Monthly Archives: November 2023

UniFi Express

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Ubiquiti has launched the $149 UniFi Express, which adds to the UXG-Lite a WiFi AP, a tiny screen, the ability to host its own UniFi controller or be adopted to an external one, and the flexibility to be used as just a router or AP, with or without wireless meshing.

Edit: Apparently it also subtracts IDS/IPS. Which I’ve never been shy about calling absolutely useless and of negative value.

CPU and RAM specs have not yet been disclosed and apparently none of the YouTube shills Influencers that Ubiquiti seeded with free devices ahead of the launch thought that was a detail worth digging into.

Edit: So without IDS/IPS, it probably limps along with the same 1GB RAM and dual-core A53 as the UXG-Lite.

Against my better judgement, I’ve ordered one for the cabin. Probably won’t find the roundtuits to actually deploy it for a while as I have no idea what I’ve done with the CK Gen2+ that I was using there previously for Protect before the UDM flaked out.

Next-Gen Gateway Lite

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Ubiquiti is finally launching a replacement for the decrepit USG. The UXG-Lite will be available for purchase from the Ubiquiti store on 11/20 for $129 and is roughly a de-spec’d UDR — A53 dual-core, 1GB RAM, 2x 1GbE ports, and an unknown amount of on-board storage that is hopefully eMMC but largely irrelevant.

I struggle to understand why they continue down this path of separate product lines for on-device and externally run UniFi Controllers. Yes, this device would need more RAM and possibly storage but that shouldn’t move the BOM much and they likely could have made that up with other cost optimizations that would go unnoticed.

In theory I should love this for my cabin in the mountains, where I’m wasting a UDM Pro SE on 100/4 Internet and 4 cameras and all the blinken lights are supremely annoying because there’s nowhere to tuck it away out of sight… but I think about it and dread the idea of dusting off a CloudKey Gen2+ to run the UniFi Controller and Protect to run the tiny number of UniFi/Protect devices in place. My ideal device there would have three assignable GbE interfaces, no PoE or AP, able to run the UniFi Controller and Protect, with an accessible M.2 or 2.5″ bay to be used for continuous recordings. Which, looking at this and the UDR, seems like a pretty reasonable $179 product.

But ultimately I’ve been leaning towards just replacing all of my UniFi routers with mini PCs and $129 easily buys an Intel N100-based dual-GbE system complete with enough RAM and storage to run a few VMs / Containers alongside whichever routing platform I’d choose. While I would never pretend that’s a fair comparison to what Ubiquiti offers, my mindset is that their products used to be extremely “hacking friendly” — which helped make up for their glacial pace of delivering and improving functionality — and I haven’t been feeling that love for an extremely long time. The only thing holding me back is that for my home network it’s too big of a project for a rip-and-replace cutover. It’d be so much easier if show configuration commands were still a thing.