This is actually probably the best thing OpenWRT have done in quite a while. I got two (one for a backup) and I've been super happy. I've happily used TP-Link, GL.iNet, and Raspberry Pi 4 devices, with OpenWRT in the past, but nothing beats the "it just works" aspect of a first party device designed for this, fully open, and a reasonable price.

Most off-the-shelf devices have too slow of CPU for a low latency/buffer router. The Raspberry Pi 4 is easily fast enough but needs to use USB3 network adapters which require packages not in the default rpi4 OpenWRT image. Not insurmountable, but a consistent pain every upgrade.

I ended up building my own image of OpenWRT to make the package hell better on upgrade, and as a bonus, I was able to build in my configs too. Recovering from a failed Pi was as simple as flashing the most-recently-built image. Upgrading just required rebuilding the image (and resolving whatever went wrong, of course, though it was usually pretty light). As a bonus, it's easy to swap SD cards on the Pi so I can have the last "known good" config available while taking the update.

Now I run OpenWRT on one of those x86 mini PC boxes with 4x 2.5GBe Intel NICs because my wirespeed is 2 Gbps symmetric, so I needed just a bit more oomph than the Pi could provide. The hardware is somehow even _less_ reliable than a Pi 4 - I'm already on my third machine in 3 years. I would love to find something more reliable.