergin media HUB 5 with 350Mbps. I switcged my HUB 5 to modem and connected the little guy to it via the wan port you can use the 2.5Gbps port (the red one, which i am doing). You can only use one port on the HUB as wan (Internet). 1. Lan port, I get the full speed and a little more. 2. at 2.4Ghz (set the band width to 40) and I get 150 Mbps. 3. at 5Ghz I get 250 Mbps. Bandwidth set to 80 I am about 10 metres away. (you might have to adjsust the antenna for your locations. direct them one of them towards you.) setting up the VPN servers is a breeze. If you have a dybamic IP address form you ISP (i.e not permanent, most are dynamic) then you need to set a switch for DDNS, you will be advised to do that, ortherwise vpn wont work as it can resolved your IP address. You can choose openvpn or wireguard. Wireguard is newer and faster. Then export the configuration file from the menu to your dvice. Download the client for your device, import the configuration file, and connect to the server. thats it (you need to do this for each device that you want it to use VPN). I testd this configurations from insiode the otudoors and works perfectly fine. You will lose some speed of course, thats normal. I haven't tested the other configurations. I bought this for the otudoor. I liked so much that I bought its big brother the AX1800 (on sale on their website, cheaper than amazon by £20. Just for the VPN servers, saving monthly subscriptions. One more thing, you need to open up port 1194 (you will advised so by the this router) I think on your modem/router. The receiver should be the IP address of the little guy. Also open it on the little guy. In repeater mode, the 5Ghz can poly use bandiwth 40. Loss of some speed. 2.Ghz is great. I you find that it is slower than expected, then check the wifi channel. Experiemnt by changing it. I resolved an issue where 5HZ default channel which was conflicting with my neighbour's. After changing it I got about 280 Mbps. Not bad for this little device. Well Recommended.

I use this while away in my caravan. It allows me to hook up to the site wifi and then all my devices connect to the router. So your phones always connect at new sites to the router and you don't end up entering passwords multiple times ! Just the once for the router. Some sites my phone didn't even see the site wifi but my router could with its better aerials. So wifi all round . Provides better security for you connect ted devices and you can also use VPN if you have one for enhanced security. This little device has been a god send, phone TV and laptop all connected and this also gets round some sites only allowing one device / connection. Always streamed sports and movies without issues. Only downside for me was lack of USB 3 but that's just me. Highly recommended as: Good signal Good security Easy to setup and connect Small footprint. Not expensive Reasonable speed.

This won’t be everyone’s use case, but someone out there will be in the same boat. I picked up the Opal not for travelling, but to spin up a NAT’d guest network at home. My main network is basically a home-lab ecosystem, and the last thing I want is visitors connecting their random devices directly to it. The Opal gives them a normal, no-nonsense Wi-Fi experience without me having to collect MAC addresses or fight with whitelists. Setup was straightforward. I put it on its own subnet, plugged the WAN port into my main network, and it was up. At first it treated my LAN like the public internet, but the router is way more configurable than its price suggests. You can SSH into it, tweak IPTables, block inter-subnet access, and even enable an advanced control panel module straight from the web interface. It’s essentially a cut-down Linux box with a friendly skin on top. A genuinely nice touch is the hardware switch for its VPN client. The router can connect to a VPN server and push all guest traffic through it, and you can toggle this on and off on the side of the unit. Useful in the UK, where half the internet wants you to upload your passport for reasons unknown. The one real snag was OpenVPN performance. Without tunnelling, I was getting around 250 Mbps on 5 GHz. The moment OpenVPN client was enabled, speeds dropped to single digits, around 5–7 Mbps. It’s not the router’s fault; OpenVPN is single-threaded and the Opal’s CPU just doesn’t have the grunt for heavy crypto. It routes traffic fine, but encrypting it is another matter. WireGuard was the fix. After spinning up a WireGuard server remotely, the Opal managed around 50–60 Mbps through the tunnel, which is more than enough for guests to browse and stream. I suspect the higher-end GL.iNet models would perform better here simply because of the upgraded CPUs. Overall, I’m happy with it. It’s a small, cheap, surprisingly capable router that’s perfect for experiments, side networks, labs, and guest isolation. If that’s your type of setup, it’ll probably slot in nicely.

I chose a travel router as most places we stay on holiday have wifi but I'm never very sure how secure it is and the wee unit is supposed to protect our holiday Internet use. At first I couldn't get my phone to link to the Opal no matter how I tried, but when I used my laptop to run the set up it all happened fairly quickly, so be patient and do the set up at home, not on holiday or in a place where you have no alternative devices to try and help you. Signal strength was excellent and I noticed that both my phone, after linking to the Opal's WiFi rather than my primary WiFi, and my laptop seemed much faster using and browsing pages. Its truly a small wonder, feels a solidly built unit, very portable and a very clever mains plug with UK and European adaptors that fit in seconds wherever your use. Once you are set up via the set up routine its like every other router except its tiny compared to office or even home wifi hubs. I used it with my Virgin hub at home to run the set up and play with it for an hour so it looks like it'll work with most wifi signals that you could meet in hotels or any public place producing a wifi signal that you'd like to use but aren't sure how secure it could be. The only thing you need to consider is that its mains powered so no battery use, but if most of your wifi use in a hotel, or villa/apartment, train, is inside the public wifi signal where you are, just find a plug for power, log in once to the public wifi and its log in routine, and then connect up to five devices to the Opal, no need to log in to the service's log in restrictions or limits. There's also 2 settings in the set up to create a VPN server or client using the Opal so if you want belt and braces security while you travel or work away from home, this wee bit of kit could fit the bill.

It’s very good at the basics. But some tech it just won’t play ball with. iPad and phones were fine but one or two others were just left hanging. Shame as it was very promising. On the stuff that connected the speeds were great and the signal was shockingly strong. But for what I needed it was not good enough. I’d love to give it 4 or even 5 but I really needed it to allow all my tech to connect I tried many different ways but it just wouldn’t. Shame as what did connect was rapid

If you've not used GL-iNet routers you are missing out. I needed a value for money travel router with 5GHz Wifi that would connect to my 5G HotSpot (via WIFI 5GHz), provide easy VPN access via WireGuard to my home network, have gigabit ethernet ports and be powered by USB C. This router fulfilled all of those requirements :-) The initial setup is super easy. Power up the device, connect to it either by WIFI or one of the Gigabit ethernet ports and put the router IP into your browser. From there you have an extremely user friendly interface with all the options you could ever need. Just to summarise these, you can connect to another Wifi source for your internet, you can plug in an ethernet source or you can even tether from a USB source (whether your phone or a USB stick). Once connected to the internet you can configure your VPN. Here you have the choice of OpenVPN or WireGuard. As my home router has a WireGuard VPN server built in, I used that and immediately I was connected. The other nice touch with regards to this router and the VPN connection is the switch on the side of the unit. You can configure this for several options, one being VPN on or off - what a smart idea!!! You can of course configure the onboard firewall as well, opening ports, DMZ etc etc. For such a small device it's heavily loaded with relevant functionality. Due to the complexity of my home network I did run into an issue where I was routing the internet connection through to the VPN, but my local network resources were not reachable. I reached out to the GL-iNet support team and they responded very quickly with great support. After changing the routing mode of the VPN (to Customize Routing Rules) I was able to apply customised routing rules specifically for my home VLAN, and as a bonus, was also able to push internet traffic out locally from the connected WIFI source instead of going via my home network :-) The support I received was first class, and the engineer even went as far as giving me the reason why I needed to use the customised routing. This was due to an IP range clash I had somewhere along the way. If the router detects this it won't push traffic automatically down the VPN tunnel, to prevent potential IP clash issues. However, you can override this easily and this is what I ended up doing. It now works flawlessly. A Huge thanks again to GL-iNet support, it really was a pleasure communicating with you. I can honestly recommend these devices and this company, what a great end user experience !!

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Funziona molto bene ed è facile da installare. Ha molte modalità di utilizzo. Piccolo e comodo da portare in viaggio, lo uso ormai da mesi e non ho mai avuto problemi con nessun wifi.

This GL.iNet device works very well when used as a dedicated Wi‑Fi access point. It’s compact, fast, and perfect for situations where you want to plug into an existing Ethernet port and add strong, reliable wireless coverage without replacing your main router. Once running, performance and stability are excellent for the price. There is one setup quirk worth knowing: if you switch the unit into Access Point mode (the mode you’ll use if you’re connecting it to an Ethernet jack to act purely as a Wi‑Fi AP), it stops using the default 192.168.8.1 address and receives a new IP from your home network. You need that new IP to reopen the admin login page — but the device doesn’t show it to you. Fortunately, the workaround is simple: open a command prompt and enter arp -a. In the list that appears, look for the entry whose MAC address starts with 94:83:C4 — that’s the GL.iNet access point, and the IP next to it is the one you use to log back in.

Klockren liten router som passar fint i husbilen!

Excellent product