Peplink makes professional level routers and I am a big fan. Most of their routers, however, are very expensive. I was a big fan of their cheapest model, for home and small business use, the Pepwave Surf SOHO. For years the Surf SOHO was available in the U.S. for $200. Sometime around September or October of 2022, the Surf SOHO was discontinued. That left the Balance 20x as the cheapest available Peplink router for home use with Wi-Fi. The Balance 20x was a big step up in horsepower, but it cost $450 (one version of the 20x cost $550).

Nothing changed in 2023, except that Peplink admitted they were working on a replacement for the Surf SOHO. Not just a new hardware generation (there were 3 hardware generations of the Surf SOHO) but a big change. Then, in December 2023, a Peplink video finally said something about the replacement (fast forward to 35 minutes, 50 seconds). It will be called the B One (a miserable name in my opinion) and there will be two versions, one with an internal 5G modem and one without. The new B One replaces both the Surf SOHO and the Balance 20x.

The B One was initially expected to be released in November or December 2023. Then, it was expected in January 2024. In mid-January 2024, on this Peplink Forum item a customer said they were told by 5G Store (a retailer of Peplink products) that the B One has "no concrete release date" but that it is hoped to be available late February or March.

Configuring: This site has a detailed walk-through of the initial configuration of the Surf SOHO. I would expect the B One to be very similar. The Balance 20x was very similar, although a few features were in different tabs. When I get my hands on a B One, I will add a page here on configuring it.

April 25, 2025: I finally ordered my own B One. My plan is to add a new page here with setup instructions, much like the one for the Surf SOHO.

HIGHLIGHTS

Having ingested some of this, these are the highlights as I see it, comparing the new B One without 5G to the older Surf SOHO and Balance 20x.

1. The B One costs $300 US, more than the Surf SOHO ($200) but much less than the Balance 20x ($450). The price of the B One has not changed from April 2024 when it was first available to April 2025. The B One Plus is $400. The B One 5G is $600.
2. The B One supports Wi-Fi 6 (aka 802.11ax). Wi-Fi 6E strikes me as a waste anyway. The B20x does Wifi 5 (aka 802.11ac).
3. The B One does not include a 4G/LTE/5G modem. The B One 5G includes a 5G modem. The One Plus includes a 4G modem (LTE Cat 4) modem. The B20x also has a 4G or 5G modem, the Surf SOHO had no wireless data modem.
4. The speed rating is full gigabit, a huge step up from the 120 Mbps of the SOHO but the same as the B20x.
   Update April 21, 2024: A Peplink reseller on the Peplink Forum said that in the real world the Balance 20x caps out at around 300 Mbps. The 1Gbps speed can only be obtained if the router is doing next to nothing. Adding features slows it down. The features that slow it down the most are the VPN, QoS and Content Blocking. This is not the case with the Surf SOHO. Mine has many features enabled (not a VPN though) and still runs at the specified speed, just over 110Mbps.
5. The maximum recommended (not a hard coded limit) concurrently connected devices is 150 for the B One. On the B20x it was 60, on the Surf SOHO it was 25.
6. All three B One variants have two Ethernet WAN ports, the Surf SOHO and B20x each had one. In addition, if you pay for Peplink Primecare (now $50/year) you can convert one of the Ethernet LAN ports into a third WAN port.
7. The older type A USB port on both the SOHO and B20x has been replaced with a type C USB port. Also, the USB port on the B20x was USB version 2, the USB port on the B One is USB version 3 - so, faster. More.
8. The USB port can make an Internet connection with a USB cellular modem, a Peplink MAX Adapter (a high end cellular modem) or an Ethernet cable via an adapter. The documentation is inconsistent on whether you can also tether an Android phone to the USB port. The Data Sheet says you can, but the FAQ does not mention it. The manual (page 16) says you can tether to an Android phone. ?????
9. The B One can function as an Access Point (AP) controller, which makes managing APs much easier. The B20x can also do this too, the Surf SOHO could not.
10. The B One has two W-Fi antennas, same as the B20x. the Surf SOHO had three.
11. It supports an Enterprise flavor of Wi-Fi encryption. The marketing material only mentions WPA/WPA2 Enterprise (mixed mode) with no mention of dedicated WPA2 Enterprise or WPA3 Enterprise. I am pretty sure the marketing data is a copy/paste of old information. The Surf SOHO running firmware 8.3 supports WPA2 Enterprise. The B20x running firmware 8.3 supports both WPA2 Enterprise and WPA3 Enterprise. The B One manual mentions both WPA2 Enterprise and WPA3 Enterprise (page 173). Sigh.
12. The B one can create up to 16 SSIDs and up to 16 VLANs, the same as the B20x. Not sure what the Surf SOHO limits were, and of course, the manual does not say.
13. It supports 4 WAN connections: 2 Ethernet WAN ports, Wi-Fi as WAN and the USB port. How many of these can be concurrently active and load balanced? Peplink does not say. The B One is advertised as Dual WAN (in the Data Sheet and the FAQ for example) but that might simply be referring to the Ethernet WAN ports. It is not clear. I looked for Wi-fi as WAN in the User Manual and it is not there. In addition, Peplink has a WAN-on-VLAN mode and a Synergy mode, both of which are beyond my understanding. Neither is mentioned in the marketing material. ?????
14. Peplink makes a big deal about connecting a Starlink antenna (or two) to the B One. They claim the B One has some features that Starlink requested, but don't say what those might be. Not sure if this is a marketing thing or a techie thing. Can't a Starlink antenna connect to a Netgear or Asus router?
15. For the Surf SOHO and B20x the meaning of the lights on the front was simple: Green was good. Specifically, this applies to the Status light and the Wi-Fi light. According to the B One manual, however, this has changed. Blue now means good.
16. The model number (for the B One version without 5G) is B-ONE-T-PRM
17. While the Surf SOHO has been discontinued, the Balance 20x is still being made (as of April 2024)
18. The branding is Peplink, no more Pepwave. That said, the name B One is miserable for multiple reasons. One (see a reason right here?) is that the B One and B Two are very different routers.
19. Upgrading: can we import a configuration backup file from either the Surf SOHO or B20x to a B One? Its complicated, more below.
20. The B20x and the Surf SOHO, do not do Bluetooth. The B One does and it is on by default. This is done to provide another way to locally access the router. As of the middle of 2024, and firmware 8.4, there is no OFF switch for the Bluetooth in the normal User Interface. However, Peplink has always provided a support.cgi page for assorted, very rarely needed, configuration options and that's where you can disable Bluetooth on the B One. See this Forum posting Why is my new B One broadcasting on Bluetooth as “Peplink API Service”?

Things all three routers have in common:

1. All have 4 gigabit LAN ports, and they are the good type: made of metal with LED lights. Cheap consumer routers have plastic Ethernet ports with no LED lights.
2. All models offer secure DNS (DoH) and you can specify a specific NextDNS profile as part of the server name.
3. Physically the B One, B20x and Surf SOHO are almost identical in shape, size and coloring
4. VPN: They all support site-to-site VPNs with PepVPN. Not sure about site-to-site with OpenVPN. All three can function as VPN servers running OpenVPN or L2TP. None support WireGuard. The Surf SOHO and the B20x could add an OpenVPN client to the router for a small charge ($20?). The B One can also function as an OpenVPN client, but it is not clear if there is an extra charge for this. Both the datasheet and the web page list Feature Add-ons and neither list includes a VPN client.
5. They all have Wi-Fi as WAN, a feature that lets the router use an existing Wi-Fi network from another source (such as a coffee shop, hotel, RV campsite or cellphone hotspot) as its connection to the Internet. Wi-Fi as WAN on the B One is part of the base product, as it was on the Surf SOHO. The Balance 20x got this feature late in life as an add-on for an extra charge.
6. When purchased new, they include one free year of cloud-based remote management using the Peplink InControl2 system. Use of InControl2 is always optional as all Peplink routers have a web-based interface.
7. All three include two on-board copies of the Peplink firmware. This is a G-R-E-A-T feature. If you have issues with the a new firmware version, it is very easy to reboot the router into the prior known-good version.

Forum Postings About the B1

1. B One range inferior to Soho MK3 April 8, 2024. It seems that Wi-Fi in the B1 is a bit worse than the Wi-Fi in the Surf SOHO.
2. Why is my new B One broadcasting on Bluetooth as "Peplink API Service"? As of April 27, 2024 and firmware 8.4.1 Bluetooth from the B1 can not be disabled. You should be able to disable it in firmware 8.4.2. Rolling this out before it could be disabled was a mistake by Peplink.

THREE MODELS

April 2025: This Peplink website page Compare Router models compares the B One, the B One 5G and the B One Plus.

April 2025: Peplink Dual WAN Routers for Small Business and Home Officefrom Peplink, about the B One Series.

June 13, 2024: Compare the Peplink B One Router Series by Valerie of 5G Store. The first model released was just the B One and it is the cheapest. The two newer models both include embedded cellular modems.

UPGRADING

A big question, for anyone upgrading from the Surf SOHO to the B One, is the settings/configuration.

Typically, the configuration backup files from one model of Peplink router can not be restored to a different model router. That is the case with the B One too. Someone like me, who has made dozens of configuration tweaks would need to spend many hours re-inventing the wheel to get the new router configured like the old one. That said, there is a way out.

As of April 2025, the only way to move the configuration of a Surf SOHO to a new B One is with InControl2, the Peplink cloud service. However, there are pre-requisites: Both routers must be in in your InControl2 account and they both must be in the same InControl2 group, the Surf SOHO must be running firmware 8.3.0, the B One must be on-line. The kicker is that the Surf SOHO must be in a Peplink supported status. After the first year of ownership, this is not a free service.

Peplink has four Care Plans. The cheapest is Essential Care and they offer 321 different Essential Care plans, in varying lengths for different products. For the Surf SOHO, Essential Care is offered in one and two year plans. One year is all that is needed for this purpose, and a year of Essential Care for the Surf SOHO is $35 US (or $49 CAN) as of April 2025.

There was a Peplink Forum post about this in May 2024: Migrate from Surf Mk3 to B One. It said that as of May or June 2024, InControl2 supports applying a configuration to another device model in the same group and that applying a config from a Surf SOHO MK3 to a B One is supported. No mention is made about a second generation Surf SOHO. It says that both routers must be in the same group in your InControl organization and that they both need to be connected to the Internet. Not sure if that is really true or just sloppy wording. Instructions: start at Surf SOHO's device overview screen, click "Show All" and scroll down to "Configuration Backups" This will reveal some backups that have been made of the Surf SOHO configuration. You can apply any of them to the B One.

For a brief time, there was another option:

1. Early February 2024: 5G Store is a major Peplink retailer and when the B One was first available, their B One page confirmed that the settings could not be copied over.
2. February 9, 2024 (give or take), 5G Store changed their tune. Their B One page now says: "After purchasing the B One from 5Gstore.com, send your Surf SOHO config file to support@5gstore.com and include your 5Gstore Invoice number for your B One. We will convert the config from Surf SOHO to B One and email it back to you (should take around 1-2 business days)".
   I took them up on their offer.
   My first attempt was rejected because the Surf SOHO was running firmware 8.2.1 and they will only convert 8.3.
3. February 23, 2024: Success! I sent 5G Store a configuration file from a Surf SOHO running firmware 8.3 and, in a few days, they sent back a B One compatible version of the file. It was a simple thing to import this config file to the B One.
4. February 2, 2025: FAILURE. 5G Store no longer offers the conversion service.

As for moving from a Balance 20x to a B One, I have not seen anything about importing the settings.

MANUALS

There seems to be one B One User Manual even though there are two models, one with 5G and one without. The model with 5G is not yet out, so we will see if it gets its own manual or not. The current manual (dated Jan. 2024 and firmware 8.4.0) does not have any mention of the B One 5G at all. Also, it seems to be a generic Peplink Balance manual rather than one dedicated to the B One model(s). For example, it includes references to an internal cellular modem that the cheaper B One (model B-ONE-T-PRM) does not have. Also, the manual seems dated. It refers to 3G and 4G but not 5G. In firmware 8.3 the Event Log got a new DHCP tab that is not shown in the manual, so clearly that screen shot is from 8.2 or earlier.

INITIAL ROLLOUT SIGHTINGS

January 30, 2024: The B One (without 5G) was officially announced today (though not yet in stock).

1. From the Peplink Forum: B One - Impressive Capability with Incredible Value by Emily Cheng
2. On the Peplink website: B One. Note the specs here omit the fact that WPA3 is supported. Someone did a simple copy/paste.
3. A B One FAQ (PDF)
4. The User Manual (PDF) dated January 2024 for firmware 8.4. The initial version seemed like a Beta release, lots of obvious issues.
5. A B One Data Sheet (PDF). For comparison see the Surf SOHO data sheet.

January 26, 2024: Someone emailed me that the B One showed up at Amazon.com. This may have been Amazon jumping the gun. For one thing, all their links, to a Spec Sheet, to an FAQ and to a User Manual are wrong. Also, the router is out of stock. And, the B One is not shown on the Peplink website in the SOHO Series section. Finally, there was no Announcement in the Peplink Forum. So, take the details below with a grain of salt.

February 6, 2024: First in-stock sighting is at 5G Store at the expected price of $299 US. 5G Store also put out a 2 minute unboxing video.

February 8, 2024: The B One is now in stock at Amazon.com. No reviews yet. The Amazon links to the B One spec sheet and FAQ are both still wrong. And, they link to a copy of the User Manual that is very old (April 2023 firmware 8.3) and probably all wrong since the product is so new. Just another indication of how trustworthy Amazon IS NOT. Also, someone asked 5G Store about concurrent WAN connections (see the B One web page at 5gstore.com) and the answer was vague and unclear and said nothing about Wi-Fi as WAN. Was this an oversight? Or, can Wi-Fi as WAN not be used concurrently with Ethernet WAN and/or USB WAN? Don't know.

February 15, 2024: Video from MobileMustHave: Meet the B One, Peplink's Most Affordable Multi-WAN Router Yet.

April 2024: The B One with 5G was first available in early April 2024.

April 7, 2024: The Peplink website has a new page on the B One with 5G.