Technology @lemmy.world SamB @lemmy.world 4 mo. ago

Ubiquiti U7 Pro Max WiFi 7 Access Point Teardown: To fan or not to fan

If you are curious whether Ubiquiti ditched the fan on the new U7 Pro Max, well, I have some bad news for you. I opened the device and this is the teardown video.

30 comments

Are Ubiquiti devices still the best value for homelabs and small businesses these days?
- For home, second hand Ubiquity might be. You can get flying saucers taken off from corpo upgrades for dirt cheap.
  
  That's where literally all my stuff comes from. Cameras, switches, APs, so much unifi in this house and I barely paid for any.
- No. TP-Link Omada is usually better and cheaper these days and offers nearly identical features.
  
  And TP Link can be used standalone,the controller is just a gimmick.
  
  For pure networking (not WiFi) Mikrotik is also a reasonable alternative,but requires more knowledge.
- I bought several before knowing what I was getting into. They work well but are designed by people worshiping Apple. Everything is locked into their ecosystem. You can't even ssl into the access point to configure it. You need to run their Java controller app to configure them or worse buy another product (cloud key) just to configure the access points you purchased. Then they try really hard to get you to setup your network admin password on their cloud servers ( they have already had security breaches where the passwords leaked).
  
  For a small businesses that pay someone off-site to manage their network they seem fantastic. But they are the opposite of homelab ethos.
  
  But again, they work really well. The access points do channel strength negotiation automatically every night by talking to each other.
  
  I was able to SSH into mine and I'm running their Docker container with a Unifi Controller instead of a cloud key.
  
  I can ssh into the APs, although I’m not sure about configuring them independent of a controller as I haven’t tried. I use a free google cloud tier to host the controller, which can be managed via web gui and phone app. It may use some Java elements in the controller but it wasn’t hard to set up.
  
  I'd say it's best to only buy routing devices supporting openwrt. Some Ubiquity devices seem compatible, so maybe you are in luck. In my opinion it's just best to stay away from preinstalled commercial software and just install Linux. You get away from the whole process of enshitification, gain long term support and an incredible set of features commercial software will never provide (at a reasonable price) imho.
  
  Don't know why you were downvoted. Everything you said is true.
  
  They bricked 2 of my pro APs with a bad update. Said fuck you after that and decided I'm done with them. I'm still looking for an alternative to the edge router x.

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