Hi, I'm Tim from Scoop. In this video we're going to be talking about the differences between our
most popular entry-level Unifi AC Access Points and the new U6-LITE. We'll also like to show you
the results of our own in-house testing and what we recommend. The increase in internet connection
speeds and accessibility has led to an increase in connected devices in households, public spaces
and workplaces. WiFi 6, also known as 802.11ax WiFi, builds and improves on the current WiFi 5,
or 802.11ac WiFi standard. WiFi 6 is also built to cater for more concurrent connections.
The reason why WiFi 6 is so welcome is, unlike its counterpart WiFi 5, provides better performance on
both 2.4 and 5GHz frequency bands. In addition, it uses a brand new modulation and coding scheme with
OFDMA, which is much better suited for higher density WiFi environments. To take advantage
of the benefits of WiFi 6, users need to upgrade their WiFi devices as more and more vendors are
ramping up production to make way for this new WiFi standard. Ubiquiti is no exception to the
list of vendors moving to WiFi 6, and they have launched a few products under their very popular
Unifi brand. Ubiquiti currently have two products available; the U6-LITE and U6-LR, but plan to add
more to this lineup in the future. When comparing the U6-LR with the U6-LITE, the U6-LR has
higher gain antennas, more spatial streams, and higher overall performance on both frequencies.
For the purpose of this video, we want to focus exclusively on the U6-LITE.
This product really grabbed our attention as it competes directly with most of our popular
entry-level WiFi 5 Unifi AP's. Our objective was to determine which of these entry-level
AP's provided the best value for money, and this is what we found. The first thing we
noticed was the name 'U6-LITE' didn't really accurately represent the AP's capabilities.
When looking at the technical specifications, it's actually more comparable to the UAP-AC-LR.
What does this mean? Firstly, the antennas in all three are similar at around 3dBi but there
are clear differences in transmitter power levels which directly influence distance to the clients.
The U6-LITE uses 48v PoE only, and doesn't ship with an injector. We needed to determine which
of these units provided better overall performance as well as signal coverage on 5GHz. We installed
these units on the ceiling at our offices in an open plan area for the performance test,
and to make things more "real-world", we connected an additional 4 devices but later found this
didn't really influence the results at all. The speed tests were done using Iperf on a WiFi 6
compatible Macbook Pro at around 5 meters away to a cabled Iperf server. This is using the cleanest
possible 80MHz channel at around 50dB signal to noise ratio. We also wanted to see how the
U6-LITE would perform with WiFi 5 clients, so we also ran a separate speed test to another client.
Taking a look at the table, as expected, the U6-LITE outperforms its counterparts when
using WiFi 6 clients by around 20-25%. This is excellent use for clients with compatible devices.
WiFi 5 users however, don't appear to get much benefit from the new chipset on the U6-LITE.
Next up was our signal test where we measured the signal strength using Ubiquiti's WiFiman App. We
measured at the same distance as our performance test and then from a closed room with a single
brick wall in between. This is where we expected the UAP-AC-LR to shine as it's really renowned for
its good antenna design and has been tried and tested in the field for some time now. We are
very surprised to see that the U6-LITE actually outperformed our best-selling Unifi Access Point.
Apart from the higher speeds and better signal, we found the U6-LITE was capable of maintaining
higher data rates at longer distances. This is great for WiFi 6 clients that are further away
but also reduces rate flapping for mobile users. The U6-LITE is a clear winner for us
and knocks the UAP-AC-LR off its perch as the undisputed king of entry-level UAP's.
With both products being similar in price, it makes almost no sense to buy the UAP-AC-LR.
Even if you're not planning on upgrading your clients to WiFi 6, you can future-proof
your network and have a better product for almost the same amount of money.
We hope that you enjoyed our take on Ubiquiti's U6-LITE and we're looking forward to benchmarking
the U6-LR when we get our hands on it. If you like our content, hit that like button
and subscribe to our channel. I'm Tim from Scoop, and thank you so much for watching.