First UniFi Wi-Fi 7 Entry Level Scores on Affordability

The market launch of Ubiquiti’s first Wi-Fi 7 product of their UniFi lineup has been hotly anticipated since its FCC filings grew to become public late final 12 months. In contrast to conventional shopper gear, Ubiquiti’s UniFi lineup of software-defined networking merchandise targets prosumers, companies, and enterprises by splitting the performance of a conventional dwelling Wi-Fi router into separate gateways, switches, and entry factors. This permits end-users to replace totally different elements at totally different deadlines based mostly on necessities. This is smart for a lot of large-area deployments, because the tempo of technological developments within the wi-fi house and wired house are fairly totally different.

Ubiquiti’s UniFi lineup is usually not identified for being on the cutting-edge, which makes it appropriate for eventualities the place stability and scalability are extra vital than uncooked efficiency. Wi-Fi 7 merchandise have been around for a while, even from distributors working in the identical house as Ubiquiti Networks. Ubiquiti is taking a really totally different strategy to Wi-Fi 7 by introducing an inexpensive mannequin first up.

The U7 Professional, priced at simply $189, eschews the 4×4 radio configurations driving up the worth of different Wi-Fi 7 APs / wi-fi routers. As an alternative, it opts for 2×2 radios in 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands, permitting it to retail at a sub-$200 value level. This ceiling-mount AP covers as much as 1500 sq. ft, and helps greater than 300 shoppers. It’s geared up with a single 2.5 GbE port and makes use of the identical port for energy. A PoE+ change is required on the uplink facet, because the U7 Professional has a most energy consumption of 21W.

The 2×2 configuration in every radio permits as much as 688 Mbps on the two.4 GHz band, 2882 Mbps on the 5 GHz band, and as much as 5765 Mbps on the 6 GHz band. The 6 GHz band helps the excessive throughput due to using 240 and 320 MHz-wide channels as per the 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7) customary.

The UniFi U7 Professional makes use of a Qualcomm Wi-Fi 7 chipset – probably the Networking Pro 620 sequence with the IPQ9554 WiSoC (quad-core Cortex-A73 @ 1.5 GHz) and the QCN9272 / 6272 Waikiki sequence of radios. There’s an Immersive Dwelling Wi-Fi 7 platform from Qualcomm with related radio help for six streams, however utilizing a quad-core Cortex A53 @ 1.5 GHz. We’ve got reached out to Ubiquiti to verify the precise platform, although our educated guess leans in the direction of the Networking Professional 620.

The U7 Professional requires both a UniFi Console working UniFi OS v3.2+ with UniFi Community utility v8.0.7 or newer, or a self-hosted controller working UniFi Community v8.0.7+. Bluetooth is notably absent from the specs, which can be an obstacle to some customers who’ve adopted Ubiquiti’s line of Bluetooth-enabled sensors that depend on APs with BT support to combine with the remainder of the UniFi community. One other side to bear in mind is that the 2×2 operation within the 5 GHz band implies that the theoretically obtainable bandwidth in that spectrum (2882 Mbps) is decrease than the equal within the U6 Professional (which has a 4×4 configuration in the identical band for 4.8 Gbps). This will affect deployment alternative based mostly on the combo of consumer units anticipated to connect with the AP. Multi-Hyperlink Operation (MLO), which is likely one of the key benefits of Wi-Fi 7 over Wi-Fi 6, can be scheduled to seem solely in a later firmware replace though the product is accessible for buy at present.