Ubiquiti UniFi nanoHD Compact 802.11ac Wave2 MU-MIMO Enterprise Access Point (UAP-NanoHD-US)

First I got a $400 consumer grade wifi 6 wi-fi router, it was shaped like a space ship and it was a piece of crap, there's some fatal flaw in the radio module such that you get extremely bad 5G performance sometimes unless you have perfect signal right next to the router. Then I swapped over to this thing, honestly, signal strength isn't that strong, I had to place it in the right spot to cover the house, but it did cover the house all by itself. This thing is built like a tank, the entire base is one solid piece of cast metal for incredible quality and heat dissipation. Wifi performance is just solid and consistent, your speed goes down reasonably with signal strength, no sudden drop-off. Just to make it clear for people who are confused, this thing DOES work all by itself, HOWEVER you need to have a computer with hard wire to set this up, and use the management interface. The Unifiy controller thing they talk about is just that management interface, the wifi WILL work without it, but you can't change any settings or see any stats without something running that software.

Update 12/7/18 - Ubiquiti has been great about pushing new firmware every few days with a ton of bug fixes in each release. Since the ~4.0 release, this AP has been rock solid and I'm comfortable recommending it now to anyone looking for a top of the line AP in small form factor. There are still a few quirks and limitations surrounding edge case features like wireless uplink but the core functionality of the AP works great and all my wireless devices have no trouble now getting and staying connected. If you have any devices that can take advantage of the 4x4 MIMO, the speeds you can achieve are incredible. I also want to reiterate how great the Ubiquiti engineering staff is. They are highly engaged on the support forums and are always looking for feedback on bugs and feature suggestions that are more often than not implemented sometimes days or weeks later. I'm really invested in this ecosystem and would recommend these products to anyone who has a solid networking background and likes to tinker. I've been working on cutting my home network over to Ubiquiti gear and was excited to get my hands on the spiritual successor to the UAP-AC-PRO. I've read that Ubiquiti gear requires a fair amount of tinkering to get everything just right and I'd say that is a fair statement after wrestling with the nanoHD, USG and the USW switches. The nanoHD is apparently still in the early stages of firmware development and has a fair number of bugs and instability compared to the other APs in the fleet. I have had a hell of a time trying to keep my devices on the 5GHz band and found that the UBNT forums are flooded with users with the same issue. I've had to resort to loading up the latest beta firmware just to stabilize things, but it still isn't perfect. Support has been great so far, they really want to stabilize as quickly as possible but I cannot give this thing a thumbs up in its current state. If you are in a saturated RF environment, I'd recommend you stick with the stable UAP-AC-PRO for now and give the nanoHD some more time to cook.

Products were as expected, properly packaged and rapid shipment. UniFi products are remarkable.

Love the NanoHD!! Very solid device and high performance at the same price point as “high end” consumer grade garbage. I was getting 15-17 ms ping times with my old router and once I hooked up the nanohd my ping times dropped drastically to 2-3 ms. It’s low profile and was super easy to setup and I really like the interface and dashboard features and statistics it provides as well.

Summary: - DFS channels, so you can use channels your neighbors probably dont have (yey for clear channels). - Very short range. These are meant for small coverage areas, like 1 or two rooms max. - Low receive gain. In terms of radio performance, they can shout, but can't hear very well. - The low gain and short range is not always a bad thing, its great for reducing interference and focusing wifi in a small area. That is a good thing for high density areas, but don't expect any long range or whole house coverage. - Great overall AP, but you will VERY likely need more than one if you want respectable performance for home or business. This is a great multi-user AP, however if you use it for home, there are things you should know. It is short range. To be specific, it has very low gain (likely no gain or negative gain). This is only a bad thing if you are trying to cover a large area, or multiple rooms in a home. It turns out this is a good thing for reducing noisy neighborhood interference (which I have a LOT of). It is true that the NanoHD has shorter range than most consumer APs out there. On the Unifi forums, many people talk about this, but the Unifi fans will assure you the NanoHD is a "good radio". It is great actually, as long as the short range and low dbm is OK for you. It's receive dbm is about 10dbm (or more) lower than most other APs, including fellow Unifi APs like the mesh and U6-LR. It is even way lower than the old archer A7. Apparently that is not a problem, as it still performs well like that in high density environments. The TX and RX rates dont hit max on most devices, so it can be slower than other APs for single user downloads. This is a known issue, where a wifi 5 device that can reach 866Mbps Rates will not maintain the full rate. This is likely not a problem you will notice or care about as it wont affect your ability to stream and stuff... however it is annoying to me because just about every other AP I've had can reach full speed rates. Again on the Unifi forums, the pros dont mind this nuance because although the Nano is somewhat "slow" for single users, it is "fast" overall if you consider the aggregate performance of lots of concurrent users. This AP supports DFS channels, which makes it worth it by itself. Apparently DFS channels can be problematic if you live by an airport or have lots of radar traffic in your area, but for me this was the solution to all my interference problems. The clear channels and small cell size (range) actually solved my biggest wifi problems, which had to do with all my neighbors and their millions of wifi devices causing lots of interference. The Unifi APs including the NanoHD have great roaming and support the newest roaming standards. The low range and slightly lower receive sensitivity actually helps roaming. Your wifi devices are more likely to pick a stronger AP under these conditions, which makes roaming smooth and effective. I have a few mobile devices and VoIP devices that can roam seamlessly between multiple NanoHDs. This is one benefit to smaller range/cell size. Of course you need multiple APs to benefit from roaming, but if you go with Nanos, you will likely need more than one anyway. Q&A: Will this solve all of your wifi issues? Yes, most likely. Will you be happy with 2 or 3 in your home? Yea, they get the job done and have great roaming. Will you be happy with 1 for full home coverage? Nah, you need more than 1 if your house has walls in it. Will you be happy if you are a wifi nerd and love internet? Absolutely not, we wifi nerds are never satisfied with wifi or internet performance, but it will keep the wifi nerds busy and you may still have fun with it. Is there something better than the NanoHD at the same price? Absolutely. If you want to stick with Unifi, the U6-Lite is cheaper and faster than the Nano for single user speeds. The U6-LR is the same price and blows the nano away for range and speed. At the end of the day, its a 5 star product that will improve/fix just about any older/outdated wifi deployment.