Yeah, I’ve had the same experience as you.
It’s not just BPi — I also bought another “OP” “WiFi 7” board, specifically ChangWang’s Q3600 (IPQ5312), and honestly that thing is a huge trap too. It has one 2.5G port and three gigabit ports, but the most important one — the 2.5G port — is defective. When you connect a 2.5G device, it looks like it’s linked, but in reality there’s no connection at all (I even provided video proof & wireshark to the manufacturer showing that basic ARP doesn’t work). This issue happens, conservatively, about 5 out of 10 times.
When it does happen, if you’ve set the 2.5G port as your WAN, you have no internet — DHCP won’t even work. If you’ve set it as LAN, your client devices lose all connectivity. There’s no software workaround on the router side (restarting the port, rebooting the system — nothing helps). Oh, and sometimes this happens right at boot, leaving you with zero options except physically unplugging and re-plugging the cable.
The manufacturer has never fixed it. They claim you can solve it by flashing certain firmware, but I tried four different versions (including official iKuai 3.18 through 3.20 and third-party OP builds) — none worked. After I sent them testing videos and packet captures for each version, they just went silent. I’m pretty confident this is yet another hardware design flaw. (*update: After I returned the unit, the manufacturer claimed that the English version of firmware 3.20 fixed the problem, but the Chinese version 3.20 had a bug. That honestly sounds pretty hard to believe. Because someone actually went and downloaded the so-called “Chinese version,” only to find it was flashing the English system — they didn’t even get the firmware file names right. When someone in the group commented, “ChangWang’s router firmware just doesn’t have a perfect version,” the group’s tone — and the official response — was: > “There’s no such thing as a perfect product.” > “Look at Windows — after all these years it’s still getting endless updates and patches.” > “Bill Gates is so rich and has so many programmers, yet why hasn’t he made an operating system that’s close to perfect?” That’s just absurd.)
And honestly, even if the 2.5G link works, it’s pointless. iperf and OpenSpeedTest from a client to the device show that — yes, even though it negotiates at 2880 Mbps@160Mhz — the wireless performance is under 1 Gbps. (For comparison, other WiFi 7 gear@160Mhz can exceed 2 Gbps, and even WiFi 6 can do better than this.)
At first, I wondered why, in their official chat group, nobody had posted speed test screenshots for almost a month after release. Then I asked around and realized: everyone had fallen into the same trap and was waiting for the “fix.” As of now, I haven’t seen any sign of a real solution. In fact, they never bring up the issue in the group — instead, they regularly post screenshots showing off how their next product is being designed. If you ask about the problem, they just say it’s been fixed — but if you ask other group members, no one’s board has actually been fixed.
Now they’re saying that not many units were sold domestically (I assume they mean mainland China) and they plan to ship it overseas. I think people should be careful — this isn’t even labeled as a “development board,” it’s sold as a real router (white-label, so you can stick on any brand or logo you like).
Recently I saw another “A***i” (again, wouldn’t mention vender name before I tested it) WiFi 7 product (they claim it’s the world’s first MT7987), but after these experiences I’m a bit allergic now — I’ll wait for someone else’s test results first. That said, the vendor claims, “BPi’s products are never calibrated; ours are fully calibrated. We’re the only DIY router maker that does full wireless calibration.” Looks like BPi’s reputation has really gotten around.
Recently SinoVoip has also released a few new… “case” I’m not sure how that’s supposed to help.
If they could provide real, reliable test results, that would actually be useful.
Of course, if future devices turn out to be uncalibrated, I’ll have to think very carefully before buying.
This product might have been ahead of the curve two years ago, but now I’m not sure they’ll even get WiFi 7 working properly before WiFi 8 hits the market.
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, it’s really meant as a friendly recommendation 
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