Elevating Your Wireless Network: Why I Chose the Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Lite

Needing to improve WiFi coverage across my house, I explored access points. In this review I cover how I settled on the Ubiquiti UniFi 6 and my reflections on the purchase.

These days high quality WiFi is critical. Some of us are working from home, others have families streaming videos and gaming online. Most of us have an ever growing number of WiFi enabled devices, from wearables to connected dishwashers, security cameras to smart TVs. 

Most Internet Service Providers will provide a home router. There is a huge amount of variance in these devices. Some providers will invest in the router, as part of their marketing to attract new customers – ‘WiFi guarantee’ etc. Others however will ship the cheapest device they can to get you online. 

A common problem is broadband contract renewals. You typically only get a new router when you take out a contract with a new provider. Many people stay with the same supplier for years, often put off by switching costs, hassle and perceived risks in not having connectivity when switching. 

In practice, unless you are switching physical connections you won’t face any issues. Most providers rely on Openreach to provide the line, hence the switch will only take you as long as it takes to plug in a new router.

If it does go wrong, rules in the UK now mean that you’ll be financially compensated. I had this recently when swapping from Virgin Media to a provider using Openreach. Openreach were unable to install the new line on their first try; and it took them a few weeks before they could come back and run a new cable. I was compensated on my new contract which more than covered leaving the existing Virgin Media line active. I still had connectivity and I made a nice profit each day! 

Old hardware can hamper performance. Performance won’t necessarily drop off, but any newer technology bought into the home won’t be operating at peak performance. A iPhone 15 will support WiFi-6, with the Pro and Max models supporting WiFi-6E. If your router only supports WiFi-4 then you simply won’t be able to make best use of the speeds on offer.

In optimal conditions WiFi-6 will provide 9.6Gpbs and WiFi-4 600Mbps. If you have the median UK broadband speed of 73Mbps then the WiFi protocol won’t make a significant difference to you. As long as your WiFi is faster than your broadband you won’t be limited. In reality your home is not an optimal environment, so you should go faster if you can. You’ll have interference from devices, yours and your neighbours, and you’ll likely have areas in your home where you don’t get a strong signal. 

There are a few ways you can improve your WiFi performance. Many providers will allow you to swap swap out the provided router for your own. This can be an easy way to improve performance.

Some providers may restrict you to their device however offer a modem only mode. This mode allows your purchases router to perform all the traffic management in your network with the provider’s router simply providing the Internet connection. When I was with Virgin Media this was my choice. I used the Virgin Media Hub in modem only mode, connecting this to a separate router I had purchased. This still allowed the improvement in WiFi performance but made sure I was still following the provider’s T&Cs.

Alternatively you can look to purchase an access point to provide wider coverage using your existing router. For me, I’m locked to the new provider’s router and modem mode is not a supported option. Adding an access point (AP) to increase range and performance is my best bet. Even with this option you still have choices with the setup. For example you could turn off the WiFi on your router, relying solely on the access point(s) to provide or WiFi coverage. Most people will rely on the AP to provide an extension of coverage vs a replacement. 

I’m fortunate enough to have ethernet connectivity in a few places around my home. This makes shopping for an access point pretty straight forward. 

There are a plethora of brands of networking devices to pick from, however Ubiquiti was one I’d heard good things about. Whilst their range is probably a bit extreme for most users, they offer good price for performance. They have a simple and effective set and forget setup, with the ability to get into the technical weeds if that’s your thing. Ubiquiti are based in the US – so perhaps fewer fears over long term quality vs Chinese devices. They offer a number of devices in the home office to enterprise spectrum. 

Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Range

Ubiquiti offer a range of WiFi 6 enabled devices, many take the form of a round disk-like unit that you can optionally wall mount. These felt like they would fit my home without looking too out of place. 

Lite: Entry level, suitable for more home users and the physically smallest of the range. Uses WiFi 4 for the 2.4 GHz range. 

Plus: An upgraded version of the Lite, with WiFi 6 on both the 2.4 GHz and 5GHz ranges. 

Pro: The flagship device with the option to plug in other accessories. 

Long Range: Designed to cover wider expanses at the trade off of requiring more power. The most expensive of the line up. 

After a bit of deliberation I went for the lower end of the spectrum device, the Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Lite. I was sceptical that a single device alongside my router would cover the entire house, hence I thought I might end up buying two. Whilst the Lite is the least capable of the range, it’s the cheapest and it’s still probably overkill for all but the most extreme users. Given my Internet speed caps out at 70Mbps the 1200Mbps offered at peak performance by the Lite felt more than enough to cover my household’s needs. 

One thing to note is that these devices get their power via the ethernet cable. This is pretty slick on the end you plug the AP into. It’s a single cable to do everything, however unless your router provides PoE you’ll need to buy a PoE Injector. These devices are pretty cheap and simply take an ethernet cable in one end and provide a powered ethernet port on the other.

For me this simply means the cable from the router plugs into the bottom of the PoE injector, along with a power lead. The out port of the PoE injector plugs into the socket on the wall. On the far end, the Ubiquiti AP plugs into an ethernet cable that plugs into the now powered ethernet socket.

The name ‘injector’ here makes a lot of sense, you simply inject power onto the ethernet cable. I went with the same brand, the Ubiquiti U-POE-AF adaptor – it’s single port. If you want to power more than one AP in this way, I suggest you purchase a POE Switch. Note this is a standard protocol so you don’t need to stay on brand, you can mix and match.

Should I get an extra AP in future, to perhaps increase coverage in the garden, I’d likely buy a TP-Link PoE Switch like the LS105GP. This is a 5 port switch with 4 PoE ports hence would support 4 APs with one port to connect to the router. It’s Gigabit ,so won’t slow down your network, and supports 65W across the PoE ports. This is more than enough to support the 9W max power required for the U6+. 

Setup was an absolute breeze. Simply plug in the device, follow the instructions in app to connect to your existing WiFi network and off you go. The app is great, allowing you to configure everything including turning off the blue light so it doesn’t keep you awake at night! Your devices can now connect and roam between your AP and router, completely seamless to you. It’s recommended you locate the device as high as possible, so for me it’s on a shelf in an upstairs room. 

Whilst the Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Lite wasn’t a cheap purchase, I’ve not touched it since setup. My WiFi performance is much better than it was previously and I can access the WiFi with a good signal strength anywhere in the home. Critically for me, I can also access the WiFi from my car. It’s not too far away from the house but given I live in a poor area for phone reception, it’s pretty important to have WiFi working when setting the directions prior to setting off.

Ubiquiti UniFi 6: Recommendation

If you are looking for an access point, I recommend the Ubiquiti range. I’d probably not go any lower than the WiFi 6 models, even though the WiFi 5 devices look cheap. WiFi 6 is increasingly becoming the default hence I’d use that as the benchmark if you plan on keeping this setup for a while.

Ubiquiti also offer a WiFi 7 range, although you won’t find many consumer devices capable of this to date, and I’d expect these prices to drop over time. Whilst I went for the Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Lite – I’d recommend the Ubiquiti UniFi 6+ now. It’s almost the same price and offers higher antenna gain which will improve coverage. Any models above the plus are probably overkill for the vast majority of users. If you want to make the most of your broadband especially if you have fibre, go Ubiquiti. 

You can browser the Ubiquiti UniFi range on the Ubiquiti Store.