I have used a multitude of consumer wifi access points, most recently the Motorola AP that is part of the AT&T UVerse router. I have a 4500 sq ft home and had many, many dead spots of coverage. Reliability with TP Link, Motorola and various others has been an issue. Streaming video apps regularly crashed/paused/reset with my old wifi.
The UniFi LR-AP was a significant change to both signal strength and reliability. I have it installed upstairs, upside down sitting on a window sill (so about the worst temporary installation possible), yet still receive 2 bars of coverage on all perimeters of my property, well outside the house. Inside the house, all rooms have 3 bars. I'm pretty sure that I will get 1-2 bars of coverage from my neighbors house when I get it installed correctly in the ceiling with PoE. (UPDATE: I now have the AP installed via structured, in wall cabling in the center of the house on the ceiling facing down. My worst performing client registers signal strength of 37%/87Mbps on 802.11n indoors. Outdoor coverage is easily to the road at around 75ft).
Streaming video apps such as Netflix, Amazon etc all work flawlessly with the new improved coverage & I have experienced zero dropouts or resets on any of these from my portable devices. I have not tested the Apple TV, Amazon Fire HD devices, as these are all on ethernet. Airplay to the Apple TV has been much improved with Ubiquit wifi. File transfers over wifi from my Macbook Air typically run at 80Mbps or more and the Mac will usually be on 144Mbps 802.11n throughout the house. Its nice to have the ability to move video files about the network and not have to go running for an ethernet cable all the time!
The physical kit comes with a proprietary PoE adapter that runs at a weird voltage. This was not on the main product page, so I will have to return the incompatible one that I purchased separately. It comes with a ceiling mounting plate. You really need to have structured cabling in your roof cavity to install this nicely on your ceiling. I installed a new Cat-5 back to my central cabling setup and patched it through to an RJ45 where I have a UPS, the PoE injector and an Intel NUC server to run the UniFi software.
The UniFi controller software needed significant install work. This is not for your average home user, as it is a LOT of effort to get setup a PC / Mac / Server that is always on to run the software. I elected to use an Intel NUC micro computer with 2GB SDRAM and 4GB SSD storage using Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS. By default, the UniFi software consumes at least 8GB of disk space with the included database. Looking through the online community, there are various posts that reveal how to get MongoDB to install on very small disks like my Intel NUC. Linux users need to do 3 things - (1) Setup UniFi MongoDB with --smallfiles option (2) Remove unnecessary init.d MongoDB instance and (3) add a script to delete old log files so your disk will not crash when it runs out of space. Its much easier if you just have a 16GB partition, then it works without any tweaks. On the bright side, there are some very helpful setup commands for a single line script to install the Linux controller on the support forum.
The UniFi software is extremely easy to use (once installed) and it takes 30 seconds or less to setup your access points. The auto discovery works well & it discovered my new AP in a few seconds. It has a great feature to setup Guest WLAN access via a captive portal (just like Starbucks). The advantage of this is that your guest WiFi has a crude firewall to prevent access to any devices on the LAN. By default the system blocks guest access to 10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x.x and 192.168.x.x (RFC 1918 private network ranges), but you can edit these to suit your needs. It's nice to know you can offer wifi to guest users and not have them hack into all of your home systems. You can't trust the baby sitter not to be an uber hacker!
The UniFi web client requires flash player, so may not work correctly on all mobile devices, especially iPhone. It works fine on all Mac/PC browsers. It will work on mobile devices without flash, but the main screen comes up with errors.
I use this will WPA PSK enabled client devices all using 802.11B/G. All of the devices reconnected to UniFi without a hitch as soon as the new AP came online. Specifically, it works with Nest thermostat, RainMachine, Amazon Fire TV, Apple Airport Express, iPhone 5 & 5S, iPad. In fact, streaming on iPad was dramatically improved and I no longer have Netflix dropouts that were very noticeable with the AT&T UVerse router wifi. Overall, bit error rates are dramatically down since using this AP.
Would thoroughly recommend for anyone that simply wants the best coverage at an amazing price.
UPDATE #1
My nest thermostat started dropping wifi every 37 minutes after a recent auto upgrade. I went to Unifi & discovered there was new AP software available. Clicked the upgrade button & now my Nest is happy again. Really awesome device support!
UPDATE #2
My Nest thermostat issue recurred with Nest software upgrade 4.4.3 where Nest have made the thermostat wifi go to sleep periodically. Turns out that Ubiquiti is rock solid.
I have also re-installed my AP into the ceiling, adding about 45M of Cat-5E cabling through the walls and celing back to my wiring closet. The included PoE adapter seems to work, but now I get up to 4 errors per day where the controller loses connectivity to the AP. Likely issues with my Cat-5E cabling skills vs a problem with my AP. Coverage has improved tremendously by placing it on the ceiling in the highest site in my home. It looks great when installed on a ceiling, like a green UFO.
I have had various Internet connectivity issues of late and it certainly is fantastic to have the UniFi AP manager. It is simple to log in remotely and check that all is well at home on the wifi front. Especially helpful as it logs all connectivity requests, current utilization for each client as well as signal strength. Perfect to satisfy the wife when the shiny new wifi network is being blamed for an internet problem.
| Standing screen display size | 7.9 Inches |
|---|---|
| Wireless Type | 802.11n, 802.11b, 802.11g |
