I would rather have a $300 fully open source, hackable device than a $50 locked down box, which is what recent WRT models were. Belkin's price is off, but they inherently get "it", they aren't afraid of letting their devices go and this is awesome.
I agree that most anything is better than an underpowered $50 locked down box. However, I suspect that the thing that Belkin gets is that they can charge a substantial premium for a Linux-compatible router/AP.
Belkin seems to be charging a 2 to 3x premium when compared to comparable dual-band 802.11ac routers. If this work results in wider 802.11ac support in OpenWRT et al., then this will be awesome. If not, then Belkin is selling a decent bit of kit, but you'd probably be better off hanging up a Ubiquiti AP and using a tiny PC for routing.
I wasn't making any comparisons. But since you brought it up, I'd rather have a $50- open source router than a $300 one. Just me.
Ironically, Belkin has a decent line of routers that are already flashable. I bought a dual band one new through their eBay store a couple years ago for $35. Threw Tomato (firmware of choice since it was released) on it and have been happy ever since: very fast, never locks up and supports dnsmasq.
I would rather have a $300 fully open source, hackable device than a $50 locked down box, which is what recent WRT models were. Belkin's price is off, but they inherently get "it", they aren't afraid of letting their devices go and this is awesome.