Hands-on: Ubiquiti’s Amplifi covers the whole house in a Wi-Fi mesh
Enlarge (credit: Lee Hutchinson)
Back in May, networking OEM Ubiquiti announced its new Ubiquiti Labs division and that division's first product: a home mesh Wi-Fi system called Amplifi. With Amplifi, Ubiquiti intends to stretch its reach out of SMB/enterprise "lite" networking and into home territory-and not just the homes of crazies like me, either. Amplifi is targeted at the plug-and-play crowd for whom a single, central Wi-Fi base station doesn't quite cut the mustard. It's a market squarely occupied by Eero, Luma, and a few other players-home mesh Wi-Fi, where you throw down a few devices and every nook and cranny of your home gets solid coverage (in theory, at least).
Ubiquiti sent Ars a preproduction Amplifi unit last week, and I've spent the weekend getting some initial impressions. This isn't going to be an exhaustive review, since I've only had a few days with the system, but my impressions so far are generally positive.
| Specs at a glance: Ubiquiti Labs Amplifi | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | LR | HD | |
| Wi-Fi standards (base/mesh) | 802.11b/g/a/n/ac 802.11b/g/a/n | 802.11b/g/a/n/ac 802.11b/g/a/n | 802.11b/g/a/n/ac 802.11b/g/a/n/ac |
| Max TX power (base/mesh) | 24 dBm 22 dBm | 26 dBm 24 dBm | 26 dBm 26 dBm |
| Radios (base/mesh) | 4 4 | 4 4 | 6 6 |
| MIMO chains (base) | 10 | 10 | 18 |
| MIMO (mesh) | 2x2 | 2x2 | 3x3 |
| Wi-Fi antennas (base) | 3x (dual-band) | ||
| Max coverage | 10,000 sqft (930 m2) | 20,000 sqft (1,860 m2) | 20,000 sqft (1,860 m2) |
| Ethernet interfaces | 1x GbE WAN, 4x GbE LAN | ||
| CPU | Qualcomm Atheros QCA956X | ||
| RAM | 128 MB | ||
| Dimensions | 99.5mm x 97.8mm x 99.6mm base 46mm x 195.7mm x 27mm mesh points (ea) | ||
| Weight | 410g base 205g mesh points (ea) | ||
| Price | $199 | $299 | $349 |
| Release date | July 20 (North America) |
The Amplifi system isn't something I'd buy for myself, but it is something I'd happily buy for my parents, who have a large home thanks to Houston's absurdly cheap housing market and struggle to get solid Wi-Fi coverage throughout. Amplifi doesn't support several features that I depend on (especially WPA2 Enterprise for 802.1X), but setup is painless, reasonably quick, and the handoff between the various mesh components works seamlessly. It's also a competent router with an actual firewall (the device runs BusyBox and uses iptables under the hood). And, if you already have a router you're happy with, it can function as a pure Wi-Fi access point and mesh network.
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