Ubiquiti U6-LITE UniFi 6 Lite Access Point

Product Information

Analogy: Instead of sending “H E L L O”, Wi-Fi devices send “Hotel Echo Lima Lima Oscar”. The receiving device can then understand the transmission even if a few characters are dropped. With no obstructions, you will see a 6 dB drop in signal strength every time you double your distance from the router. Using 5 GHz at close range, the U6-Lite and U6-LR are faster than Wi-Fi 5 access points by around 10-20%. 2.4 GHz performance is not improved.

Ruud, thanks for sharing your tests. Please kindly advise on my situation. We live in the U.S. in an L-shaped single-story, wood framed/drywall home. The current router/AP is a Orbi which I want to replace with a hard wired router/switch that will accept 5-6 wired devices (presently using 4) and add a Unifi 6 AP and am between the Lite and LR. The current Orbi is positioned at the “corner” of the L-Shaped floorplan on the floor. The bedrooms are located off one wing of the home with the furthest about 35-40 feet away from the AP. The family room is the furthest room on the other wing of the home, about 55 feet away. We have horrible cellular reception here and rely on WiFi. Probably 25 wifi clients in total connected to the network. I had a satellite Orbi connected to main Orbi but were getting constant dropouts so unplugged it. The stability improved greatly. Would you recommend the Lite or LR? What would be a good wired router/switch to use with the Unifi AP? I had previously tried an Edgerouter with the Orbi in AP model and could not get it working. I’ve since removed the wired router and am using the Orbi for both routing and AP. Thoughts on which Unifi AP and what type of wired router to use? Thank you ~ Mike For this review, I have done some speed and signal strength tests with the new and old Unifi Lite and Long Range access points. I wanted to compare the new and old models in a normal use-case scenario.

The UniFi 6 Lite is a 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 access point that delivers up to 1.5 Gbps aggregate radio rate with 5 GHz (MU-MIMO and OFDMA) and 2.4 GHz (MIMO) radios. The UniFi 6 Lite can be mounted horizontally in a ceiling to cover a high-density environment, or vertically on a wall to extend its range. The UniFi 6 Lite has a compact and nano-sized design, so it can use nanoHD covers and mounting accessories.

When possible, place two Lite‘s in the center of each wing of your home, that would give the best result. Otherwise, go for the LR. Walls and floors are more likely to have a bigger impact than distance in most homes, but the exact dB penalty depends on material. My 6lite if is set to Eu countries has under 20db TX even on high setting(26 beeing the max from spec sheet)….and is waay worse than a RT AC68U set to 26db both on 2.4 and 5ghz. Even in close proximity on wifi analyzer ac68u is better. 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. I am torn between a 6 Lite and a 6 LR for a bar area guest wifi. The room is about 25’x45′ with 12′ ceilings. I was going to place one of the AP’s in the center of the room to hopefully provide good signal to the 75 guests inside.For comparisons of all UniFi AP models, see my UniFi Comparison Charts and UniFi Access Point Buyers Guide. What I found interesting to see is that we can see a significant improvement between the Unifi 6 Lite and the old model. But between the U6 LR and the old Long Range model I didn’t. Unifi 6 – 5Ghz performance These same improvements are also mentioned on firmware version 5.60.1, which is the most current release candidate as of May 2021. I haven’t re-run these tests with that version yet.

Upstairs I have placed the U6 lite and measured the speed from my office. Between the access point and my office are two drywalls. Doubling your channel width increases the noise floor by 3 dB, reducing SNR and your range by around 30% each time.

Good the know is that WiFi 6 is only supported on the 5GHz band on both models. We see this also with other manufactures, that they only upgrade the 5GHz band and not the 2.4GHz band to WiFi 6. That doesn’t mean that you won’t see any performance improvements on 2.4 GHz. As the test will show you, they are actually a bit faster than the old models on 2.4 GHz as well. Even though the new Unifi 6 access points don’t support WiFi 6 on the 2.4 GHz band, we can still see a clear improvement in speed between the old and new models. The new U6 LR is slightly faster than the U6 lite, but you won’t see many differences here. The Ubiquiti UniFi6 Lite is a 2x2 WiFi 6 access point that can reach an aggregate throughput rate up to 1.5 Gbps with its 5 GHz (MU-MIMO and OFDMA) and 2.4 GHz (MIMO) bands. 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.