Ubiquiti - UniFi Express 7

You can use the Express 7 as a tabletop AP very easily. I got 3 and run them like that.

I bought 3 for a mesh system in a 3100 SF trac home. Only unboxed and setup two of three. With two just downstairs the coverage was really weak and the speeds were low. After tinkering with them for a week I sent all 3 back. They couldn't out perform the TP Link XE75 Pros, or TP Link BE63's. Tested Eero 6 and finally settled on a two pack of the Asus BT10's. Two BT10's both downstairs cover our entire home, garage and large backyard. Wasn't impressed.

Don’t listen to him. He doesn’t know. A Unifi Express 7 cost 179€ and include the Wifi AP, the Unifi controller (brain) and connect to your modem. This is all you need and much cheaper that two Deco 50 !

Sorry it wasn’t obvious. Anyway the important fact is that he only need an Unifi Express 7 and it’s damn cheap to step in the Unifi universe of good reliable internet like no other that hypnotise all their clients for life.

He doesn’t need two AP, he said it clearly. Unifi provide the most stable wifi network for IoT of all the AP on the market, even with one VLAN, even in mesh configuration. On top of this you can setup dedicated IoT VLAN and dedicated IoT SSID, use their new object oriented policy management (unique on the market) for the most complex IoT setups. They went that far to have little icons for every gadget on the market in their interface. I know a bit or two, I have +200 IoT devices in my home from Apple, Switchbot, Aqara, Logitech, Eufy, Hue, Govee, and numerous exotic brands. I have been through hell with solutions from Apple, Orbi, Peplink, Meraki, Eero, Huawei and many many more. And only since I am rocking on Unifi I can open my Apple Home app with not a single device error ! At 179€ the Unifi Express 7 is, by far, the best solution for OP and a damn cheap ticket for discovering the “Apple” of networking.

UniFi object policy management allow you to easily pick devices and create group of them that are accessible by your kids (mobile, switch, laptop, smart tv, …) then control (block with optional schedules) access to classes of websites (ex. porn), groups of applications (ex. Social media), specific websites (lol) or specific apps (TikTok). I use it with two teenagers (one study computer sciences, the other polytechnic) and it resisted their hacking tentatives until today. On top of this there is an optional subscription that allows to use Cloudflare to go even further in granularity.

Absolutely. Get and try it for a week. You can always send it back if it doesn’t fit your need. But I am 100% that you will fall in love with Unifi, like all of us.

Believe me, I tried them all. Unifi is the best, easiest, fastest, most reliable solution for Wifi. You can start with a simple Unifi Express 7 : https://eu.store.ui.com/eu/en/products/ux7 Warning, you may end up with a home full of Unifi products and a beautiful rack.

I would return the dream router get the Unifi express series either the regular or the 7s. put one in the cupboard and put another in the house they mesh.

The express is designed to mesh with other expresses. Ive installed a few for people that wiring is not an option.

Yes they can he was asking about a router. The expresses are meant to be meshed together like the tplink decos.

Uniform UX7s ensure no weak links in your mesh. Saving on AP costs now can cost you in performance later.

You’ll need to buy piecemeal, I’ll leave required equipment below for what I’d do. https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/u7-lite https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/ux7 https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/usw-lite-8-poe You’d only need about 1 UX7 and 1-2 U7 Lites. I’d do 1 U7 Lite and see how that performs, you can scale up easily if needed.

First, mesh is bad without a wired backhaul ( [https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/189h7um/mesh\_wifi\_much\_slower\_than\_main\_router/](https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/189h7um/mesh_wifi_much_slower_than_main_router/) ). Just something to know going into it. You really should have all of your APs (access points, the things that send out the Wi-Fi) wired back to a central or "home" controller. If your home has coax or ethernet already run, then get non-mesh wired APs instead. If you're getting mesh, I would look at the Ubiquiti UX7. They are scalable, small, have Wi-Fi 7 at a reasonable-ish price, and can easily do all of the things you mentioned except custom firmware. Not sure what the need is for point 4 in your case.

Juuust switched to Unifi few days ago. Blown away. Ive seen you ask a few people here what there setup is.. whats your current setup? I.e. how many nest wifi points do you have, and are they meshed wired or over wifi?

Hmmm fair. My experience with Unifi has been good (other than initial speed issues with IoT). What ive noticed is the wifi broadcast is fairly powerful, definitely more so compared with Nest wifi pro. I was running 2 nest wifi pros either end of the house. Ground and first floor. Ive now placed one UDR7 fairly central in the house and I great speeds in all rooms. That being said, if you have 3 points you should really wire the points together. I had lots of speed and stability issues at my parents who have a fairly "long" 3 story house with lots of walls. Depends on placement too, the main point was furthest, then another point to the middle, and the last point at the other end of the house. Nest is supposed to mesh to any point, but for some reason mines kept looking for the main point. Wired them up (nest to unmanaged switch, ethernet to each point) and that solved speed and stability issues. Major benefit is it doesn't need to use wireless backhaul (which research at the time suggested takes up a significant enough portion of bandwidth and processing power). Honestly, rather than buy a different system, I would put some effort in and wire the points. Once done, it will definitely be faster but you've also opened yourself up to lots of options (not just unifi kit, but also opportunity to wire more devices as you can place switches at the end of each run).

Couldn't agree more. I got a unifi express 7 this summer and it's been. Muchbetter than my Netgear.

For wireless meshing you should definitely look for 4x4 spatial streams in 5GHz. APs will use 5GHz for the wireless backhaul. When I switched over to Unifi (from Google Wifi), I went with a UX7 and 2x U6 Mesh APs. They were both meshed back to the UX7 instead of hardwired and performance was great, especially for a home network and compared to the Google Wifi APs. I have since added a Lite 8 PoE switch and hardwired one of the U6 Mesh APs and have the second AP wireless meshed to the hardwired AP. I have been very happy with performance, to the point that hardwiring the second AP has become very low priority. The U6E is a great deal. The additional ports would let you hardwire other devices directly to the AP, including a PoE port if you power the AP with PoE++ (or via a PoE++ adapter).