Everything I write comes from real world use. Not benchmarks, not controlled tests, not a weekend of casual experimentation. I’m a working digital tech and I test gear on live commercial shoots. If it fails, it fails in front of a client. That’s the only kind of review I know how to write.

The Mudi 7 is GL.iNet’s new flagship travel router — 5G, WiFi 7, built-in battery, dual SIM. I took it to Naples for two full shoot days. Here’s what actually happened.

What the Mudi 7 is

The Mudi 7 (GL-E5800) combines 5G NR connectivity with peak speeds up to 4.67Gbps and tri-band WiFi 7 performance. It features built-in eSIM support and Dual SIM Dual Standby, a 2.5G Ethernet port, dual USB-C ports, and a 2.8-inch touchscreen for on-device configuration. 

Under the hood it runs a Qualcomm quad-core 2.2GHz platform with 2GB LPDDR4X and 8GB eMMC, measuring 157 x 75 x 22.8mm and weighing 300g. 

WiFi 7 tri-band speeds break down as 688Mbps on 2.4GHz, 2882Mbps on 5GHz, and 5765Mbps on 6GHz. The 5380mAh battery is rated for up to 13.5 hours with 24W PD fast charging. 

The key upgrade over the previous Mudi V2 is substantial — the V2 was a 4G LTE router with WiFi 5, maxing out at 733Mbps combined. The Mudi 7 is a fundamentally different class of device.

How it compares to the Nighthawk

The Mudi 7’s closest competitor for professional mobile use is the Netgear Nighthawk M6 Pro — the router many digital techs have been running for the past couple of years.

The Nighthawk has mmWave 5G which gives it an edge in dense urban environments with strong coverage. The Mudi 7 wins on price, dual SIM flexibility, the newer WiFi 7 standard, and OpenWrt firmware — which matters if you want to configure your network precisely for on-set use rather than work within a locked-down consumer interface. For location shoots crossing borders, the dual SIM and eSIM combination is a genuine practical advantage.

Day 1 — Naples, urban location, 14 hours

Day 1 was a fashion shoot in Naples — port and city locations, production moving constantly through the morning. Hectic pace, no fixed base, kit in and out of vehicles between setups.

My standard setup: iPad 11 mounted on the digiplate beside the laptop via a Wedgie quick release. I operate from the iPad with a Stream Deck while the art director and stylist are tagging and referencing images on the laptop. Histogram, camera control, focus — all floating on the iPad. That’s my primary instrument panel, not a secondary screen. Any lag there directly affects exposure decisions in real time. The Wedgie release also means I can pull the iPad off the rig and take it to the photographer for a close-up review in seconds — Sidecar holds reliably up to about 10 metres, which covers most set sizes.

I’ve been running Sidecar as my primary iPad connection for two years. In that time it’s acted up on one day. One. That’s 99% uptime on a wireless peer-to-peer screen extension that needs no router, no app, no subscription. It just works — and that reliability is worth more on a live shoot than any spec sheet.

Since Sidecar is peer-to-peer, the Mudi 7 wasn’t involved in any of the morning setup. It was running clean with essentially no load on it.

In the afternoon we settled into a more static position and I brought out the 12.9 iPad on a stand for Capture One Live. That’s when the Mudi 7 was actually being used — and also when I was reminded why Live is always a gamble. It kept freezing. I pulled it out of the workflow.

If I’m honest with myself, the reliable solution for a second client-facing iPad has always been the Hollyland Pyro S. It’s a stable, self-contained wireless signal that doesn’t depend on a router or a software subscription. The problem is the quality and the aspect ratio — it’s a 16:9 video monitoring pipeline on a locked portrait orientation, and for stills work that’s a compromise I find hard to accept. So I keep trying to make Capture One Live work, because I want a full-resolution, colour-managed client screen. There’s never been a fully reliable day with it. That’s the honest record after years of trying.

We also had files to upload mid-shoot in the afternoon. The Mudi’s WiFi connection was solid — fast enough that it wasn’t remotely the issue. Uploads moved cleanly in the background without interrupting the shoot at all.

Battery at end of day: 25%. After 14 hours. Early real-world testing recorded around 17 hours with multiple connected devices  — my result is consistent with that. For a full location day, you are not going to run out of power.

Day 2 — Duet, two screens, and the 2pm wall

Duet Display hasn’t been part of my regular workflow for a while. But I renewed my subscription recently on a day when nothing else was working, and I was genuinely impressed by what it could do — streaming two simultaneous desktop extensions to the iPad, one in landscape and one in vertical orientation. Capture One viewer A and viewer B on separate screens, both live. That’s something Sidecar can’t do, and when it was working it was working brilliantly.

Both screens routing through the Mudi 7. That’s where it was being properly tested.

It held all morning. Then around 2pm performance dropped — delay appeared on my own monitor, which is the one thing I can’t tolerate. The light was changing fast with cloud cover moving in, I needed immediate exposure feedback, and I wasn’t getting it. Ten images were off before I caught it. The iPad 11 was also going black for two seconds at a time intermittently — not long, but enough to break concentration.

I didn’t have time to diagnose whether it was Duet, the Mudi 7 under sustained load, or something else entirely. On a live shoot you don’t get that time. I dropped the second iPad immediately and switched my own back to Sidecar.

Then the photographer wanted a second screen again, so I switched the 12.9 to Capture One Live. The Mudi’s WiFi connection was solid — the router wasn’t the problem. Then the app froze. Same old story. I decommissioned it again and when she wanted to see images up close I just brought my iPad Air 11 over and repositioned the tripod so she could always glance at it.

Which brings me to something I’ve been sitting on for a while. When Capture One Live first launched I had a few genuinely good months with it. Solid enough that I said to myself — finally, they fixed it. And then, lo and behold, the problems came back. Crashes, freezes, stuck on the last frame. It’s never been a reliably good day with it, just periods of working followed by periods of not.

Capture One recently raised subscription prices by 6%. I pay it because I want to believe I’m paying for professional-grade software. But Live has never earned that confidence. Meanwhile Capture One seems increasingly focused on features for wedding photographers and consumer workflows that have nothing to do with commercial production. They’re starting to look more like Tether Tools than Phase One.

The truth is, it won’t be long before I can just vibe code exactly the app I need — only the features I actually use, working solidly, for the price of a yearly Capture One subscription. Hey, that’s actually not a bad idea.

We finished Day 2 on laptop and iPad 11 on Sidecar. Clean, simple, reliable.

The honest verdict so far

The Mudi 7 hardware is excellent. Battery life is class-leading, 5G speeds are fast enough to stop being a consideration, and the router handled everything thrown at it across two demanding location days without a single dropout or connection failure.

The Day 2 instability under dual-Duet load is hard to attribute definitively. Duet is the more likely culprit — it has a history of degrading under sustained use, and running two simultaneous desktop extensions through it is a demanding configuration. Whether the Mudi 7 was a contributing factor I can’t say yet without more testing.

One thing I’m genuinely excited to use more going forward: the dual SIM setup. Your home country SIM in one slot, a local travel SIM in the other, plus eSIM as a third option with automatic failover between them. For a digital tech working across multiple countries — which is most of us — that’s a real practical improvement over carrying a separate device or swapping SIMs at the airport. I’ll be using that a lot.

At €432 it’s meaningfully cheaper than the Nighthawk M6 Pro for a more current feature set. If your workflow is Sidecar for your own screen and 5G for data delivery — which is where I keep landing — the Mudi 7 does both very well.

More testing coming. This is a first report, not a final verdict.

If you've already made up your mind, you'll need to mount the Mudi 7 on a stand, cart or digiplate, so pick up an AetherMount for Mudi 7 for a clean setup.