This is an impressive little unit for less than $100. It is an enterprise class outdoor access point, for the price of a mid-end consumer router and it has the form factor of a long and large pen (or the box of it). For the price, it is hard to beat the value. I use these for testing out a hotspot service at a marina and use several of them mounted on the halyards and masts of sail boats to extend coverage. All units are heavily exposed to harsh weather conditions, including rain, moisture and wind. They have not been up and running for too long yet but they haven't encountered any problems under almost constant rain for 48 hours.
Before I go further, let me tell what this is and is not. First of all, this is not a router. It is only an access point, meaning you will still need a router that does routing, NAT, DHCP, DNS, filtering and access-lists (if you need them) etc. Most consumer grade routers combine access point functionality with a router that does many other things, this will not have those (at least without specific add-ons). Also, based on the reviews and questions I have seen there seems to be some confusion about the mesh capabilities and how and where it can be used. Some of the answers I have seen were not correct, at least not for the current firmware as of this review. I will clarify them here:
1) This unit will work perfectly standalone, inside or outside as an AP (without router functionality as I explained above)
2) If you have more than one of these units, they can form a wireless mesh network. One of the units needs to be connected to a wired uplink, others can be connected wirelessly to that wired unit. You DO NOT need an existing AC AP Pro or other non-mesh Ubiquiti AP to form a mesh (some comments, even some of the older documentation from Ubiquiti implies the opposite, which initially confused me. I run a mesh with multiple UAP-AC-Ms and they work without issues).
3) If you have more than one of these units and can provide wired uplinks to all, they will also work greatly without a mesh. Having mesh in the name doesn't mean that these are built for mesh networks only. Mesh concept is interesting but make sure that is your only viable option before deciding to go down that path. Among possible wireless topologies, mesh is the least interesting from a performance perspective. If you have the possibility, wired uplinks will provide vastly superior performance to mesh as each mesh hop will halve the available bandwidth. Mesh is ideal if you have power but no connectivity at a given location.
You will also need a controller software to control these units. Ubiquiti provides the software for free and it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux (Debian/Ubuntu). These are not configured from a web interface. There is also a mobile app which I believe can be used to configure them but I haven't tested it, so I cannot confirm. The software itself is also pretty impressive and is an enterprise class wireless network management system. I manage all the access points in the marina from a controller I installed in the cloud on a Linux/Ubuntu machine. Certain functions for the controller requires additional products to be purchased (like Unifi Security Gateway) but those are optional. I am actually impressed that this software is free to download and use when you simply buy a $100 device. To obtain any real practical value from the software you will need to have several of these units though. If you have only one, the software is probably not going to provide much value and may even be a hindrance. The downside of this model for non-tech savvy users or simpler use-cases is added complexity. Mobile app version of the software may address this issue but you need to check the reviews of it separately as I haven't used it.
In terms of performance, as I mentioned, I use these in a marina, mounted on halyards and masts at about 30 ft height. And marina is close to several industrial complexes (to give you a reference, 641 neighboring access point seen over the last 72 hours as measured by the controller software). As such, there is a high degree of interference at especially 2.4Ghz, also some at 5 Ghz. Still the performance is pretty decent. Longest wireless uplink is made at 460ft line-of-sight with default rubber duck omni antennas at speeds 117 (Tx) / 234 (Rx) Mbps, which is more than adequate for this scenario.
Default antennas are ok but nothing outstanding. If I had one complaint, it would be to have slightly better antennas but I won't cut a star for it, keeping the price point in mind. Also another relatively negative issue is the lack of antenna options. These are dual band antennas and there are not that many options for dual-band antennas to extend the range. Ubiquiti itself doesn't have a dual band antenna for these units as of this writing, but based on forum discussions I understand they are about to announce one. I didn't play with the Pro version of these units as their form factor is not suitable for mounting on boats directly but if you need a more powerful unit, that's what I would look at. They have more powerful 3x8 dbi internal antennas, their max transmit power is higher and they are 3x3 MIMO as opposed to 2x2 MIMO for this.
All in all, I really think this is an amazing value for an access point that costs less than $100. Prior to this, I tested a Open Mesh OM2P for a similar Hotspot use case. Total price for one OM2P with the unit itself, weather proof case and PoE adapter is more than the cost of this and it doesn't come anywhere close in terms of specs or features. This could even be a replacement for consumer grade access points as long as the user needs multiple units, is a bit tech savvy and/or is willing to play with things and learn. This will certainly be more complicated to set up and requires some technical knowledge or experience.
| Wireless Type | 802.11a/b/g/n |
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