do you find you need range extenders for 5 GHz? if so, you want mesh. I live in a relatively small apartment, and I’m perfectly happy with my Belkin AC1900. it maxes out at 1.3 gbps on the 5ghz but I’m only paying for 1.2 so no need to upgrade yet
I’m personally a fan of microtik products. It’s nice as they have a lot of built in management features. However, the downside is that there is a learning curve to their products which can feel like a vertical wall some times.
I had many wifi issues due to the layout and structure of my dwelling, and Unifi was the only setup that solved them. I started with my original Orbi (Voxel firmware) mesh setup from my previous home, but performance wasn’t where I wanted it due to the age of the devices. Then I tried the TP-Link w7200 sets from Walmart, but it didn’t meet my needs connecting a remote building on the property.
Unifi are expensive, but I have no regrets. Even added their security cameras to my network when the old system needed replaced.
Any relatively large home made out of reinforced concrete will need multiple access points with cable connections.
I use UniFi myself. My parents have a grandstream setup. They are both very good. Best bang for buck right now is probably tplink omada but those acces points are hideous.
Any WiFi 6 or 7 router in which you can install openwrt and set as a dumb AP connected to an x86 machine running OPNSense or openwrt itself. The redundancy and enhanced control are 10/10 worth it, along with security and stability.
Unifi Gateway Ultra and the Unifi AP Pro 7 is my current setup and I have nothing but praise for it. I definitely don’t recommend consumer mesh systems as I’ve had poor performance with those.
My recommendation falls squarely on the Omada series from TP-Link. It’s their SMB (small-medium business) offering and its very wallet friendly for what it is. Though WiFi 7 stuff is of course not cheap if you want the bleeding edge. I suggest going with the EAP6 series with WiFi 6E. No need to buy the physical controller, instead DIY a router with opnsense or pfsense and the Omada software for managing the APs is what I recommend. You of course need a switch with PoE like TL-SG2008P. PoE is a game changer for making wiring up the APs easy, and I do recommend wiring them because then you don’t need to think about having a strong signal between the APs.
Criteria being stability mainly, all consumer stuff is much more prone to the occasional drop and just plain wonky ness. Another criteria being upgrade path, the Omada stuff can easily be sold when you upgrade because they retain value pretty well (and you can find them used to start with as well). They also don’t ship with the bloat consumer devices come with. With features you don’t need and router+AP combo is fine if you’re in a single room apartment but it doesn’t scale to a multiroom setup well. I’ve used Asus “AI-mesh” and you really waste more money than you save in my experience.
That’s a good point. I haven’t used unifi’s combined devices. I was under the impression that the radio generally works better when not next to the router but maybe that’s old news.
How hard is it to put openwrt on any old commodity router if it’s on the compatible devices list? Is it basically just using the old router’s firmware update page and loading the openwrt firmware image?
Thinking about gifting a new wifi access point for one of my friends with a crap router that doesn’t even support 5ghz channels
There is usually a per-router guide on installation. Sometimes you can just use the built-in firmware flashing interface, sometimes you have to do funny things like do that twice in a row, sometimes you need to access a special interface.
Before buying, look for secondhand ones, many people move to a different house where their previous system becomes obsolete, or they upgraded to a different beast.
I had a heckuva time making the signal reach the living room. Went through WPS and range extenders. The only thing that has worked was a set of four mesh routers.