I've been thinking about putting in a WAP (or maybe 2) to improve wifi round the house for a couple of years now but without actually getting around to it (I'm disorganised and lazy like that).
When I first started looking, everyone recommended Ubiquiti UniFi kit, pretty much every time. So I always thought that if I did anything it would be using UniFi.
I've just started looking into it again, but now there seem to be a few more competitors on the block and I've also read some not so good things about some of the newer Uni kit - mainly about the security camera stuff (which I don't care about) but more worryingly about their firmware.
Is this a sign that they've lost (or are losing) their crown? Or are they still the go-to for basic WAP stuff ?(assuming I don't need cameras/doorbells/etc)
The ‘gold standard’ is Cisco Meraki and you pay an annual licensing fee.
Unifi isn’t the hardware. Unifi is the controller. The access points, switches, routers for the UniFi controller are pretty ordinary from a hardware point of view. It’s the software that makes using that hardware a nice experience. One controller interface, a change to one changes everything else to keep it working properly etc.
Somehow Ubiquiti has built Unifi into a brand of almost mythical proportions. It’s Ozk, but it’s not as good as the hype.
The access points are definitely the best bit about Unifi but they can’t defeat the laws of physics.
The switches are perfectly decent switches. And you could probably even say they were competitively priced.
The routers/consoles are junk and should be avoided unless you just need something roughly equivalent to a BT Homehub in terms of features.
Protect is a hobby project for the man who owns Ubiquiti and when he gets bored of it, he’ll ditch it. In a recent IPVM report it was described as
“IPVM Report” said:
Summary
Protect offers tightly integrated people and vehicle analytics and solid low-latency live streaming to web and mobile clients. However, it is missing common VMS and VSaaS features (e.g. multi-camera playback, mapping, 3rd party camera support, cloud video backup, multi-imager camera support, etc.) and we found several UI issues and inconsistencies between the web client and mobile app.
Person and vehicle detection analytics offered on G4 cameras (Bullet/Dome/Bullet Pro) were generally accurate, though consistently missed running subjects and infrequently classified vehicles as people or detected stationary vehicles.
Its low cost and tight integration with Ubiquiti's networking devices make it a far less expensive option to Meraki and Verkada while its pricing is similar to Dahua and Hikvision while being NDAA compliant. However, Ubiquiti's VMS and analytics do lack certain features as we describe in the individual sections.
So pretty ordinary considering how much more expensive than Dahua/Hikvision the system is.
For me, I would continue to do your research, and then buy what suits your needs best.