Ubiquiti AmpliFi Mesh Routers – HD & Instant Reviewed
Mesh routers are quickly becoming the hot new thing in networking, with kits from Netgear – their Orbi line I’ve checked out before, and even the likes of Google with their Google WiFi kits, being pretty popular. For those of you who know about networking, you will have undoubtedly heard of Ubiquiti, likely for their Wireless Access Points. Now though, they’ve got their own mesh router kits, the HD and Instant, and this video is all about them.
Let’s run you through what a mesh network is first. Basically, it’s multiple routers, all connected together as if they were one device, but since they are spread apart, you get the benefit of much better WiFi coverage, and because they aren’t your standard ISP router, they might even speed up your connection too.
Right so now you know what they are, lets see what you get for each. Starting with the more expensive HD kit, you get a cube router with a nice big touch sensitive display that shows the time and date, your internet usage and speeds, and the IP address of the router along with how many connected devices you have. It uses USB-C for power, and has 1 gigabit ethernet port as your “WAN” or internet connection, and another 4 for your local network to connect your devices like PCs or smart TVs to.
You also get 2 MeshPointHD devices in the kit, which are your WiFi signal boosters, effectively. They plug straight into the wall with basically no other outputs, but you can position the antenna to get the best signal for you.
Moving over to the instant kit, this is a good bit cheaper – around half the price in fact – but only comes with one “satellite”, so won’t cover quite as large an area. These boxes are both the same size, with the router having a small, black and white, touch sensitive screen on the front, and an extra gigabit ethernet port on the back for your internet connection. They both use USB-C for power and have one ethernet port each.
Setup is the same for both, while you can do it on a desktop, they really want you to use their app and so that’s what I’ll show here. To set it up, you connect to the temporary WiFi connection it sets up, give your WiFi a name and password, then open the AmpliFi app, put that password in, and then you are good to go.
I’d recommend doing any updates it suggests immediately, but once that’s done and it says your satellites are connected, you can leave it as is if you like. If you do want to tinker with anything, like say putting in “bridge mode” which means it just acts like a WiFi access point, you can do that. You can also change settings for the WiFi, internet connection if you don’t need a modem, or a fair few other settings too.
So, how good are they? Well obviously the main pull for these is WiFi, so lets test the signal strength around my house. The HD kit does the best job, since you have 2 extra satellite devices around your house, and has the strongest signal out of the two – and even my Netgear Orbi kit.
The instant kit still does a great job, and is plenty for this small-to-medium sized house, but does fall off a little bit towards the back of the house since the router and satellite are both middle and front. Both kits seem to handle switching between the access points a lot faster and smoother than Netgear’s Orbi kit, which is quite a big deal in terms of usability.
When it comes to absolutely hammering the connection, it still isn’t quite as fast between the satellite and the router as an ethernet cable is, but with the instant kit you do have the option to use ethernet as the backbone, instead of wireless, which greatly improves the speed between them. I wouldn’t say it’s a massive issue though, nor is it ‘required’.
So, would i put these on my desk? Well, in general, yes. The instant kit is probably where I’d put my money, if I didn’t have quite a specific use case, which is that I need more ethernet ports than a single one from the router, so I’d have to get a switch on top of this which is a bit of a pain. The HD kit is great for larger properties, especially if you only care about WiFi, but I need ethernet upstairs and only having plugs that give WiFi is annoying – for my specific use case. In general though, I’d be happy to recommend these kits, and actually probably over the Orbi, by just how smooth they are to transition.
HD Kit: https://techteamgb.co.uk/amplifihd
Instant: https://techteamgb.co.uk/amplifiinstant
Products shown provided by: Ubiquiti
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