UniFi Access Points - Speed Comparison
Testing the WIFI speed between the Ubiquiti entry-level access points: AP AC Lite (Wifi5), U6+, U7 Lite and the UDM (Wifi5)
For a while now, I've been planning to update my home wireless setup. I've been a Ubiquiti/Unifi user for a long time now and I'm very happy with the stability as well as the features they have added over time. I was still curious to do a quick test and find out how much of a speed difference there is between the old and the new.
My current setup...
I have a Unifi Dream Machine (aka. R2-D2), which has a gateway (aka. router), switch, Unifi controller and Access Point.
There are some limitations, until recently it was not possible to disable the Access Point and as of Unifi Network Controller ver. 9.1.120 it is possible to disable the internal access point by disabling the individual radio, 5GHz and 2.4GHz respectively.
My new setup...
When I first had thoughts about updating I had purchased the U6+, but I got lazy so Ubiquiti came out with a newer entry-level access point called U7 Lite, which does not support the 6GHz, but is still considered as WIFI7... so I bought one as well. I have used my iPhone 15 Pro with the Wifiman app to run all the speed tests.
I will have another, more detailed post with my new setup, but in the meantime I was curious to test out the old and the new access points, including an AC Lite that I had from a couple of years ago and also the one builtin to the UDM. Below are the beautiful results.
To keep the tests consistent I have used the same Wifi channel number, width and the same transmission power. I have swapped them in one by one and did a speed test.
New devices like laptops, tablets and mobile phones, support newer and faster WiFi protocols, at the same time, I was curious about the speed differences for the 2.4GHz band, which most of the IoT devices use with the following results:
The differences here are quite smaller, also I could not create the perfect testing environment so this testing was conducted when other devices used the same band.
Conclusion
I don't think there is a notable difference that you will notice in everyday use. It makes sense to go for the Wifi7 access points if you are now buying into the system or you have some pretty old access points... I think between generations the gains are marginal. I would focus instead on tuning the channels to reduce overlap with other access points and ensuring you have good coverage in terms of access points.
