Ubiquiti Networks UniFi AP-AC-Lite

[porina]

Manufacturer's product page: https://www.ui.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-lite/

 

Starting with the device itself, it is a small round shape, with a blue ring faintly lit up when it is working normally (less obvious than the stock image above). On the back is a single RJ45 socket and it takes PoE. It comes bundled with a PoE power injector in case you're not using a PoE enabled switch. The only control on the unit is a reset hole which is recessed. I've haven't needed to use it. In operation it only gets slightly warm, so it doesn't use much power. I didn't notice any noise from the unit when it was new. In recent months I have noticed something like coil whine from it, which can be heard if there are no other noises in the area. The unit used to be located in my front room, but I moved it into my kitchen because of this noise.

 

I bought mine in October 2018 but see it is still offered for sale new today. I bought it because I was having problems with my "gaming" router and had to revert back to my ISP router, and the wifi at the time was only on the congested 2.4 GHz band. I wanted a good 5 GHz connection, and chose this.

 

I have a modern (=small) house in the UK. With the unit located in the middle of the ground floor, I have good signal in all areas of the house and garden.

 

So far so good? What's the interface like for configuration? Here is where I have some mild reservations. 

 

 

To use it, first you have to create an online account. Yes, welcome to cloud connected devices. You can't configure this "offline", or at least it wasn't obvious there was any way to do so when I originally set this up. You also need to install a software client on a PC. See replies below for update.

 

Once you get through all that, above is the main dashboard. Note I'm only using a single access point on my home network. UniFi also make routers, switches etc. If you have those, or multiple thereof, they can all be managed through this interface. Since I don't have any of those, I will look only at the AP part.

 

 

Going to the AP page, it will show you your devices (I only have one) and in my case, it offered a firmware update. You can choose to update a specific one, or do a rolling upgrade of all available. For bigger deployments, that later feature could be more interesting.

 

 

The other page I have shows the clients using the AP. In my case, this is my mobile, my Android tablet, and my iPad. 

 

Not shown, but there are many pages where you can look up details of devices, what frequency bands are in use where, as well as the usual settings. Apart from setting up the SSID and passkey, I don't think I needed to change anything.

 

Basically, I rarely ever go into this software interface. I don't know how old my firmware is before the update, but "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". 

 

I've not run any performance testing on it, since it mainly serves my mobile devices they're not the greatest demands of bandwidth. The interest for me was to have a good and reliable connection, and it doesn't disappoint in that case. I don't recall getting any unexpected disconnections while in or around the house.

 

Would I buy it today? I'm not sure what the competition is now, given nearly 2 years have passed since I got this. Maybe there is something faster with newer revisions of wifi are available now, if you wanted to future resist a bit more. Still worth a consideration if you want a good connection.

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

You can set this up without an account, you just need to download the UniFi Controller, run it on a PC to adopt the AP, set it up and then you can leave it. 

 

I have a VM that runs my UniFi controller because I have mutliple switches, APs and a gateway, but don't have a Ubiquiti Account, it's all done via the local network. I use the software a fair bit for monitoring and management.

 

I do wish they'd allow you to just set it up standalone without the need for the controller at all though. You can uninstall the controller once it's set up and it'll work fine, so not sure why you can't do it through the AP directly. 

[Dujith]

Not sure where you got that you have to use an online account. I deploy unifi alot and till this day (yesterday to be exact)

i never had to use the online account. Last week i deployed 2 at a site with no internet. Its not like Sonos or something like that where your forced.

 

In the setup you can simply skip that step if it asks for your unifi acount.

I wouldnt call it cloud either as connecting it to your ubnt account just makes it so you can reach them from anywhere.

 

Anyway, without being stuck on licences or fees there is no real "pro" competitor. They earn money by selling the hardware,

and NOT licenses which is a big draw for me.

 

You can mix and match newer and older models so no reason to switch to another brand for something stronger. Get a HD or whatever you need.

 

Like you said yourself. Its a set and forget type of deal. Very stable and easy to manange.

 

ps. You can disable the blue light. Most of the times i dont cuz i get complaints that "they dont work"  

[Oshino Shinobu]

1 minute ago, Dujith said:

Not sure where you got that you have to use an online account. I deploy unifi alot and till this day (yesterday to be exact)

i never had to use the online account. Last week i deployed 2 at a site with no internet. Its not like Sonos or something like that where your forced.

 

In the setup you can simply skip that step if it asks for your unifi acount.

I wouldnt call it cloud either as connecting it to your ubnt account just makes it so you can reach them from anywhere.

 

Anyway, without being stuck on licences or fees there is no real "pro" competitor. They earn money by selling the hardware,

and NOT licenses which is a big draw for me.

 

You can mix and match newer and older models so no reason to switch to another brand for something stronger. Get a HD or whatever you need.

 

Like you said yourself. Its a set and forget type of deal. Very stable and easy to manange.

To add onto this, they do have some licensing, which is relatively recent I believe. They have cloud controller licenses, which some of their products are coming with a 1 to 3 year cloud hosted controller. 

[porina]

4 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

You can set this up without an account, you just need to download the UniFi Controller, run it on a PC to adopt the AP, set it up and then you can leave it. 

 

2 minutes ago, Dujith said:

Not sure where you got that you have to use an online account. I deploy unifi alot and till this day (yesterday to be exact)

i never had to use the online account. Last week i deployed 2 at a site with no internet. Its not like Sonos or something like that where your forced.

Thanks both for the input. I have edited my post accordingly.

 

As said I bought this nearly two years ago, and I don't recall the software offering me the option to go local at the time. If there was a way to run it locally, I would have chosen it. So either I'm blind, or it wasn't offered as an option at the time.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, porina said:

 

Thanks both for the input. I have edited my post accordingly.

 

As said I bought this nearly two years ago, and I don't recall the software offering me the option to go local at the time. If there was a way to run it locally, I would have chosen it. So either I'm blind, or it wasn't offered as an option at the time.

Maybe it depends how you go about setting it up. You can download the SDN directly from their site, but their set-up process in the instructions may point you towards setting up and account. 

 

Still, you can just disable the cloud access and have it function locally without remote access that way. I have cloud access disabled and instead go through my own VPN as I have more control over that. 

[Dujith]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

To add onto this, they do have some licensing, which is relatively recent I believe. They have cloud controller licenses, which some of their products are coming with a 1 to 3 year cloud hosted controller. 

O yes, i forgot about the "elite" option  But since thats not available in the EU i never bothered with it.

Even then, isnt it more like renting an online controller? But i think they are stepping away from that as the Dream machines have everything included nowadays.