Best Router device for openwrt 2025

Best Router device for openwrt 2025

I am completely new to OpenWRT/Pi-hole and need a recommendation for a device that could run OpenWRT/Pi-hole on it to replace my current router. I'm not even sure if I used the correct wording in this sentence, lol.

I have checked:

• https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/9xkk75w3
• https://openwrt.org/supported_devices
• https://reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/1e3t29i/whats_your_favourite_openwrt_router_which_would/
• https://openwrt.org/docs/techref/hardware/list
• https://openwrt.org/toh/recommended_routers

I need recommendations for devices to get some hands-on experience. And please explain the advantages of the devices you recommend a bit. There are indeed a lot of options listed on the internet, but not enough reasons are provided.

• I need Pi-hole because I want local DNS, but I guess OpenWRT could do the job as well.
• My current router does not support changing the DNS server.
• I need a simple substitute.
• I need good performance because it might need to connect to about 15 devices (though I have no idea what good performance means in terms of a router).
• So I guess a device with at least 256MB of RAM is needed.
• No limitation on price as long as it is not excessively expensive.

• Users should consider multi-core, ARM-based (or x8664/AMD64) devices for mid-range and higher applications. (From https://openwrt.org/toh/recommended/_routers)

Thanks for your help in advance!