Posted: 5/27/2026 5:19:38 PM EDT
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I'm not exactly in a hurry but I'm running ancient Ruckus R310U's at home currently and they haven't received updates in several years. I already have a public UniFi controller set up that a few family members and I manage their networks for them but Ubiquiti pissed me off many years ago when I got several pieces of defective equipment and they were a royal pain to deal with to get replacements. After managing the existing networks I've decided to go ahead and try UniFi for WiFi again. It looks like there weren't any Memorial Day sales on the UI site so besides Amazon and B&H I'm curious if there are other places to look? I'll wind up needing 3 x AP's between my house and shop. |
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The sucky thing about it you get 2 years of warranty if you buy direct. If you buy from BH or MircroCenter you only get 1 year. I have been running Unifi for a couple of years now and it mostly works but I'm not super impressed with it. For the money its ok. I have a UCG Fiber and two Pro XGS AP's. Alta Labs is also worth looking at. It was started by ex Unifi people who had a falling out with them and started their own company. One of the complaints is Unifi releases half baked updates and stuff can remain broken for months before they get around to fixing it. I've run into that a few times and I'm running on the official update channel not early release or release candidate versions. Some issues I've had- look down and phone is not connected to wifi when I'm sitting 10 feet from the AP. Reconnect and it will be fine for a few days. Issue seems to have been fixed now. On the Fiber you can select any port for WAN but port 5 (10g ethernet) and port 7 (SFP+) are the out of the box designated WAN. I had a hell of a time getting it to detect internet in port 5, and when I did research it was a known issue that had been around for months. No idea if it's fixed now. Plug WAN connection in ethernet SFP+ module and it picks up my connection in seconds. Plug into 10g ethernet port and about 9 times out of 10 it acts like its not connected to the net. I finally got it working and have left it alone since then lol And they are still a PITA to deal with for warranty or RMA issues. I go through their own official forums and follow the sub Reddit. A lot of people with issues that Unifi dropped the ball on until they make a public post to get attention. Customers should not need to go on forums or Reddit to post about the issues they have before Unifi does the right thing for that person. It can also be tough to find real world valid stuff on their products on YouTube. Unifi puts a lot of effort into "partner" channels that won't say anything too harsh about them. Those channels also get affiliate links so they get paid to shill Unifi products. They get a ton of free review products every year which is multiple thousands worth of stuff. You hardly ever see any of them point out negatives about Unifi be it CS, warranty issues, updates that cause problems or breaks existing stuff, and it gives people the impression all is well in Unifi land. |
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Originally Posted By Rebel31: The sucky thing about it you get 2 years of warranty if you buy direct. If you buy from BH or MircroCenter you only get 1 year. I have been running Unifi for a couple of years now and it mostly works but I'm not super impressed with it. For the money its ok. I have a UCG Fiber and two Pro XGS AP's. Alta Labs is also worth looking at. It was started by ex Unifi people who had a falling out with them and started their own company. One of the complaints is Unifi releases half baked updates and stuff can remain broken for months before they get around to fixing it. I've run into that a few times and I'm running on the official update channel not early release or release candidate versions. Some issues I've had- look down and phone is not connected to wifi when I'm sitting 10 feet from the AP. Reconnect and it will be fine for a few days. Issue seems to have been fixed now. On the Fiber you can select any port for WAN but port 5 (10g ethernet) and port 7 (SFP+) are the out of the box designated WAN. I had a hell of a time getting it to detect internet in port 5, and when I did research it was a known issue that had been around for months. No idea if it's fixed now. Plug WAN connection in ethernet SFP+ module and it picks up my connection in seconds. Plug into 10g ethernet port and about 9 times out of 10 it acts like its not connected to the net. I finally got it working and have left it alone since then lol And they are still a PITA to deal with for warranty or RMA issues. I go through their own official forums and follow the sub Reddit. A lot of people with issues that Unifi dropped the ball on until they make a public post to get attention. Customers should not need to go on forums or Reddit to post about the issues they have before Unifi does the right thing for that person. It can also be tough to find real world valid stuff on their products on YouTube. Unifi puts a lot of effort into "partner" channels that won't say anything too harsh about them. Those channels also get affiliate links so they get paid to shill Unifi products. They get a ton of free review products every year which is multiple thousands worth of stuff. You hardly ever see any of them point out negatives about Unifi be it CS, warranty issues, updates that cause problems or breaks existing stuff, and it gives people the impression all is well in Unifi land. Pretty good writeup. I have a Unifi network here with Protect cameras. Features regularly break. The gateway and APs have been mostly reliable, and it allows failover internet (my backup is 5G). The wifi planning tool is useless and will overcrowd your airspace. If I only needed one ISP and some WiFi, the Unifi would not be of much value. The APs do reach pretty far, with 2.4GHz, but you have to taper expectations after it goes through a few walls. I think a lot of people have unrealistic expectations of 5Ghz. The Protect ecosystem has been a disappointment. Every update breaks something. My settings (including recording quality!) get overridden. They push you to cloud services, even though Unifi has the selling point of not being cloud-based security. At this point I would not recommend it to anyone not needing local storage. |
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I'll wind up sticking with UniFi for the family members that I manage networks for since it's easier for me to manage since most of them are behind CGNAT, however, I think I'll just stick with my current OPNsense/Ruckus/Blue Iris/switch setup that I currently use for now. I looked into Alto Labs but they don't appear to really be keeping up with currently WiFi standards which makes me wonder about their existence in a few years. I like my TP-Link SFP+ switches but I don't really trust Omada. My other switches are FS.com and Cisco SG250 series but they've all been rock solid with TB's of data being passed daily through the TP-Link switches. |
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Originally Posted By PlaysWithAtoms: Pretty good writeup. I have a Unifi network here with Protect cameras. Features regularly break. The gateway and APs have been mostly reliable, and it allows failover internet (my backup is 5G). The wifi planning tool is useless and will overcrowd your airspace. If I only needed one ISP and some WiFi, the Unifi would not be of much value. The APs do reach pretty far, with 2.4GHz, but you have to taper expectations after it goes through a few walls. I think a lot of people have unrealistic expectations of 5Ghz. The Protect ecosystem has been a disappointment. Every update breaks something. My settings (including recording quality!) get overridden. They push you to cloud services, even though Unifi has the selling point of not being cloud-based security. At this point I would not recommend it to anyone not needing local storage. Originally Posted By PlaysWithAtoms: Originally Posted By Rebel31: The sucky thing about it you get 2 years of warranty if you buy direct. If you buy from BH or MircroCenter you only get 1 year. I have been running Unifi for a couple of years now and it mostly works but I'm not super impressed with it. For the money its ok. I have a UCG Fiber and two Pro XGS AP's. Alta Labs is also worth looking at. It was started by ex Unifi people who had a falling out with them and started their own company. One of the complaints is Unifi releases half baked updates and stuff can remain broken for months before they get around to fixing it. I've run into that a few times and I'm running on the official update channel not early release or release candidate versions. Some issues I've had- look down and phone is not connected to wifi when I'm sitting 10 feet from the AP. Reconnect and it will be fine for a few days. Issue seems to have been fixed now. On the Fiber you can select any port for WAN but port 5 (10g ethernet) and port 7 (SFP+) are the out of the box designated WAN. I had a hell of a time getting it to detect internet in port 5, and when I did research it was a known issue that had been around for months. No idea if it's fixed now. Plug WAN connection in ethernet SFP+ module and it picks up my connection in seconds. Plug into 10g ethernet port and about 9 times out of 10 it acts like its not connected to the net. I finally got it working and have left it alone since then lol And they are still a PITA to deal with for warranty or RMA issues. I go through their own official forums and follow the sub Reddit. A lot of people with issues that Unifi dropped the ball on until they make a public post to get attention. Customers should not need to go on forums or Reddit to post about the issues they have before Unifi does the right thing for that person. It can also be tough to find real world valid stuff on their products on YouTube. Unifi puts a lot of effort into "partner" channels that won't say anything too harsh about them. Those channels also get affiliate links so they get paid to shill Unifi products. They get a ton of free review products every year which is multiple thousands worth of stuff. You hardly ever see any of them point out negatives about Unifi be it CS, warranty issues, updates that cause problems or breaks existing stuff, and it gives people the impression all is well in Unifi land. Pretty good writeup. I have a Unifi network here with Protect cameras. Features regularly break. The gateway and APs have been mostly reliable, and it allows failover internet (my backup is 5G). The wifi planning tool is useless and will overcrowd your airspace. If I only needed one ISP and some WiFi, the Unifi would not be of much value. The APs do reach pretty far, with 2.4GHz, but you have to taper expectations after it goes through a few walls. I think a lot of people have unrealistic expectations of 5Ghz. The Protect ecosystem has been a disappointment. Every update breaks something. My settings (including recording quality!) get overridden. They push you to cloud services, even though Unifi has the selling point of not being cloud-based security. At this point I would not recommend it to anyone not needing local storage. IMO they are releasing too many products too fast and pushing out software that is not properly tested. I have kept up with some stuff on their own forums and tracked how long the first early release goes to official channel. Sometimes it's only a couple of weeks while people are reporting issues and that same build gets pushed to official release anyways then onto the next build with a different feature set. A lot of products release with missing announced features with a "promise" to come later. Never ever buy a product based on promised future features or updates. I've seen a lot of people with camera problems. I know they have a lot of hardware out there but some of this stuff people report are just obvious poor design flaws. I see a lot of issues with Protect features like AI detections. People have regressions where a camera was detecting things for months then detections go to shit for months with no apparent fix or reason why there was a regression. It's all over the map with what problems people have. They had to do a hardware revision on the U7 Pro AP's because the first ones sucked and were failing at a high rate. There is no program or official way to get the "fixed" version if you bought the first faulty ones. They didn't reach out to people that bought them and offer a proactive replacement or extended warranty. This stuff is actually why they had a group of people leave and start their own company (Alta Labs). It's just how the leadership wants to run Unifi and I don't see them changing anytime soon. They are a public company and need to show shareholders growth. I have held off on expanding my own network with more Unifi products because I don't like the business model of push now and they may or may not fix stuff later. |
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been in the ui system for quite some time. i bought one ap from amazon. then learned about the 2 year warranty buying direct and have done so since i have 4 different poe switches. they never seem to fail. (8 ports). USW-Pro-8-PoE (120W) is my current primary switch runing the AP and 2 cameras. then a backup AP plugged in but poe is Off. i can use the network app to enable that port if the enterprise Ap goes down. i have gone from ac lite, Nano HD, Flex, 6 pro, to now a 6 enterprise for 6ghz wireless the pro died the year before last while i was doing taxes, it started to make a high pitched hissing sound and then my ssid's dissapeared... i didn't have the UI care so it ended up being out for a week or so. they replaced it but i bought a u6 enterprise since i had just got a new Mac laptop and wanted to play with the zero interference 6ghz. and here i am the only network in range.... wonderful. im happy with the network side. protect cameras software seems to be a cluster with AI automation and all the stuff they are trying. i've opened a half dozen tickets for the basic things that stop working  |
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My setup has been rock solid. DMP SE, 24 port POE switch, and 5 APs. Blue Iris runs its own thing. No lost settings, no firmware update issues, and my PiHole integrated seamlessly (and works like a champ!) I didn't know about Alta Labs, happy to check them out, but I currently have no reason to switch anything out. |