Sometimes hotel Wi-Fi is insecure, limited, or an outright hassle to join. Fortunately, there is a way around all of those issues—the humble travel router.
A router small enough to take with me
My own network wherever I go
The point of a travel router is right in its name. This is a device that functions just like your home router, but it isn’t designed to be tethered in place to a single outlet and Ethernet cable in perpetuity. That’s not to say you can’t use one that way. It will function just fine, albeit it with a shorter range than your conventional Wi-Fi router.
Newer travel routers have impressive speeds, like the TP-Link TL-WR3002X AX3000 travel router I reviewed (good luck remembering the name, I know). With Wi-Fi 6 and max speeds of up to 2.4Gbps, this router may just outperform the router you have at home, especially if it’s an ancient model you’re renting from your ISP.
This travel router draws power via a USB-C port, and the energy can be supplied via a wall adapter or an external battery bank. The latter effectively turns a travel router into a portable one. The experience is akin to carrying around a dedicated hotspot, minus the cellular connection.
Unlike having a dedicated portable hotspot, which can supply internet at times when you don’t have any and is a worthwhile upgrade over just using your phone, a travel router’s uses aren’t immediately intuitive. Still, I now consider this one of the key items I seek to pack when my family travels.
Connecting all of my devices at once
No one enjoys entering Wi-Fi passwords
Connecting devices to Wi-Fi is one of the more tedious rituals of modern life. We enter a new space and ask around for the network name and password. We then click or tap through various settings in order to enter that information on our phones and PC. The more devices, the more work it becomes, and the work increases exponentially if you have family members in tow. Young kids, in particular, often don’t understand why a device isn’t working and lack patience for you to type in the necessary credentials.
A travel router reduces this friction. Instead of connecting all of my devices to public Wi-Fi, I will now connect all of my devices to the travel router. It keeps the same network name and password no matter where I go. All I have to do then is connect this single device to a new network. Once the router goes online, the phone, laptops, tablets, and gaming consoles that we’ve connected all go online as well. I don’t travel with a TV streaming stick, but you could also add that to the list.
Making public networks private
Strangers don’t need to see my devices (and what I use them for)
This travel router also removes much of the anxiety that comes from using insecure public Wi-Fi. This is because my devices are now moving their activity from an insecure public network to our secure private one. We gain all the benefits of having our own private local network, just like we have at home. We can allow devices to seek out other devices and share files between them without fear of exposing our devices to strangers.
This privacy can be enhanced further by signing in to a VPN at the router level. This hides everyone’s traffic from the ISP and the system administrators who manage the hotel Wi-Fi. Running a VPN directly on the router also removes the added battery drain from each device having to maintain a VPN on its own—though VPN routers do find with downsides.
A portable NAS that travels with us
No need to stream from home
This one is still on my to-do list, but travel routers typically come with the ability to share files saved to an external drive or memory card, just like home routers. This makes them an easy way to carry a media library with you that the entire family can share. Said library can consist of downloaded videos or music, or it can be a collection of books and comics purchased from DRM-free sources.
Even if you have a personal Plex server you can access remotely, a travel router still comes with advantages. You aren’t dependent on the speed of your hotel connection in order to access your videos, and you can even access files without going online at all. A travel router is not only useful at the hotel, but when we’re on our way there as well.
Toss a travel router in your bag, you won’t regret it
The nice thing about travel routers is that they don’t take up much space, so they add very little weight to your luggage. Mine fits in my back pocket, not that I would want to actually keep it there for long. And since it lacks its own battery with a limited lifespan, this is an investment that can last for a decade to come.
- Range
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1800 sq.ft
- Wi-Fi Bands
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5 GHz
- Ethernet Ports
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2
- USB Ports
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1
- Supported standards
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802.11n, 802.11ax, 802.11ac, 802.11g, 802.11.be
- Speeds
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Up to 3,600mb/s
Experience blazing-fast speeds and enhanced network capacity. Delivers up to 2882 Mbps on the 5 GHz band and up to 688 Mbps on the 2.4 GHz band. Enjoy uninterrupted video streaming, downloads, and gaming across up to 90 devices.
