Is Unifi worth the upgrade?

[conflictednetworks]

i shifted from consumer gear to SMB gear because i got tired of investing hours diagnosing a black box. The SMB APs, i configured once and set the power levels until i had adequate coverage. i didn't need bragging rights but needed something that did not require constant attention. You will get to that point one day.... Once you switch and forget about the gear, it will all become clear.

one thing I do find strange in consumer routers is why can't they have a clean easy to understand client list presented nicely like how unifi does? I was trying to dig into 3 2.4 ghz wifi clients that was doing some wonky stuff the other day and all I could get as a Mac address which doesn't tell me squat. Unifi? easily tells me its wemo switches and nest cameras. I would imagine asus could do something like that but they didn't. I think I know my answer and where I need to put my money but ouch that's gonna hurt my wallet for a while.

 

[Tech9]

When single AP is enough I would recommend home AIO router as best price/performance option. You already have above average number of clients for a typical household and may experience disconnections from single AP. Wireless cameras on 2.4GHz may use the entire channel bandwidth when single radio serves all 2.4GHz devices. Don't look at the price and speed test only, but also plan future expansion options.

Home AIO routers are cheaper, but disposable at EoL. You probably noticed already Trend Micro engine used in ASUS firmware requires data sharing to 3rd party company. This same bwdpi engine on ASUS BE-class routers is broken. If you need App based device prioritization or parental controls it may not work as you'd expect. AiProtection signatures in Asuswrt will update around once a month vs. daily in UniFi OS.

Choose whatever you like better and fits your budget and use case. Don't overpay for hardware and don't judge system performance based on speed test to phones and tablets. You have missed the sale for UCG-Max and could fit under CAD1000 with 2x U7 Pro for your wireless devices and 2x USW-Flex-2.5G-5 for your wired devices for well balanced 2.5GbE UniFi system with full set of control and tuning options.

All the best in 2026!

 

[conflictednetworks]

When single AP is enough I would recommend home AIO router as best price/performance option. You already have above average number of clients for a typical household and may experience disconnections from single AP. Wireless cameras on 2.4GHz may use the entire channel bandwidth when single radio serves all 2.4GHz devices. Don't look at the price and speed test only, but also plan future expansion options.

Home AIO routers are cheaper, but disposable at EoL. You probably noticed already Trend Micro engine used in ASUS firmware requires data sharing to 3rd party company. This same bwdpi engine on ASUS BE-class routers is broken. If you need App based device prioritization or parental controls it may not work as you'd expect. AiProtection signatures in Asuswrt will update around once a month vs. daily in UniFi OS.

Choose whatever you like better and fits your budget and use case. Don't overpay for hardware and don't judge system performance based on speed test to phones and tablets. You have missed the sale for UCG-Max and could fit under CAD1000 with 2x U7 Pro for your wireless devices and 2x USW-Flex-2.5G-5 for your wired devices for well balanced 2.5GbE UniFi system with full set of control and tuning options.

All the best in 2026!

Gah that sale was what stung. Ubiquiti Canada had a sale on the u7 pros for $180 cad each plus shipping. Granted Ubiquiti Ugg fiber wasn’t on sale ($379) so really what I lost out on is the very competitive pricing on the AP during the sale. As far as switches went I don’t think the distributor I bought from even had the said switch you are speaking of. I just purchased a TPlink 5 port POE++ 2.5 GBE switch for $140 CAD and the rest of the home is fed via a Cisco gig-e POE switch. As far as AP goes, I have a U7 Pro XG that cost $290 CAD that I could hobble along with until the next ui sale. How often dos Ubiquiti have a sale? Is it once a year around Black Friday/Christmas?

How long as this bwdpi engine been broken?

Thanks for all the thoughtful replies from you and others. Definitely helps make me think carefully about my future network decisions.

 

[Tech9]

How often dos Ubiquiti have a sale?

Rarely, few times a year for specific items. They had UCG-Max and U7-Pro on sale recently for Black Friday. You have to watch for sales and act fast because the sale products disappear quickly.

How long as this bwdpi engine been broken?

Since the introduction of BE-class models. As per current information ASUS is perhaps working on service provider replacement. There is one model using different engine already, GT-BE19000AI.

 

[degrub]

Rough numbers per AP for ASUS/other consumer gear - somewhere around 30 clients sharing the radios.
SMB gear is usually designed for many more clients , 50, 100, 200, .... just check the specs. And the software driving it is reliable as businesses don't tolerate much downtime and don't tolerate being beta testers unless they specifically sign up for it.
Plus the software driving the APs allows for much finer implementation control to ensure more even coverage among other things.
Least troublesome way to add more clients is to use the ASUS gear as APs hardwired back to a main router. But you don't have the ability to fine tune the APs, so placement can be tricky. Sure , AiMesh can/does work well enough for some cases. But is is mostly marketing hype to sell product. AIO consumer gear was designed for a different use case and "mesh" was kluged onto it.

 

[tgl]

I'm not sure why my particular home always has some weird "gotchas". Perhaps b/c I have a bunch of IoT devices but I figured they're super low bandwidth and couldn't possibly be causing me issues (or can they?). Looking at my Asus router client list right now... 70 clients in the home with maybe 10% of them are hardwired at the moment? Is that considered a lot if its bulbs and lightswitches and security cameras? I was always under the premise that lots of clients doesn't mean much and more importantly, look at their overall bandwidth usage to make an estimate of the "real use".

The issue definitely could be in there somewhere. A client that supposedly needs only low bandwidth can fill up a disproportionate amount of available airtime if it causes many packet retransmissions, either because it's hanging onto a poor signal or because it's just buggy. (IoT-type devices have a general reputation for having shoddy wifi implementations.)

It might be instructive to shut off most of your clients and see if things get better, and if so add them back a few at a time to identify which one(s) are causing trouble.

 

[Tech9]

What @conflictednetworks has to know is UniFi access points don't support WPS. Not specific to Ubiquiti, no SMB-class access points support it. If some of the many IoTs in use require WPS as connection method perhaps home AIO router is the more convenient to use hardware. There are Plan B workarounds with SMB hardware, but require extra time and hardware.

 

[conflictednetworks]

What @conflictednetworks has to know is UniFi access points don't support WPS. Not specific to Ubiquiti, no SMB-class access points support it. If some of the many IoTs in use require WPS as connection method perhaps home AIO router is the more convenient to use hardware. There are Plan B workarounds with SMB hardware, but require extra time and hardware.

No need for wps. What’s disheartening is that doing some router tests with unifi and an Asus be96u is that the basis by ALL accounts crushes the performance AND range of the unifi u7 pro. Out home is not huge by any stretch and I know enough about networking to know what key settings to use for optimal bandwidth. Crazy thing is the Asus with just a few tweaks and it’s screaming on multiple clients at full (1500mbit down 150 up) isp speeds over WiFi. Even 6GHz range is shockingly good and even the antennas in the router hear the clients better as shown by the return rssi levels. In other words, while unifi does a lot of things well like centralized management and their ui is light years better than their hardware - specifically their RF portion of the higher end routers is what I perceive to be light years better. Do I want unifi? 1000% but I don’t want to spend double the cost of the Asus 96u to get the same performance and coverage for our modest space. If it was $200 more I couldn’t complain but it is literally 2x the price. I spend a solid 8 hours doing a/b testing with what I had available to me (mainly RF levels measurements using the airport utility app) and consistently the Asus consistently outperformed. I went as far as loading up 10 streaming video in mixed HD and 4K, 2 large 50GB file download on two different computers, 1tB transfer to my nas and asked my wife and kids to web surf all at the same time and the Asus didn’t flinch. Unifi was showing slowdown even before the tests started as their raw is performance is naturally dialed dialed back. The only thing I can’t figure out at this point is why the 96u will drop randomly my 2.4 clients for about 4-5 minutes every 7-10 days. Rssi levels at the router return signal from client is solid as are the broadcast forward signal strength.

If would be awesome if Asus WiFi RF performance was available to unifi at a reasonable price point. I shouldn’t have to buy an e7 campus AP to get similar coverage as a $600 consumer aio router.

I have the unifi gear boxed up to be returned but legit holding for a miracle here for someone to tell me I am missing something huge but I don’t think my findings are wrong and my use case for a router isn’t overly complicated. The 4x4 mu-mimo in the Asus DO seem to make a difference in our setup by nature of the fact that I can have multiple 2x2 devices running in parallel in all spectrums since the radios are all 4x4.

 

[Tech9]

The only thing I can’t figure out at this point is why the 96u will drop randomly my 2.4 clients for about 4-5 minutes every 7-10 days.

This is part of the performance as well. You are comparing single SMB AP designed to work in clusters with consumer AIO router designed to work as stand-alone AP. You are also overpaying for hardware and this is why your UniFi devices cost is high. Your call, make your choice.

The 4x4 mu-mimo in the Asus DO seem to make a difference in our setup by nature of the fact that I can have multiple 2x2 devices running in parallel

It's actually 4x4 MIMO and you can't run multiple 2x2 devices in MU-MIMO.

 

[conflictednetworks]

This is part of the performance as well. You are comparing single SMB AP designed to work in clusters with consumer AIO router designed to work as stand-alone AP. You are also overpaying for hardware and this is why your UniFi devices cost is high. Your call, make your choice.

It’s a tough one for sure. Unifi is so polished looking and as an Apple guy it aligns well with what I am used to seeing. I just can’t get my wallet to agree to the steep price tag to participate. I’ve literally taped the Ap to the wall, put the Ap on a super tall fiberglass alder in open spaces to see if there is a mounting issue leading to my performance issues and they all perform slower than expected.

It's actually 4x4 MIMO and you can't run multiple 2x2 devices in MU-MIMO.

Interesting. My understanding in Mimo is that a 4x4 can handle 2x2 or 4 1x1 clients simultaneously no?

 

[Tech9]

they all perform slower than expected

Okay, if it doesn't meet your expectations - send it back.

My understanding in Mimo is that a 4x4 can handle 2x2 or 4 1x1 clients simultaneously no?

This doesn't happen automatically. Multiple requirements have to be met from client support to beamforming conditions. It may work mostly to static devices and shares the bandwidth. What you hope to get from a single AP based on specs on paper and theory will work guaranteed with 2x APs all the time including for your IoT devices on 2.4GHz band. Not trying to convince you what better Wi-Fi is, you make your own decisions based on own understanding of things. Good luck!

 

[conflictednetworks]

Okay, if it doesn't meet your expectations - send it back.

Yeah unfortunately it is looking that way. I may go to the retailer to pick up a different style AP and abandon the wifi7 AP b/c they're pricey and just don't seem all that great. Is consistently bad in my home for reasons unknown. The U6 enterprise is one I could consider though she's pricey. I would be nice if they had a U6 mesh version of the u7. Nice small tiny form factor that sits on a desk and priced reasonably.

I have about another week before I actually have to return the unifi setup but I've done so much exhaustive work in my home that I'm well... getting some serious networking fatigue.

This doesn't happen automatically. Multiple requirements have to be met from client support to beamforming conditions. It may work mostly to static devices and shares the bandwidth. What you hope to get from a single AP based on specs on paper and theory will work guaranteed with 2x APs all the time including for your IoT devices on 2.4GHz band. Not trying to convince you what better Wi-Fi is, you make your own decisions based on own understanding of things. Good luck!

true that. It isn't so clear cut for sure but one can HOPE that it can take advantage of multiple streams. I guess the million dollar question is "if things work then why continue messing with it and have wishful thinking?"

Thanks for all the advice you and others have provided.

 

[conflictednetworks]

Okay, if it doesn't meet your expectations - send it back.



This doesn't happen automatically. Multiple requirements have to be met from client support to beamforming conditions. It may work mostly to static devices and shares the bandwidth. What you hope to get from a single AP based on specs on paper and theory will work guaranteed with 2x APs all the time including for your IoT devices on 2.4GHz band. Not trying to convince you what better Wi-Fi is, you make your own decisions based on own understanding of things. Good luck!

So quick update.... I made a last ditch attempt and went back to the store to buy the u7 pro wall. Placed in places that already had ethernet jacks. Let's just say "HOLY CHRIST OF MOTHER!" 10000% game changer - wow just FRIGGEN WOW. Problem is.... $1000 total price tag for 2 u7 wall pro and a ucg-fiber. Pretty steep premium but oh gosh I love the interface...

 

[Tech9]

So this model works better in your environment? Glad you found what you were looking for.

The price is higher, but you get better quality Qualcomm hardware, better software, potentially higher aggregate throughput from 2x APs on different 5/6GHz band channels, 2x 2.4GHz radios for your IoTs, full VLAN support per LAN/WLAN... and the customizable UI you like better. I also believe UniFi devices have higher Wife Acceptance Factor compared to dead spider looking AIO routers. Late Christmas gift, enjoy!

 

[tgl]

So quick update.... I made a last ditch attempt and went back to the store to buy the u7 pro wall. Placed in places that already had ethernet jacks. Let's just say "HOLY CHRIST OF MOTHER!" 10000% game changer - wow just FRIGGEN WOW.

Huh. Per UI's tech specs, the radios in the u7 pro wall and u7 pro are the same. Antenna configuration obviously not, but that shouldn't make such a huge difference. Now I wonder if your u7 pro was defective.

 

[conflictednetworks]

Huh. Per UI's tech specs, the radios in the u7 pro wall and u7 pro are the same. Antenna configuration obviously not, but that shouldn't make such a huge difference. Now I wonder if your u7 pro was defective.

This was precisely what I thought too. I literally spent 8+ hours testing back and forth u7 pro series ceiling APs the u7 pro, then the u7 pro xg, another pro 7xg all the same less than stellar performance. I plug in the u7 pro wall setup with the same channel width and spacing and fire it up and screaming mad fast. As fast as Asus? Pretty darned close but slightly slower in some regards but the coverage is close and better in some spots and worse in others. I frankly don’t care much if my hallway isn’t getting me line speeds so this setup is good. No round dinner plate mounted on the walls

Don’t ask my how or why the ceiling mounts don’t work well but the wall versions just blast signal so well.

 

[conflictednetworks]

So this model works better in your environment? Glad you found what you were looking for.

The price is higher, but you get better quality Qualcomm hardware, better software, potentially higher aggregate throughput from 2x APs on different 5/6GHz band channels, 2x 2.4GHz radios for your IoTs, full VLAN support per LAN/WLAN... and the customizable UI you like better. I also believe UniFi devices have higher Wife Acceptance Factor compared to dead spider looking AIO routers. Late Christmas gift, enjoy!

Thanks! WAF fortunately is moot. She doesn’t care much but I guess if I went with UI and had a dinner plate screwed to the wall she’d complain more about that than the spider.

Either way I am just glad I got this sorted out. Weird considering the AP radio and chipset is identical to the u7 pro ceiling. I wonder…. Would plugging into a POE++ switch make a difference? It shouldn’t since the APs are poe+ only. How I had my u7 pro ceiling setup for testing was I had it plugged into the poe+ port of the UCG fiber which should have plenty of juice to power up the 1 AP. I still have the u7 ceiling AP. I should mount it in the basement ceiling and just suck it up and install that too and then my home setup will be permanently “finished”

 

[tgl]

Just to eliminate the obvious ... all these APs were running the same firmware version, right?

 

[fruitcornbread]

Thanks! WAF fortunately is moot. She doesn’t care much but I guess if I went with UI and had a dinner plate screwed to the wall she’d complain more about that than the spider.

Either way I am just glad I got this sorted out. Weird considering the AP radio and chipset is identical to the u7 pro ceiling. I wonder…. Would plugging into a POE++ switch make a difference? It shouldn’t since the APs are poe+ only. How I had my u7 pro ceiling setup for testing was I had it plugged into the poe+ port of the UCG fiber which should have plenty of juice to power up the 1 AP. I still have the u7 ceiling AP. I should mount it in the basement ceiling and just suck it up and install that too and then my home setup will be permanently “finished”

Just out of curiosity, do you have the FCCID for the U7 Pro? You should be able to find it easily on the packaging box. Ubiquiti made two versions of U7 Pro. The first version (FCCID SWX-U7PRO) had a fan in it (you can see the fan slit opening on the back of the AP). The second version (FCCID SWX-U7PROP) was quietly released and they removed the fan and added a separate 2.4GHz radio.

 

[conflictednetworks]

Just out of curiosity, do you have the FCCID for the U7 Pro? You should be able to find it easily on the packaging box. Ubiquiti made two versions of U7 Pro. The first version (FCCID SWX-U7PRO) had a fan in it (you can see the fan slit opening on the back of the AP). The second version (FCCID SWX-U7PROP) was quietly released and they removed the fan and added a separate 2.4GHz radio.

I know with absolute certainty the u7pro ceiling AP I bought in early December did not have a fan as I was aware of the fan vs non fan version. Too bad for me though, I got it for a good price and then subsequently returned it b/c I was coming up to my 14 day return window and I wasn't killing the asus router in any manner. Tested it again the XG version and same sub standard results. The game changer is definitely the u7 pro wall. What kills me though is the fact the u7 pro wall XG is out but not yet available and will probably cost the same as the ones I bought today so not sure if its really worth waiting on to get the "XG" version.

Now for the U7 Pro Wall - the one I have FCCID: SWX-u7prow... it has vents but I don't hear a fan running though that AP after being powered on for 8 hours is VERY warm.