Target Wake Time (TWT). This reduces the amount of time that a client device in Power Save (PS) mode needs to be awake (and consuming power). This allows the device to ‘sleep’ longer and reduce energy consumption. This is really important for mobile devices where minimising battery consumption is critical. Let’s first start with the size of the new access points. The new lite access point, the U6 Lite, has now the same size as the nanoHD. This means that you can use the covers from the nanoHD on the new U6 lite which is great when it comes to placing the access point insight. Doubling your channel width increases the noise floor by 3 dB, reducing SNR and your range by around 30% each time. So, I adjusted the settings to broadcast the signal at 80MHz and reconnected the WiFi 6 client device (AX200). As expected, the close-to-Gigabit speeds are gone, but the throughput is not bad. At 5 feet, upstream, I saw an average of 735Mbps, while downstream, it was 349Mbps. Ubiquiti U6-Pro – Wireless Test – 5GHz – WiFi 5 and WiFi 6 client devices – Upstream Ubiquiti U6-Pro – Signal Strength – 5GHz – WiFi 5 and WiFi 6 client devices – Upstream 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.

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. The rate of overhead varies with modulation and coding rate. With a strong signal, less redundancy is needed, and throughput improves. It’s always a tradeoff between redundancy/integrity and throughput.

Conclusions

I need to explain a little bit how I tested the speed of the access points. Measuring the speed of a wireless network connection really depends on many factors. Transmit power settings, the distance between an access point and client, wireless network congestion (if you live in an urban environment, then the 2.4 GHz channels are probably crowded), the wireless adapter of the client device, etc. So having the 2 pc’s of the old LR model, living in a small village with “plenty” off free wifi channels – Then there is no point in upgrading? 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) When further away, you can see the impact of the lower EIRP of the U6-Lite. The UDM and AC-HD are able to compensate with better beamforming, and ended up performing slightly better than the U6-Lite from the furthest location. This is where the U6-LR shows it’s biggest advantage over the U6-Lite. Its higher gain antenna and higher transmit power allow it to reach further than any of the other models I’ve tested. A better antenna and few extra dBm is enough to allow the U6-LR to effectively cover a larger area than any of the other APs listed. One of the advantages of WiFi 6 is that it allows devices to use the same WiFi channels by breaking up the channel into smaller groups (Resource Units). This way more devices can communicate at the same time. Other improvements are MU-MIMO in both downlink and uplink direction, Target Wait Time, Dynamic fragmentation, and more.

Upstairs I have placed the U6 lite and measured the speed from my office. Between the access point and my office are two drywalls. When it comes to speed improvement we can see the biggest difference in the 5 GHz band. You really see here the advantage of WiFi 6, with much higher throughput. For testing, I had set the transmit power to medium. The speed where lower on high, which is probably the result of being too close to the access point. Poynting has been a huge part of NetXL since its launch in 2019. Let's chat with Hugo to find out what makes Poynting so special and why it's the perfect solution for you! Overall, we highly recommend the Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Long Range Access Point – our Best Access Point For 2021.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.