U6-LR Review and Benchmarks

[@Rosscoff2000]

This is Long Range UAP - I'd be a lot more interested in some comparative range tests than unrealistic pushing of max speeds.

[@frostbite1991]

Has maybe half the range of my Linksys WRT1900AC. Not very impressed with it tbh. Feels like a waste for $200. Will also mention the 2.4GHz radio in my Mikrotik router has an insane amount of range compared to both of those, and that thing is ancient, so IDK why the U6-LR doesn't have very long range. It's also terrible at penetrating walls and floors in a house. Best used for big open office spaces or auditoriums.

[@Rosscoff2000]

@@frostbite1991 Sure, as I said, it would have been better to see its real world range tested, rather than its close-range throughput.

[@frostbite1991]

@@Rosscoff2000 yea I have yet to see real world long distance testing on these things. Probably because the distance sucks haha.

[@851995STARGATE]

@@frostbite1991 my UAP AC LR has crazy distance, I doubt the distance sucks

[@frostbite1991]

@@851995STARGATE different model, there's lots of people complaining about the U6-LR. currently using an old Linksys 1900AC as an access point and it's performing way better than my U6-LR ever did, no matter how many hours of reconfiguring I did on it. And yes, I did scan nearby wifi to ensure it wasn't on a bloated channel.

[@vincentchow6448]

Great review. The 2.5g NIC is a deal breaker for me and it was what I really wanted to know.

[@daviddjerf2856]

When testing a "long range" AP it would be nice with a range comparison.

[@GoSolveIT]

Agree they state on the website it has 2x the range of the old AC LR. Still searching for a video that can back this statement up.

[@theeclectic6015]

I have one that is covering the space between cabin and barn on a ranch. I haven't tested the full range, but the barn is around 250 yards and gets a nice signal still.

[@JacksonCampbell]

@@GoSolveIT Where do they say that?

[@JacksonCampbell]

@@theeclectic6015 This is at least something to go off of. I have heard so little about actual range on these things. I care about connectivity for messages and calls, not speed. Either way, if it reaches farther it will be faster farther away.

[@ONE_OF_300]

Thanks for the testing confirmation. I have this as my main AP in my home and works great. Moved the AC pro to the back patio and AC lite to the front garage for full coverage, probably overkill. All credit for my move to complete Unifi setup has been based on your channel, information, and guides. So, thank you!

[@michaeljohnson9760]

Put one of these into service, for a single story house, and reaches an extender in a shed 85' across the back yard. Thing is a beast.

[@mt_kegan512]

Same here. Planning on hardwiring the barn ultimately, but holy crap connects at 5Ghz to the downlink thru metal! Beast-mode!

[@zadekeys2194]

What is the line of sight like from the AP to the extender?

[@Wingnut353]

@@ClickyCoyote Nothing you can really do if there are thick concrete or block walls... mine UAP-AC-LR goes 70ft through a brick wall and 4 apartments in a townhouse built in the late 70s... I suspect the U6-LR I just got will do even better.

[@michaeljohnson9760]

@@zadekeys2194 A couple of walls between. And a shed wall, but it's pretty thin.

[@mt_kegan512]

This is a temp setup but: AP behind a TV (no direct line of site) through gas insulated windows (doubt that matters much, then about 80 ft and hits the downlinked AC Pro inside of Barn. Barn is all metal but I did make a line of site through the barn window to the interior windows. It doesn't have the strongest signal but still pulls ~50 Mbps with ZERO interruptions and latency has only increased 2ms compared to my living room. Uplink U6-LR has ~30 other devices on it to including streaming devices and a camera that's uploading constantly (temp...cameras will get hardwired of course...I'm tired at night!). Working great all things considered. For the U6-LR to not make it 50ft there must be some serious stuff in it's way. Metal and concrete usually give me the most trouble at home and work (I work IT). Good luck to u, I just think this baby is a beast. ... At least until the pro/6e's come out ;-)

[@Obelixlxxvi]

Completely agree with you on the 1Gig NIC weakness.

[@cjhan47]

Agreed. 2.5 gig should be the minimum at this point.

[@curtisbme]

Why in the world they would build something to support that many clients at that wifi speed and give it only a 1gig connection is a head scratcher.

[@cool2180]

Ubiquiti probably want people to buy the u6-lr HD with dual nic lol. something like that.

[@Sam-qg1dy]

from the guy who understands a little: can clients communicate with each other without going thru the NIC??

[@hb2998]

​@@Sam-qg1dy I am also not an expert, but I think I understand your question. If there are two clients connected to the same AP, would trying to transmit data to each other (which is rare) would the AP be able to route the traffic between the two devices without relying on its own NIC. I don't think so. I think all traffic through an AP will have to go all the way back to the switch, and then return back to the AP to be transmitted to the client who happens to be connected to the same AP.

[@billmcalister8706]

Finally got this last week. Looks good so far. I have 2 other lite 6 APs. Full coverage no problem at my house. (probably on my block :))

[@crizz6397]

I would love to test the long range aspect of the access point.

[@nikxoom]

At leas in Germany with a max transmit power of 23dbi it’s not really giving me more range then the lite. So the antenna pattern doesn’t seem to be improved much.

[@PerkyinkXD]

Ixl

[@gsmith2220]

Hi, Chris. One reason there's only 1Gbps Ethernet may be because you'd likely never saturate the wired link in actual usage. Wi-Fi is, effectively, half-duplex. So at 2.4Gbps theoretical (at the PHY; less once you get to the air), you'd only get about 1.2 Gbps max. because half the time it's sending and half the time it's receiving. When you add in the other Wi-Fi overhead (like management frames, beacons, headers on the packets, etc.), not to mention any noise or other clients in your area, your actual throughput that *gets to the wire* on the Ethernet side is going to drop even more, likely below the 1.0 Gbps limit. As always another great video.

[@HighlandSteam]

When moving from poor ADSL to fibre. I went with the Unifi ecosystem with a UDM-pro, 5 8port POEs and 5 flexi minis in my home network refresh.

[@SithTracy]

I got my LR-6 a couple of weeks ago for my home network... Pretty impressed with it (with COVID been WFH and kids have been schooling from home, wish it came sooner). I suspect the "AP6-Pro" model will have dual 2.5GB nics... I have to imagine that thing is still in R&D as they hone the performance of what it will become.

[@Zizzily]

At least as it sits in the EA store, the U6-Pro is still a single 1Gbps port.

[@isbestlizard]

@@Zizzily So they're expecting 5Gbps to flow down a 1Gbps cable? Madness.

[@Zizzily]

@@isbestlizard Well, they're expecting it to do it client-to-client. Wireless is also half-duplex.

[@hakalashabitat1584]

I picked up the U6 lite for my home a few weeks ago and love it. have the kids setup on their own WiFi network with a Pihole to keep them focused on school and there is no loss with 20+ connected clients, 4 of them on video calls. The whole UniFi suite is really great to work with. Best prosumer network gear.

[@seanpalmer8472]

Have you considered adding a ping/jitter tests to your benchmarking? I have no idea if there will be significant differences between APs, but it might be interesting to see unloaded vs. under-load measurements (e.g. one client performs ping tests while the others perform sustained file transfers).

[@kdmaj]

Chris, great video as per usual. I needed more info on both the new Wifi6 APs and this hit the nail on the head and your other video on the Lite. Many thanks

[@brimur69]

Hey Chris, FYI the UAP AC HD has had 160Mhz for a couple of years. All my compatible 2x2 devices connect to it @ 1733Mhz

[@gsmith2220]

The IW-HD also supports 160 MHz channels.

[@kim0sabe]

And the Nano HD too :)

[@johnmerryman1825]

Quick suggestion about the parallel client test - you might want to try it with the clients connected by wired gigabit ethernet. That might give you a good baseline.

[@CrosstalkSolutions]

Good suggestion - but a lot of wires to run.

[@peterleblanc4727]

@@CrosstalkSolutions Have you tried running iPerf simultaneously across all of the clients? Another suggestion would be maybe put an SSD or SSD Cache in the NAS for the file copy test?

[@BrUcYNL]

Given its a "Long Range" access point, it would have been interesting to see some range comparison and testing.

[@Obelixlxxvi]

Exactly!

[@davidprinzing8059]

Sure, but we know that the range is improved, what we don't know is how it stacks up compared to the other APs in the Unifi lineup as far as speed and stability. When it comes to range, everyone's mileage will vary and there is no single type of testing that would have given a good analysis of this product other than simply comparing antenna gain. Most people today who believe that they have "range issues" in fact have either interference issues or lack the experience to know how to properly count for or distribute APs throughout their environment. Unifi has a great product set for serious range issues but that is a whole different product line. To analyze the range improvement from the previous generation LR, the AC-LR has a single dual-band antenna at 2.4Ghz, 3dBi and 5Ghz, 3dBi. The U6-LR has a single dual-band antenna, at 2.4, 4dBi and 5Ghz, 5.5dBi. The AC-LR has a max TX power of 24dBm@2.4Ghz and 22dBm@5Ghz. The max power on the U6-LR is 26dBm on both 2.4 and 5Ghz. Of course, the big winner here for range is the Wifi 6 technology, specifically the MIMO and OFDMA. Having these both means significantly more bandwidth from further away which, let's face it, doesn't matter to a lot of people if it's only a 10% or a 200% improvement as long as it is an improvement. The one metric that I wish was talked more about is RX amplification, physical antenna size and the various chip technologies designed to help the AP "hear" the client from a long distance or through interference. Although we can improve the power that these APs output, doing so doesn't always improve the distance that they are able to communicate as the AP still needs to be able to detect the weak return signal of the device in question. At the end of the day, Unifi brags that the U6-LR has 2x further range than the AC-LR... and I believe it although the devil is in the details and your mileage will significantly vary. For most, this will solve problems that they should have solved through different means but for many it'll be a happy improvement to their current wifi situation.

[@thakorpatel8543]

U6lr have rang twice of nano

[@thakorpatel8543]

U6lr have on second floor going through concrete floors decks

[@jeffm2787]

Been using one for a while and the range is incredible. I use to have to mesh to get out to my garage. I replaced my nanoHD with the U6-LR and was able to not only remove the mesh but also get 80Mhz 5Ghz in the garage with great results. Excellent range. Blows away the AC-LR and the nanoHD. I own two AC-LR's and a nanoHD plus an AC-Lite.

[@2008mjb]

wireless mesh the two wifi 6 AP's and see what kind of speed you get vs two wifi 5 AP's. I personally have a detached garage/workshop that I am thinking of doing two ap6 lites in my house and one wirelessly meshed in the detached garage. knowing how well the lite performs in a mesh could help others with similar setups. I'd recommend 40-50 ft with at least two walls in between.

[@sstobbe1817]

I watched a few of your tests now. I have to say that I like the way you test and explain. It probably isn't an official "scientific"' way of testing, but it will do to get a very good impression concerning the differences between the devices. Besides that, because it's not a scientific way of testing and explaining, it's understandable for most (non-technical) people out there and probably more than enough to base a buying decision on. Thanks and keep up the good work!

[@rupertmtb]

I use 2x U6-lite in my house and I'm very happy with the setup & results, roaming between floors works great. I would probably have problem with seemless roaming with 2x U6-LR setup as the signal strength would not let the client switch AP (it's possible to tune power in controller though). For house deployment U6-lite makes a lot of sense. I pulled the trigger for U-6Lite thanks to your reviews, kudos to you!

[@wertherland]

Would you mind sharing what speeds you get with that setup and on what mobile device? I have been struggling with AP's throughput since day one, it's been 3 years and was never able to get over 120 mbps on a wire connection that peaks at 600

[@matyf_]

hey Chris, thanks for this AWESOME video. We've been waiting for this for a long time. I have some thoughts/comments that may be useful for you: 1. Something that you didn't mention is that this one only supports MU-MIMO and OFDMA on the 5GHz band. So it's 802.11n on the 2.4GHz band. 2. From what you mentioned, it seems you only used the 5GHz band on all the tests, right? 3. IMHO 160MHz channels are not that feasible given that there's not even one non-DFS 160MHz channel available. I think it would be better (and fairer) to compare all the APs at 80MHz. 4. You mentioned that this would be a great AP for businesses. I guess it could be a bit difficult to minimize co-channel interference in an office where you may need to deploy multiple APs in a small space given that it has such high antenna gain. What do you think? 5. Regarding the sustained throughput tests, I was not expecting such performance. At least on paper, it should have been better. Something interesting is that in your windows machines you got exactly 50Mbps, that's exactly the same value you got from the AC Pro and the U6 Lite, that seems fishy. Maybe you can try to perform a sustained concurrent throughput test with multiple iperf "fixed duration" tests running in parallel. 6. Regarding the performance difference you saw between iperf and openspeedtest tests, I had some issues running iperf3 on windows in the past. When I used a UDP test, the windows version of iperf3 didn't use the bandwidth I defined. After some research, I've found that iperf3 isn't officially supported on windows. There are binaries compiled for windows on the internet, but those aren't officially supported. On the other hand, iperf2 IS supported on windows, so you may want to try that one to see how it works. Thanks again for all this hard work!

[@jeffm2787]

Been using one for a while now. The range is incredible IMO. Test 80Mhz, not 160Mhz. I found I get much better overall performance with 80 on any channel. Commercial installation would never use 160 or even 80 Mhz. The gigabit NIC is just fine. Edit: The nanoHD supports VHT160, I have one of those as well and now two U6-LR's. Still 160 is just a waste of time on any AP, maybe on 6E for a short while it'll be better.

[@matthewmercer6922]

Hi Chris, Please correct me if I'm wrong but my nanoHD allows me to set a 160mhz channel width (I use 80 for compatibility) If the nanoHD does indeed do 160mhz I'd love to see a new comparison between the two. I am very tempted to upgrade but I feel like an apples for apples comparison needs to be done first...

[@gsmith2220]

Hi, Chris. For your sustained throughput test, I might suggest running the test a few times with as little as possible other access of your FreeNAS box. In theory, accessing the same file a few times will move it into the ZFS ARC (assuming the ARC is big enough to hold the file). At that point, you're just throttled by RAM speed, rather than disk I/O. Just a thought.

[@Wheeze_NL]

Thank you again for providing us with such a complete overview, tests and opinions. I don’t have the possibility to buy and test all these, but this way I can still give informed advise to family and friends. Is it me, or was there a rattle in the audio? Maybe it came from the AP being so close to the microphone 🎙. Thanks again!

[@traxeonic3600]

I have this AP now. I used to have the HD (overkill). Same mounting plate as the HD btw. My HD had dual NIC which I ran in aggregate. This AP should have dual 2.5Ghz, not just single. Especially given the ~300 client ability.

[@jochenx6944]

I actually disagree with the conclusion that the U6 LR is overkill for home installations. In my 120m^2 house, I used a single UAP-InWall-HD before. Most rooms had good coverage, but concrete floors and brick walls meant limited signal strength in some less important places. The U6 Lite I tested was marginally better than the InWall-HD, but that may have been due to a better mounting location. U6-LR has great signal strength everywhere, much better than the InWall or Lite. All of the WiFi based smart home devices also report much better signal strength, even though they worked fine with the InWall HD before.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Great video Chris. The U6 LR is a beast

[@cp1011986]

Access points are going 1 per room, this long range version will help for outdoor and covering outages. Most switches are still 1gb to the client. It won't go 2.5gb in a business scenario, 10 is more mainstream then you just move the bottleneck to the uplink which is worse. Upping the processor and ram to increase buffer, not to mention the chooser for the faster Lan, would be for the pro. P.s. we are testing multi channel fiber ATM, so existing fiber can go about 10gb, but I think most have not yet.

[@alanwong928]

I got rid of my two nanos and got a U6LR and a U6 Lite to replace them and I think they are much better than the nanos. The range on the LR is pretty amazing. I can get full signal right at the back of my garden, the nano couldn’t even reach the garden.

[@BertdeJ]

I'd love to buy it. Now have the older model the AP-AC-LR. the annoying thing is that Ubiquiti is not in such a hurry to deliver to Europe. customer service that does not make sense and one should not interfere with the transmission power, delivery times that make no sense. Fortunately there is a (better) alternative and that is the Zyxel NWA210AX. faster, stronger signal.

[@ThePopolou]

Yes, maybe you can run at 160mhz in your isolated location but when you have an urban environment and deploy in the manufacturer's user case scenario like a purpose built office building, you've got a snow ball's chance to run at that bandwidth level.

[@jeffm2787]

Been using the U6-LR for a while now, it rocks. But yes 160Mhz is not the reason to buy it at all. The range is incredible and at 80Mhz it rocks in my sub-urban environment. The range is better then the AC-LR, the nanoHD, etc. I own an AC-Lite, 2 AC-LR's a nanoHD and now the U6-LR. The U6-LR is my fav next to the nanoHD.

[@AaronMcHale]

Ordered and received two U6 Lite APs last week, they work great for my home, but... even though the LR is double the price and way overkill for my home, kind of want the U6 LR now after watching this haha!

[@munrostuart]

You can use 160 MHz channels on the UAP AC-HD.

[@nickroussy]

Thank you so much Chris, I am currently building a network at home and you confirm my choices.

[@willtechenterprises280]

Great video, can you do one that includes the Wifi 6 Pro?

[@BradleyBrewer]

Hoping mine arrives soon. Thanks for the information.

[@ghostofdre]

Nice video but like a lot of people I'd like to see some range tests on the LR and how it compares to the U6 Lite.

[@trick0502]

Bring on the u6 pro. I missed them on sale yesterday. But it still suffers from a single 1gbps nic.

[@myob2k]

So they do not have a 1gig nic?

[@lordgarth1]

Does the chipset support 2.5? Perhaps it’s just not enabled yet in EA.

[@jed1mstr]

Some clarification on something you said here, the Unifi AP-HD also supports VHT160 channel width on 5ghz so that isn't something new.

[@TheDanielShepherd]

so does the Nano HD, so does the Wifi-6 Lite, i'm not sure he's not seen this before.

[@robertf863]

I just put one of mine up.. second one still back ordered I guess. This thing is in ceiling of 2nd middle story of wood, drywall and outer brick home. Covers top floor plus bottom with default settings. I even turned off the WiFi on one of in wall hd APs. The signal on main floor is as good if not better. I am pleased with it. I am run it via cat6a to udmp. I did tweak settings and seeing 580/400 on my Fios. I am very pleased. Will be able to downsize my APs some and get better/faster coverage.

[@mt_kegan512]

It blew my AC Pro outta the water! Some far reaching smart bulbs and switches would drop out before, haven't had a single issue since the upgrade.

[@robertf863]

@@mt_kegan512 yea, I got a outdoor beer camera that is on front porch in cornered on other side of brick. It dropped off and off the network all the time. I am replacing with it soon with wired UniFi camera but since the U6LR been up thus far it has dropped is reporting at least a decent signal. Other devices on first floor seem to be more attracted to it also. I am pleased customer so far. Hoping a firmware doesn’t surprise me and ruin it but so far I am happy.

[@marcelhamers6037]

Hi Chris, IPv6 multicast should have this ONE STREAM TO MANY functionality. Am actually doing the IPv6 course and for me it is still theory. Hopefully you are more advanced at IPv6 then I am ;-) Keep up the good work!

[@nikxoom]

So I got the U6 Lite and U6 LR now, used my AVM Fritzbox 7590 and a Fritzrepeater 2400 before. Both 4x4 ac access points and the speed improvements with one client are marginale. Before the max it got connected we’re 866mbit now 1200mbit but in reality I never got over 550mbits irl with my iPhone 12 2x2 ax, my ac setup did about 470mbit. And I gotta say I have a lot more connection issues especially with the LR, the Lite is awesome for the price!

[@tubastud06]

I think Ubiquiti is saving the 2.5/5/10 gig ports or dual ports for the "Pro" series... Whenever they get around to releasing them

[@ChrisParkerVT]

They're not, from what I've seen so far. Their pending switches claim to be "Unifi 6" meaning they have 2.5G ports, but the coming Pro Wifi6 WAP is still 1G

[@hdtvkeith1604]

Nice video, surprised the U6LR is not blowing the doors off everything in every benchmark.I also wonder what happens if the U6LR had a 2.5gb nic in it. Ubiquiti needs to upgrade these to 2.5gb nics. I am holding off on upgrading my Nanos until they have a U6 4x4 with 2.5gb nic. I know my Nanos can push 500-600mbs on various speed tests.

[@jsort001]

Thanks Chris! Another great AP comparison.

[@steveforrest9294]

Great video as always. I am interested in seeing Test of Unifi HD AP in 2 Port lag vs U6LR and see if makes a diff?

[@TechMeOut5]

Thanks for the video Chris. Excellent stuff

[@RReevesnFamily]

The name is LR, Long Range. So what is its range? How does it perform at a distance? In particular when mounted on the end of my barn, will it get across the 3 acre field to the pond?

[@gabakusa]

you are doing wrong the test with the windows and ubuntu machines, you should use dual boot and test the same machine, it might be a problem with drivers

[@guydubois]

Hi as this is about the LR version, it would be nice to see a LR line-up comparison on speed, range and stability.

[@jordanc8926]

Great video, all the effort is greatly appreciated.

[@kevinweiner7123]

Need some options from the group. Working on a project for a 3/2 house- about 1800 sq ft, one floor, cinder block construction in south Florida. Will have gigabit internet (cable), and ubiquiti equipment (dream machine, switch, etc.). Also anticipate smart devices all over the place (smart switches, brilliant controller, sonos and Alexa devices in each room, etc.) Comparing the U6 LR and lite (thanks for this vid btw) show that the LR is the way better device, but.... the size at 6:34 between the two makes me want to get a couple lites instead of one LR purely due to aesthetic reasons You think the 2x2 Mimo and lower speed on the lite can still handle all the smart stuff, or is it better to throw an LR in the middle of the house and let it do its thing?

[@wertherland]

Thank you for another great video. Do you have an episode explaining how to set this AP's up to get those download speeds?

[@ytb4328]

Good day I'm really interested how does the U6-LR performance compare to UAP-AC-HD ? Thank you!

[@rickz6006]

Found this video because I was looking for a replacement for my RT-AC3200 which is in ap mode so I can connect to both my Tank Utility propane tank level monitor at ~190 feet from the front of our home and our Generac which is behind the home. The ac-pro will not do the job. Wanting something Ubiquiti so the home security and home automation SSid’s and vlans are supported. Did you have a range test on the Ubiquiti line of APs that I can watch? Thanks.

[@dreamingflurry2729]

If you can get one, I don't know if they are just always late when it comes to the European market because frankly: I wanted one, but couldn't get one in Germany! I bought the light version and will replace again soon (I need the AP because I am moving into my new appartment soon and I want to setup the network (cables (especially since drilling through the walls is dirty business creating a lot of dust and dirt!), patch-panel, switch etc.) before I actually move my stuff in and even before I paint the walls!)

[@glenndiorio8967]

Using 2 AP-Lites at my home and am happy. Plenty of coverage and they come with METAL mounting plates too. :)

[@steve2020]

thankyou for making these video's.

[@timrobertson8242]

I am wondering if you reset the U6-LR to do "Auto" on the channel width if that would improve your multi-user tests. Perhaps it is causing them to not share as much when there is more than one connection active at one time -- especially since the other Access Points are banging through to the same file service configuration. I appreciate your doing such a comprehensive survey and cost comparison -- Very valuable stuff!

[@hpgurgel]

Awesome work, thanks a lot for the great video.

[@ahmedagbabiaka]

I have the LR on the main floor with the most users. A lite in the basement and one in the garage. And a flex in the office. I love this setup and the performance of both the LR and lite have been phenomenal. I saw the pro in EA and it throws a monkey wrench in the lite vs LR conversation 🤔

[@ToreOnYouTube]

I’m using an Aironet 2802I running Mobility Express. It does not do AX, but damn is it fast. With fantastic functionality and customization.

[@OmarVR]

Excellent choice! That's an extremely reliable and powerful AP.

[@RomaZhuzha]

Perhaps ideally you should be copying four files from four SSDs for the throughput test 🤔

[@GuillermoFrontera]

In my experience iperf is better because write to ram. Is a benchmark utility. But to be fair file copy is more realistic.

[@shawnmoss9322]

ZFS is caching the file to ram. Not a fair multi user-multi file test.

[@pelle7771]

Thank you for the test. I have an AC Pro at home and I am not satisfied wih the bandwith through the (german) stone walls. For movies in UHD it has not enough bandwith and they keep on "rebuffering" and stand still. With around twice the bandwith it should work well. The difference in the antenna gain between all the tested devices would have been interesting, too.

[@theeclectic6015]

This is a GREAT access point! Love mine.

[@shawnmoss9322]

I wondered about the only one gigabit interface myself. One would have to identify the arm chip in question. A53 is old tech so one would need to look at the AMBA interface bandwidth,AXI or PCIe lane availability to really know why they did not put on another interface. Wait for the PRO model.lolz. I am sure they have it in the pipeline. Still a decent stop gap for certain applications. I was looking at this for inside a covered structure outside for back yard coverage. Gigabit is enough but I rather have two bonded Ethernet gig to keep the costs down and support more of the hardware capabilities. I have not dealt with 2.5 yet but it might be a limitation on bandwidth between chip to chip comms.

[@mschwope]

Thanks for the review. Would you expect to see better wall penetration on the LR with the additional antenna gain as well?? Thanks!

[@Wayne-Pr]

Hi Chris love your videos, as a Cambium Networks partner in Aust I'd love to see you put the Ubiquiti U6-LR up against the Cambium Networks WiFi 6 both the "Commercial model. XV3-8 Wi-Fi 6 Access Point & the Home" model. XV2-2 Indoor Dual Radio Wi-Fi 6 2x2 WLAN AP, 2.5GBE, RoW, AP Only. All bebI accept that the U6 is a lot cheaper than the XV2-2 but it does come with a 2.5GBE. Regards Wayne.

[@silverclifflightshow]

Thought that was weird, the output of those new UniFi 6 device are 2 to 5 gigabits second but the input is only one gigabit second it makes no sense, why would they even release something like that I know I may not use gigabit second on any of my wireless device for many years to come but I guess they just want to get you to buy the new stuff all the time!

[@garrettstech1]

For $300 the UniFi Dream Machine does support 160Mhz of 5Ghz bandwidth and 40Mhz of 2.4Ghz while having a built in AP. Best to keep separate SSIDs.

[@Sir-Fix-a-Lot]

How does the LR part of this AP benefit you with regards to range/wall penetration?

[@davidanderson2436]

Thanks for the info, great video as always - just curious are you using a SLOG and ZIL in your trueNAS server? And are they fast enough for your 10G nic? The new office looks great - need to run that cable to your Picture frame in the wall (Echogear White in-Wall Cable Management Kit $20 Amazon).

[@jakearmstrong9845]

I'm anxiously awaiting the release of the In-Wall WiFi 6. Do you expect similar gains over the In-Wall HD?

[@jvlivtriple]

I have been waiting for a couple of these for weeks. Maybe they will show up soon.

[@rpsmith]

Will start buying these as soon as the add a 2.5G Ethernet port.

[@TudorButiulca]

I was waiting for this kind of review, great job ! Can you please tell me how much poe power consumes in a switch ? lite version and also LR, I want to order where I work 9 LR and 9 lites wifi 6 and to see if I can put it togheter in a 190w poe switch :)

[@montereynolds7713]

The 2.5 Gbps Nic would certainly benefit this Access Point. My thoughts "you asked for them" in a scenario where you have 20+ users, you would probably not be on 160mhz. At most you'd probably be using 40mhz. You can get away with 40mhz with only 20 users but if you had many more you'd want to bump it down to 20mhz which would limit the bandwidth to a given user. In this scenario that 2.5 Gbps nic would certainly come in handy as those 20 mhz users add up to 1 Gbps quick.

[@Christopher_Ago]

2 of the 6lites for $20 more seems like a better deal than 1LR.

[@rrlevy]

Great video! Why don’t you try running iperfs between 2 computers connected to the Wifi? You might get around the 1gbps NIC limitation

[@Eleven.Eleven.1111]

I'm sold!

[@philipcook7608]

It might be a good idea to add a new chart for 160 Mhz capable devices and test everything on 80 Mhz as well so there is an apples to apples comparison.

[@Mehmehx]

Just bought 4 Unifi 6 Lite for my house. My old nano-hd goes to the basement. Personally I prefer using many APs on low power rather than one big one for a large area. If needed in the future I’ll upgrade the living room AP to LR version or wait for a new ”nano-HD-6”. I think the LR is overkill for a home and I rather have 5Ghz Lite 6 on low power in each room for great roaming

[@irfanafzal5158]

Hey Chris off topic but did you ever do a review of Ubiquity 48 port usw-pro-48-poe switch? Apologies for being off topic

[@tothbe]

Hey Chris. This test was a long time ago and in the meanwhile also U6 Pro came out. Is there any chance you make a comparison video including that too? Thanks.

[@bfourney]

But the increased performance is due to 160mhz bands vs the 80mhz for all the others? Wouldn't then any advantage in speed be negated in a 80mhz limited setup? Or am I missing something? Also would be good to see the size vs the lite and the UAP-AC-PRO and if the bracketry is simple plug and play to swap AP Pros with either of these.

[@davidprinzing8059]

Re: "1Gbps Ethernet seems like a bottleneck on this device" I can see where you are coming from, but I'm not going to be worried about it. Assuming that your specific test cases are actually approaching 1Gbps then what I imagine is that adding two clients at the same time attempting to communicate to the radio is likely to divide the current allocation of traffic while also adding additional radio overhead. Meaning, that if you aren't hitting the ceiling under optimal wifi conditions where the 1Gbps is obviously your bottleneck, then adding more clients creates significantly less optimal wireless conditions and thus I think it proves that you won't actually have an issue. Of course, I'm willing to be wrong on this and the best way to determine if I am is to run several machine speedtests at the same time and see which nic on the AP saturates first, the wired or the wireless. Additionally, as you mentioned, 2.5Gbps nics adds significant additional expense to the access point which punches it up into a different price bracket. That's great when you both have the office switch for it ready to go as well as don't care if the AP is $30-$50 more in cost for tech that most people still don't have yet. However, I think they made the right call to not add a 2.5Gbps nic to this AP as the market that this AP is likely to be geared towards are people who want better signal ratio and a tech upgrade to their existing infrastructure at a budget friendly cost. I'm more critical of their U6-Pro not having a 2.5Gbps port as I believe that this particular product is more geared towards business and power users who may actually have the 2.5Gbps switches ready to go or at least would like seeing the Pro series hardware on parity to the competition.

[@CrosstalkSolutions]

Very well reasoned response - thanks!

[@AaronMcHale]

@@CrosstalkSolutions I guess one way to do theoretical speed tests without the potential NIC bottleneck would be to just run a speed testing tool/server on the AP itself. It has SSH access after all, so in theory it’s possible 😀

[@Wahinies]

@@AaronMcHale they did have iperf natively on UAP until around firmware 3.7 I believe with the explanation that the inadequate CPU would give inaccurate results and it was subsequently removed

[@davidprinzing8059]

@@AaronMcHale Yeah, I'm going to agree with Wahinies on this one. Doing anything on the AP itself creates the possibility of creating results that are inaccurate, not real world results, or both. My suggestion would be to run iftop on the Unifi switch that the AP is connected to in order to monitor the particular port bandwidth while testing.

[@adammatthiesen6203]

one thought that I have in regards to the reason Ubiquiti would opt to stick with a 1GB nic instead of moving to a 2.5, would be that Wi-Fi 6 is supposed to have a better traffic shaping that allows more users to be able to connect at the same time and to be able to layer the operations in a logical line better previous versions of Wi-Fi. so theoretically from what I have read and heard you can have multiple people(10-20) connected while for each of those users it will appear that there is no latency while their traffic might be getting shaped and send in order of first come first serve. not sure on the science behind it is, but I do remember something about the new version of Wi-Fi being able to shape traffic to improve speeds...

[@ManuelSchneider94]

The UAP-HD was capable of 160MHz as well, the U6-LR dimensions to me seem very similar to the UAP-HD as well...

[@ErnestIT]

I'm using the UAP-NanoHD and my 5GHz Channel Width is set to VHT160 as well...

[@jamiemcglynn6600]

(At 7:30) The nanoHD does do 160MHz, but probably not in the same way or implementation (VHT160). I left mine in 40MHz width because any higher than that causes some of my devices lose connectivity after a short while, so there is a tradeoff to bear in mind.

[@garanceadrosehn9691]

When it comes to the Sustained-throughput test, it would be interesting to see what happened if you had only three of the four clients running at the same time. This would provide some idea of whether there is a bottleneck with the hard disk on your server, or maybe even that there's a bottleneck on that ethernet link. And as long as I'm thinking up ways to provide more work for you, you could do two Sustained-throughput tests. One with the three slowest machines (as determined by the other benchmarks), and another with the three fastest machines. So on the second test you're dropping the machine with the slowest transfers, and adding the machine which had the fastest transfers. Lots of interesting info here, though. Very helpful. Thanks!

[@flyguy8791]

I think was also a great showcase of how good the U6 Lite is also, I'm very curious to see a comparison with the U6-Pro-US-BETA (which also has my attention, but of course is a EA product). I've been experimenting with a U6 Lite in my home, impressed with it thus far.

[@ronwaldon7970]

I agree with the 1 Gbps port complaint but it also got me thinking. What about the UDM-Pro? It's WAN port is also 1 Gbps. I think that's a mistake as well. And here we go again! The New UniFi 6 Pro which claims 4.8 Gbps through put, with a slower processor I might add, also only has a 1 Gbps port. What's up with that? I'm also curious if you have any idea how the UniFi 6 Pro is getting double the through put of the U6LR with a slower processor & the other specs appear to be the same as the U6LR. One good thing to note about the U6 Pro is that while the 2.4 GHz antenna knocked down to 22 dBm, the 5 GHz is at 26 dBm the same as the U6LR.

[@coryharrison5893]

It would be great if you could test the UAP-IW-HD. I'd like to see where it falls in the "bang for your buck" list. I'm thinking of putting them in our new house, so that if need I can have easy access ports for TVs or computers.

[@kristianwind2755]

Should one upgrade from our UAP-AC-HD's taking into account that I do not have any IP6 devices - yet?

[@macexpert7247]

Install the Lite and the LR in your office and walk around the house and run the speed tests again. Next connect multiple decides and stream data simultaneously.

[@NeilAcquatella]

How about "wall" mounting a "ceiling" AP? I suppose a wall mount disposition will affect the WiFi signal range/orientation?

[@jtjumpshot]

Do firmware updates change the results? Looking at this a few months later I wonder if the results will be different. Do you plan to repeat test again?

[@myatix1]

What types of walls do you have Chris? Brick or stud walls? Would love to see the UAP WIFI 6 Pro review done like this to compare them the the WIFI 6LR, WIFI 6 Lite and NanoHD

[@jeffschaller1562]

Thanks, I enjoy your reviews. If you have any time, can you look at the Controller Utilization Report for the U6-LR 2.4ghz channel? Mine is showing 20-30% interference consistently. I live in a very rural area, Wifiman shows no other AP's broadcasting on the channel (6) I have operating on the U6-LR 2.4 channel. I also powered down all my other AP's and assured no clients were connected to the U6-LR yet the interference percent being reported is still at 20-30%. Controller Version is 6.0.45_14358. Just wondering what someone else's Channel Utilization for the 2.4 show interference wise. FYI my U6-LR 5ghz band interference is very low. Also the UAP-AC_Pro that was replaced by the U6-LR had a very low interference % as well. Thanks