Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Long-Range Access Point U6-LR

Product Information

Doubling your channel width increases the noise floor by 3 dB, reducing SNR and your range by around 30% each time. The old LR were already impressive, but the new LR impresses me even more. It sure is big and heavy though. 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

Whether you own a motorhome, van or emergency vehicle, Poynting antennas can bring you the stable and reliable connection you need to stay in touch no matter the conditions or circumstances. Here is your buying guide to find the perfect model for you! The quoted wireless specification is given as the maximum radio performance. Achievable range and throughput will vary depending on the regional regulations where the radio is deployed. It is really important to emphasise that bolstering signal levels by deploying multiple Access Points will provide huge benefit to those currently running a single Wi-Fi router, irrespective of whether these are Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6. Choosing Wi-Fi 6 provides the ‘icing on the cake’ for those deploying multiple Access Points. However, don’t think that the use of single UniFi 6 Long Range Access Point will deliver improved performance over operating multiple Wi-Fi 5 Access Points. 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 Improvements Again, keep in mind that these tests didn’t show the full potential of the access points. They are capable of even higher throughputs when using multiple clients (or multiple threads) or if you have a client with a WiFi 6 3×3 adapter, for example.

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The throughput at 30 feet was 238Mbps up and 121Mbps downstream, but things get a bit problematic at 45 feet and farther. That because the attenuation shot up to 79dB and the throughput was barely decent, 43.9Mbps upstream and 12.7Mbps downstream. At 70 feet, I could no longer see the network, so it’s 0Mbps. Before reaching conclusions, I just assumed that it’s the fault of interference (which did ramp up after 30 feet) and it’s natural when using the 160MHz channel bandwidth on 5GHz. The Unifi 6 Lite and the U6 LR are the first WiFi 6 access point from Ubiquiti. And even though they are both WiFi 6 access points, they are completely different when it comes to size, specifications, performance, and usability.

Ubiquiti's UniFi WiFi 6 Long-Range (U6-LR) is a high-performance Access Point leveraging advanced WiFi 6 technology to provide powerful wireless coverage to enterprise environments.It delivers an aggregate radio rate of up to 3.0 Gbps with 5 GHz (4x4 MU-MIMO and OFDMA) and 2.4 GHz 4x4 MIMO radios. The U6-LR seamlessly blends into any environment, and is capable of being mounted in indoor and semi-outdoor environments (IP54 rated). Overall, we highly recommend the Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Long Range Access Point – our Best Access Point For 2021.The curious thing is that the industry wants to push us now towards WiFi 6E. Slow down, guys, you’re not going to pull this off in the WiFi networking market, although I applaud your effort. I know people that are still using 802.11n (WiFi 4) routers, so the adoption at the home-user level is really not that great; neither is at the SMB or enterprise level because the equipment costs money, the monitoring and the management for new hardware costs money and it’s not worth it upgrading every couple of years. Wireless Test (5GHz) Without the advantage of 4 spatial streams or Wi-Fi 6 enhancements, the U6-Lite falls behind. I couldn’t get my MacBook Pro to associate to a 40 MHz channel on any of these APs, so I excluded those results from this test. I believe Apple uses the “ fat channel intolerant” setting on their devices. As always, 5 GHz is the best option for speed, and 40 MHz channels on 2.4 GHz should be avoided in most situations. Ubiquiti makes great access points with their Unifi line. They have the best value for money in my opinion, so I was really waiting for their new WiFi 6 Access Points. With the Unifi 6 Lite and the Unifi 6 LR now generally available, is it a good time to take a closer look. Unifi 6 Lite (left) and Unifi 6 Long Range (right) Even if very high maximum radio link speeds are claimed, real throughput speeds may be limited by the Ethernet connection to the Access Point. Ubiquiti claims that its UniFi 6 Long Range Access Point delivers a ‘radio rate’ of up to 2.4 Gbps in the 5 GHz band. However, since the UniFi 6 Long Range Access Point is equipped with a single Gigabit Ethernet connection, the maximum throughput – determined by the speed limitation of the Gigabit Ethernet connection itself – is about 940 Mbps.

Recently, we helped a neighbour configure a Wi-Fi router from Sky, and realised just how much more control you get with the UniFi system. The Sky Wi-Fi router only provided the opportunity to select non-DFS 5 GHz channels with 40 GHz and 80 GHz channel bandwidths, while the UniFi Controller allows you to set a raft of configuration options with the UniFi 6 Long Range Access Point, including: U6-LR is a high-performance Access Point leveraging advanced WiFi 6 technology to provide powerful wireless coverage to enterprise environments. Next, I detached the metallic part of the case, leaving the antenna assembly still connected to the PCB. Flipping it upside down allowed me to identify the dual-core 1GHz Qualcomm IPQ5018, there are 4GB of flash NAND memory from Mouser Electronics (THGBMNG5D1LBAIL VD6963 2147KAE) and 8MB flash memory from MXIC (25U6432F). Ubiquiti U6-Pro Teardown. Speeds increase for both Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 with increasing channel bandwidths. While the UniFi 6 LR Access Point supports 160 MHz channel bandwidths, the use of such wide bandwidths may not be possible in practice. Firstly, many Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 client devices only support a maximum channel bandwidth of 80 MHz. Secondly, if you are deploying multiple Access Points (and we strongly recommend that you do this), there will be insufficient non-overlapping 5 GHz channels to deploy multiple Access Points using 160 MHz channel bandwidths without Access Points interfering with each other. Realistically, 80 MHz channels are the maximum that could be achieved in many domestic deployments, and that is with DFS channels. Each of these have profound implications for the performance of the UniFi 6 LR Access Point, as we will now discuss.Speeds increase for both Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 with the number of MIMO spatial streams on client devices. Even though the UniFi 6 LR Access Point is equipped with 4×4 MIMO, maximum speeds to individual client devices will be determined by the MIMO capabilities of those client devices. A client device with 3×3 MIMO will deliver significantly greater speeds than one with 2×2 MIMO. However, many devices (such as modern mobile phones and laptops) only support 2×2 MIMO. Compared with Ubiquiti’s nanoHD Wi-Fi 5 Access Point, for little more money, the UniFi 6 Long Range Access Point provides future proofing, noticeably higher speeds with Wi-Fi 6 devices and improved range. For anyone looking for a new Access Point now, opting for the UniFi 6 Long Range Wi-Fi Access Point is a no-brainer. While Wi-Fi 6 is more about efficiency improvement rather than speed enhancement, we still measured significant throughput increases. With modern Apple devices (equipped with 2×2 MIMO), we measured real, close-range throughputs of over 900 Mbps, compared with about 640 Mbps achieved with the nanoHD Access Point. In other words, throughputs nearly match Gigabit Ethernet, which is a very impressive result. So, optimally deploying several UniFi 6 Long Range devices in a home or business would finally do full justice to the fastest ultrafast broadband connections.