Ubiquiti U6-LITE UniFi 6 Lite Access Point

Product Information

I just wanted to compare the old access points with the new Unifi WiFi 6 access points in a real world scenario. airFiber is Ubiquiti's own proprietary custom silicon and implements the most efficient use of licensed and unlicensed-band spectrum – a vital attribute in increasingly crowded RF environments. Featuring a unique dual-antenna design and proprietary self-interference cancellation algorithms, airFiber solutions extract more usable channels out of the available spectrum than any other radio system. airFiber’s built-in configuration tool guides the selection of RF channel bandwidths, transmit power, and other parameters to minimise potential interference and optimise link budgets. Further away, the lower transmit power limits the U6-Lite. The U6-LR offers more performance and range for roughly double the price. I had set the transmit power to high and used channel 6 (which was used the least) to test the 2.4 GHz performance. Setting the transmit power to high can result in the access point over shouting the client. The test was done with a clear line of sight, at a distance of 7 meters. Doubling your channel width increases the noise floor by 3 dB, reducing SNR and your range by around 30% each time.

For the Unifi 6 LR, we can see an almost 100% speed increase compared to the old long-range model. Testing your own network speed Both the AC Lite and 6 Lite are 2×2 MIMO radios, dual band supporting 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. The AC Lite has 3dbi of gain on both antennas with a max output power of 20dBm on both frequencies, whereas the 6 Lite has 2.8dBi of gain on 2.4GHz and 3dBi on 5GHz with a max output power of 23dBm on both frequencies. The U6-LR does offer more performance and range, but it is also almost double the price of the U6-Lite. Deciding between them depends on a lot of factors, especially if you’re comparing two U6-Lites vs. one U6-LR. If maximum range and speed is your top priority, step up to the U6-LR. If you’re unsure or have a smaller area to cover, the U6-Lite is a good default option.The rate of overhead varies with modulation and coding rate. With a strong signal, less redundancy is needed, and throughput improves. It’s always a tradeoff between redundancy/integrity and throughput. These same improvements are also mentioned on firmware version 5.60.1, which is the most current release candidate as of May 2021. I haven’t re-run these tests with that version yet. I need to explain a little bit how I tested the speed of the access points. Measuring the speed of a wireless network connection really depends on many factors. Transmit power settings, the distance between an access point and client, wireless network congestion (if you live in an urban environment, then the 2.4 GHz channels are probably crowded), the wireless adapter of the client device, etc.

For the next test, I switched over to my MacBook Pro and it’s 3 spatial stream Wi-Fi 5 radio. This is an interesting test because it shows the impact of an additional spatial stream, and removes the highest-end modulation and longer symbol duration of Wi-Fi 6. This is a more even playing field, and the U6-LR and AC-HD rightfully pull ahead due to their 4x4 MIMO radios. In my home network, I was already using the normal Unifi Lite and LR model, so in this article, we will compare the old with the new models. I have done different tests to compare the speed and signal strength of the access points, in different scenarios. Wifi 6 ImprovementsThere’s also the promise of Wi-Fi 6E on the horizon, which is a more meaningful upgrade than the 10-20% speed improvement you can expect from upgrading a good Wi-Fi 5 AP. That said, Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are only relevant when you have clients that support them. Wi-Fi 6E devices are starting to roll out in 2021, but it will be a while until it’s common for most home users. If you are happy with your Wi-Fi network, it’s probably a smart idea to hold off on upgrading. If you’re looking for an upgrade now, the WiFi 6 Lite and WiFi 6 Long-Range are two good options. So I have used iPerf3 to measure the throughput of the access points and used only a single thread. I connect a notebook directly to the switch and used another notebook with an Intel AX201 WiFi 6 Adapter to measure the speed. It only has a 2×2 antenna, so it won’t fully benefit from the 4×4 mu-MIMO radio of the U6-LR.

Here you can really see the performance improvement of the new U6 LR. The speedtest are done on 40Mhz for the 2.4Ghz band and 80Mhz for the 5Ghz band. The performance improvement of the U6 lite is between 20% and 30%. Let’s first start with the size of the new access points. The new lite access point, the U6 Lite, has now the same size as the nanoHD. This means that you can use the covers from the nanoHD on the new U6 lite which is great when it comes to placing the access point insight. We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen. To test only the speed of the Wi-Fi connection between the client and the AP, my iPerf server was connected over gigabit Ethernet to my Switch Lite 8. I primarily used my dedicated pfSense box for this, but I also used my PC and laptop depending on what I was testing. To specify which AP and which band was being used, I made an AP group for each AP, and swapped them in and out as needed. I then stepped through the different channel widths and bands, letting the connection stabilize before beginning my tests. I ran all of my tests with multiple TCP streams, and occasionally reversed the direction as a point of comparison. These tests ran for 60 seconds, so a typical client command would look like: iperf3 -c 172.25.10.5 -P 8 -t 60Our brands include: Cambium Networks , Ubiquiti , Grandstream , BDCOM , MikroTik , Siklu , Tenda , Ring , TP-Link , Mimosa , Ignitenet , Acconet , Edge-corE , Radwin , RF elements , Ajax The size of the U6 LR on the other hand is increased a lot compared to the old model. It’s the same size as the old Unifi HD access point. The new long-range access point is splash and dust resistant (IP54 rated), which means you can place it semi-outdoors under a porch for example. You can also run the test with multiple threads, which can increase the total speed that you can get, to do this use the -P switch: iperf3 -c 192.168.1.10 -P 5 -t 10 Wrapping Up