Ubiquiti AmpliFi Alien is an expensive black Wi-Fi 6 internet tube that promises a super-fast wifi connection and a unique, user-friendly experience, as intuitive as these things can be. The touch screen on the main unit is probably as close as intimidating with one Matrix-green vertical reading, full of graphs and numbers, but I think most people who want to easily understand its contents. I like to imagine that when I look at the physical and software interface design decisions, that someone asked Ubiquiti if it’s dedicated to green, and the company responded with wedding photos from its responsible Zoom ceremony, to the top shade. Although it is green, the whole business is so remarkable, frictionless, strange and luxurious, in a way that only things that cost a lot of money can ever do.
In fact, though. This thing is excruciating. A single alien sells for $ 380 and you can approach an additional cost $ 320 for the mesh unit, with its almost no-features surface and a single Ethernet / LAN WAN port. if you are thinking of buying only the main cylinder and supplementing with smaller AmpliFi units, think again, Bucko. This puppy is only compatible with other Alien routers! That being said, it is not expensive compared to other 6-mesh Wi-Fi systems, as long as you compare apples to apples. At a total of $ 700 for a pair, it’s only $ 50 more than Wi-Fi 6 Netgear Orbi, while the Linksys MX10 Velop falls into the same $ 700 if you buy two (one alien is actually cheaper than a single Velop). The specifications for each are impressive and the only consensual opinion between them seems to be that they all it cost too much money, which it does, but it looks like Ubiquiti is trying a little harder to soften the blow.
When you start to open the package – which feels like you’re taking a power cell out of a spaceship or something – and grab one of the hard-bottomed aliens, covered in soft material to the touch, it’s pretty obvious that Ubiquiti wanted her to feel that you made the right call when you gave up that 0% financing offer on your credit card. Even the one-minute setup feels generous, with pleasant tones emitted by a speaker much better than it should be and a MeshPoint setup that is as easy as connecting to it. The AmpliFi app is great and while it’s not exactly ugly with options, it still offers a decent amount of configuration options compared to other mesh alternatives. I like, for example, to be able to activate or deactivate the status LED and the touch screen, but also to adjust their brightness and set a program at night.
When I set out to review a new router, I usually have to hang out for an entire afternoon just to troubleshoot all the smart devices at home that don’t connect until I reset them at the factory, which brings with it all sorts of frustrations in -a smart house and irritates my family. It’s the first time I’ve set up a new router for review and tracked all over 35 wireless devices Connect. I spent the next week waiting for something to fail and it just never happened. Such Luxuria!
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Now, there are some trade-offs to be aware of. First, although you get a tri-band router in business, one of those bands pushes only 5 GHz 802.11ac, while the other 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands do 802.11ax. Alien uses that 5 GHz 802.11ax band as wireless backhaul to communicate between the two routers, which means you’ll share traffic with revision traffic. The workaround uses Ethernet for backhaul or skips the mesh configuration, but most people do not use long ethernet cables if it is not already there or buys a mesh router and does not use the mesh. There are also no USB ports on the AmpliFi Alien, nor are there Ethernet ports that offer speeds greater than 1 Gbps. For most people, these things don’t really matter – the gigabit internet is still pretty hard to find, much less a bit faster than that, and if you’re honestly thinking about buying this router, it’s quite likely you won’t use it for storage. directly attached or to try to get your internet from a 4G cellular signal. Still, we like our options, don’t we?
Listen, here’s the deal: my internet plan is not incredible fast. It’s certainly not slow by current standards – 300 Mbps is more than enough to stream multiple 4K videos simultaneously while listening to music, while games, while screaming at the tubes to tell you how many half-cups are in a cup. My old 802.11ac network gives me fast internet in all but the most remote areas of my yard. The thing is, you don’t buy a Wi-Fi 6 router because 802.11ac is a slow standard. You do it because Wi-Fi 6 is a much better multi-tasker.
For this, you can blame several multi-input multi-output users (MU-MIMO) and its equally memorable cousin, the multiple access with orthogonal frequency division (OFDMA). Due to the growing presence of portable devices and smart devices at home, our networks are growing in complexity, as is the demand we place on our network hardware. Those acronyms order chaos, allowing the router to send transmissions to each of your devices, either in multiple spatial streams (great for games or video calls), or in simultaneous, slightly offset data packets for multiple clients in one single channel. OFDMA, which uses the latest technique, is particularly cool and that’s why 802.11ax is so good for a home that stutters tons of smart home data packets. If you want to read about it, I recommend it this explanatory, and if you want good views, I like it this video.
However, there is no indication that the alien does any of this particularly better than its main competitors, and others reviewers I found him wanting. I have not personally tested the most direct competition, but I have tested other Wi-Fi 6 routers and, in relation to these, the numbers were correct, but not exceptional. With an alien, I could see the maximum speed of the ISP up to 45 meters away, outside my house, but about a third yield 80 meters back, with some trees and other things in the way. Adding a MeshPoint, I saw a larger drop to 45 feet, but better speeds on the way back to my yard. Compared to the fastest other Wi-Fi 6 router I’ve tested – TP-Link’s Archer AX6000 – the download speed was slower at 45 feet, although the upload speed remained as close as possible all the time .
Of course, the numbers don’t tell the whole story, and in both configurations, I was surprised at how little I thought I gave my connection. Due to the holiday periods, I lived with the Alien system in a very demanding time, as my wife and I are both at home and do more than almost everything – streaming, games, video calls. All this time, I did exactly zero network troubleshooting and it was glorious.
Beyond network performance, I was pretty immediately enchanted by the minor extravagances you don’t see in a normal router. Brightness adjustment for the touch screen and LED ring at the bottom of the cylinder. A router steering switch so you can make sure a device stays connected to the gateway unit as long as possible. A speaker that you can legitimately listen to music, but you will almost never hear outside of the original setup. Haptic feedback on the touch screen. A Pi-Hole-style DNS ad blocker that Ubiquiti doesn’t even really promote – it’s just there, waiting to be found.
It even has a VPN that lets you route traffic through your home network before you go out on the Internet, hiding your IP address as it goes. Like hand-sewn leather on luxury car upholstery, none are needed; equates to books rich in mahogany and leather. But these are the types of features you add to your friends list when you look at other routers, and it might be enough to push it when compared to its main competition, depending on how you feel about some omissions. of it – for example, it lacks a USB port for directly attached storage or lacks WPA3 or a wireless protocol for the low-power smart home hub, such as Thread.
Many of these features are already on AmpliFi HD. And, indeed, that’s the whole Alien: an AmpliFi HD, but More. Wider coverage, twice as long as its predecessor, much higher total traffic capacity, at a theoretical 7685 Mbps (compared to 1700 Mbps in HD) and 8×8 MU-MIMO – this means more than twice MU-MIMO sites! It is proof of the future, even if it is anchored in the present perhaps more than you would expect.
Overall, the Alien mesh system has many functions. It’s fast, reliable and I don’t have to think about it – in my opinion, these are the three pillars of the good Internet and everything else. Does it justify the price? Hell, no, but I’m willing to bet that for those who make money on AmpliFi Alien, it doesn’t tend to be an unfortunate purchase.
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- It’s incredibly expensive.
- It’s incredibly luxurious.
- Alien includes a touch screen with haptic feedback, switches the various lights, a built-in VPN and a built-in ad blocker.
- Lack of USB or Thread is a problem at this price. But not totally missed.