Can someone explain what "just works" when compared to other networking gear? IE I use ASUS and their mesh, and it all "just works". Have a mix of routers over 10 years and they all mesh together.
I started with TPLink gear in a mesh mode, and it kinda sorta maybe worked? I had an access point on the ground floor, a range extender + option to connect RJ45 (for devices with out WiFi), on the middle floor, and an additional meshed AP / range extender on the top floor. The top floor meshed thing basically didn't work, the RJ45 thing got me like 50 Mbps while wireless was getting me 200 Mbps. It 'just worked', but it didn't work well.
In that same house switching over to Ubiquiti just worked, and worked well. I had the same setup (mesh nodes on every floor), but performance was substantially better (2-4x).
I've moved house, and now have wired APs on every floor, and get phenomenal performance. The management UI to see what is where / how its connected, and when something doesn't work is very good. It also enables things that were hard / difficult with other non-'prosumer' gear. Like I can have multiple WAN ports, and plug in a cellular modem, so that when my internet doesn't just work (which happens way too often) it auto-fails over to the cellular modem, and continues just working.
The reason I went with Ubiquiti in the first place was their Unifi Protect line of cameras, and again those 'just work' from the wireless small ones to domes / etc plugged into wired connections they all just seamlessly connect to my dream machine, and provides a great UI, and the data is on prem which I want.
The only thing Ubiquiti doesn't do the way I want is DHCP + DNS, so I have a seperate raspberry pi doing that.
After years of fussing around with either linux / pfsense / ... routing + firewall solutions, and different AP / meshing configurations the ubiquiti stuff is very hands off.
Ah, so based on your last paragraph I guess you're in "prosumer" territory? My router has dual WAN, SFP, can do cellular over USB, tells DHCP clients to use the pihole for DNS, and I don't have speed issues in or around the house with the mesh nodes, but maybe it falls short if I was looking to do more advanced routing/firewalls.
Definitely in prosumer territory, and it's totally achievable with equipment that isn't Ubiquiti (they're not magic, the mediums RF + ethernet + fiber are all the same), but the amount of fiddling I found to get things to 'work right' with ubiquiti was plug it all in, set up the WiFi password, and update the DNS / DHCP server to my pihole, and then I didn't have to do much else, and there was a really nice UI with nice metrics, and a nice UI for cameras all built in, and a few other niceties like some VPN options. There's also sufficient logging that when something doesn't work I can maybe figure out why.
I don't really do more 'advanced' routing (other than maybe the unifi protect aka camera stuff it sounds like we're describing similar configurations), it's just that when I tried to achieve the configuration you're describing with Asus it was impossible, with TPLink it took a lot of fiddling / configuration and never 'worked right' (right meaning as well as I thought it should, though I've not tried TPLink in a primarily wired configuration) where as the ubiquiti stuff was plug and play and just 'worked right' (close to the speeds and reliability I expected both in a mesh mode and in wired).
The whole camera thing -- which is what really got me to pay the ubiquiti tax -- is another story entirely, I'm sure there are lots of other good options for self hosted IP camera solutions, but I couldn't find any ones I wanted to use, and again with ubiquiti it was super plug and play, and once I'd bought the UDM to do camera stuff and saw how well that worked I wanted to try the ubiquiti networking stuff, and it worked better with less configuration that the other alternatives I'd tried.
With infinite time and finite budget ubiquiti is not the right choice for home networks, with a sizable budget for home networking equipment minimal time investment and a preference for performance ubiquiti has worked out better for me than alternatives out of the box, and better for me after spending time tweaking and trying to optimize TPlink (meaning ubiquiti out of the box was better after trying to optimize TPlink).
If "not ubiquiti" works for you out of the box, or in the configuration you're already in then you're all set, and you're definitely not missing out on anything. If things aren't working out of the box and you're tired of fiddling with it, or your other goals aren't possible, and they are with ubiquiti maybe it's worth the investigation.
I also _hate_ how much I sound like an ad for ubiquiti. I'm really not, but I think I've spent more time writing these two comments than I've spent having to fuss around with my network equipment in years.
Hey, really appreciate the response though. I would say I'm in the "more time than money" category.
It's hard to not notice the ... ubiquity of praise for their gear over the years, but I haven't seen much clarifying what sets them apart. Maybe I should look at them like peak Apple but for networking gear?
Yes. That is how I view them, and a fair description I think.
When I was willing to spend time on this (home networking + cameras) I would have never touched this equipment. It was all open source / cheap stuff with BSD or Linux routers, random switches, home assistant raspberry pi's connected to USB cameras. It would take some time maybe not a lot, but enough, and it would break frequently enough due to some update somewhere or something.
I think the idea is that the Ubiquiti equipment is far more capable than normal consumer-grade equipment like ASUS, and still manages to "just work". So your ASUS may also "just work" but is has a fraction of the capabilities as the unifi system in terms of feature load-out and scope of native device integrations.
Adding a new Unifi device to the network is just a matter of powering it up, responding to "adopt this new device?" prompt on your phone, and that's it. It's literally Plug'n'Play in 2025. Even if other brands let you do that with similar number of steps, the UX is so behind that it's impossible for you to discover the steps that easily. Ubiquiti uses UX quite intelligently to make complicated things feel simple. My experience hasn't been close to Ubiquiti's with any other brand I've tried.
