Hi Folks & merry X-Mas to you all,

I am looking for a router that will be able to sustain 1Gbps towards ISP connection, hence including enabled NAT/masquerading,., while on LAN side hostinbg a smaller set (approx 5) VLANs, where two of these will be simultaneously allocate bandwidth towards the ISP/WAN side.

Will a Hex-S or hap-ac2 be able to do this or what other model is it that you would rather suggest instead?

TIA,
hominidae

Bare minimum I highly suggest this: https://mikrotik.com/product/rb450gx4#fndtn-testresults

Plenty of RAM and storage with powerful enough CPU to hit 1G as per those specs/results.

...many thanks for your fast response!

Looks like that RB450 variant comes with the same CPU and performance test results as the hap-ac2, but with much more RAM...which, economically doubles its retail price in comparison (adding enclosure and power supply).

...many thanks for your fast response!

Looks like that RB450 variant comes with the same CPU and performance test results as the hap-ac2, but with much more RAM...which, economically doubles its retail price in comparison (adding enclosure and power supply).

Go for the RB450Gx4, 1GB RAM + 512MB Flash, is more than enough for years to come by if your target is 1G routing.

...all required parts combined, the RB450Gx4 is only 25% cheaper, from a good, reputable source than the RB4100 (which I already have in use, hence already knowing what it can do).

While I don't have experience with RB450Gx4, my experience with other types of MT tells me that this device will just manage to route at 1Gbps. Which might actually not suffice, as per OP there will be several VLANs and router will possibly have to route between VLANs as well. When looking at routing performance, one has to add all possible directions.

Cheapest router, capable of routing beyond 1Gbps without any doubt, is then RB4011.

....indeed, there will be a few VLANs active, but mainly only 1 will be used with inter-VLAN routing (holding common resources as printers and the like for users in the other two VLANs and anything better than 100Mbps wil be fine here).
I am more concerned about access from the other 2 VLANs (for which inter-routing/forwarding will be blocked) to the 1Gbps WAN, as this will have to involve NAT/Masquerading...a feature I was not able to gahther info, whether this will be hardware accelerated on MT (some or in general) devices or not.

The RB4011 actually would present an overkill for the situation...even a single core will do without getting into any kind of sweat above 10% CPU-usage according to a short test on another site I just did.

this will have to involve NAT/Masquerading...a feature I was not able to gahther info, whether this will be hardware accelerated on MT (some or in general) devices or not.

No it won't.
All current mikrotik routers don't do NAT in HW.

(Only some of mikrotik switches can do HW NAT in ROS7 now, but on routers it is all CPU).

...thanks, so no HW-NAT.....that sort of explains the recommendations for a beefy CPU.

If you are using only IPv4 with fasttrack, hap ac2 will do the job. If you need fasttrack disabled and/or good IPv6 performance, rb4011 is the way to go.

RB450Gx4 is probably for some rare in between usecases, when hap ac2 cpu is fast enough but you need more RAM.