The Ubiquiti AmpliFi Alien is an expensive black Wi-Fi 6 internet tube that promises super fast Wi-Fi and a uniquely enjoyable user experience that is as intuitive as these things can likely be. The touch screen on the main unit may be as intimidating as ever, with a Matrix-green vertical readout full of graphs and numbers, but I think most people who want that will easily understand the content. Looking at the software’s physical design and UI decisions, I like to imagine someone asking Ubiquiti if it is committed to the color green, and the company responded with wedding photos from the responsibly held Zoom ceremony to the swardy shade. As green as it is, the whole thing is so remarkably friction-free, geeky and luxurious, in a way that only big bucks things can ever do.
But seriously. This thing is expensive. A single Alien retails for $ 380, and you can buy an extra one $ 320 for the mesh unit, with its almost characterless surface and single ethernet LAN / WAN port. if you are thinking of buying only the master cylinder and topping it up with smaller AmpliFi units, think again, Bucko. This puppy is only compatible with other Alien routers! That said, it is not expensive compared to the other mesh Wi-Fi 6 systems, as long as you compare apples to apples. At a total of $ 700 for a pair, it’s only $ 50 more than the Wi-Fi 6 Netgear Orbi, while the Linksys MX10 Velop clocks in at the same $ 700 if you buy two (a single Alien is actually cheaper than a single Velop ). Specifications for each are impressive, and the only consensus among them seems to be that they are all of them costs too much money, which, yes, but it looks like Ubiquiti is trying a little harder to soften the blow.
When you start opening the packaging – which feels like you’re pulling a power cell out of a spaceship or something – and you take out one of the heavy, soft-touch material-coated Aliens, it’s pretty clear that Ubiquiti wanted it to feel have made the right decision when you gave in to that 0% financing agreement on your credit card. Even the one minute install feels lavish, with pleasing tones emitted from a loudspeaker that is much better than it should be, and a MeshPoint setup that’s as easy as plugging it in. The AmpliFi app is great, and while it’s not exactly lousy with options, it still offers a fair amount of configuration options compared to other mesh alternatives. For example, I like to be able to not only turn the status LED and the touchscreen on or off, but also to adjust their brightness and set a night schedule.
When I settle in to review a new router, I usually have to block an entire afternoon troubleshooting all the smart home devices that won’t connect until I reset them to factory settings, which brings all sorts of frustrations in a smart home, irritating my family. This is the first time I have ever set up a new router for review and looked at all 35+ wireless devices just connect. I waited the week after for something to fail and it just never happened. Sun luxury!
G / O Media can receive a commission
Now there are some trade-offs to keep in mind. First, while you get a tri-band router in the deal, one of those bands only pushes 5GHz 802.11ac, while the other 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands do 802.11ax. The Alien uses that 802.11ax 5 GHz band as a wireless backhaul for communication between the two routers, which means you are going to share your traffic with backhaul traffic. The solution is to use ethernet for backhaul or to skip the mesh installation, but most people don’t like long ethernet cables if it isn’t already there or if you buy a mesh router and don’t use the mesh. Also, there are no USB ports on the AmpliFi Alien, nor are there any Ethernet ports that offer speeds of more than 1 Gbps. For most people, these things don’t really matter: gigabit internet is still quite hard to find, let alone a little faster than that, and if you think honestly about buying this router, it’s pretty likely that you don’t use it for direct-attached storage or if you’re trying to get your internet via a 4G cellular signal. Still, we like our options, don’t we?
Listen, here’s the deal: my internet plan isn’t incredible fast. By today’s standards it is certainly not slow: 300 Mbps is more than enough to stream multiple 4K videos at the same time, while listening to music. gaming, while yell at tubes to tell you how many half cups are in a cup. My old, timeless 802.11ac mesh network gives me fast internet in all but the farthest corners of my yard. The point is, 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 that, you can blame the Multiple User Multi-Input Multi-Output (MU-MIMO) and its equally memorable cousin Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). With the increasing presence of wearables and smart home devices, our networks are becoming more complex, and so is the demand we are asking of our network hardware. Those acronyms bring order to the chaos by letting your router send transmissions to each of your many devices in either multiple spatial streams (ideal for gaming or video calls) or simultaneous, slightly shifted data packets destined for multiple clients in a single channel. OFDMA, which uses the latest technique, is particularly cool and that’s why 802.11ax is so good for a home that has tons of data packets flying around from smart home devices. If you want to read about it I recommend you this interpreter, and if you want good visualizations, I like that this video.
However, there is no indication that the Alien does any of this particularly better than its main rivals, and a few others reviewers thought it was to be desired. I haven’t personally tested the most direct competition yet, but I’ve tested other Wi-Fi 6 routers, and in relation to those, the numbers were decent, but not exceptional. With one Alien, I saw full ISP speeds up to 45 feet away, outside of my house, but about a third the transit back 80 feet, with some trees and things in the way. Adding a MeshPoint saw a heavier drop at 45 feet, but better speeds on the way back from my yard. Compared to the fastest other Wi-Fi 6 router I’ve tested, TP-Link’s Archer AX6000, download speeds were slower from 45 feet, although upload speeds stayed close to the maximum all the time.
Numbers don’t tell the whole story, of course, and in both configurations I noticed how little attention I paid to my connection. Due to the vacation timing, I’ve lived with the Alien system in a particularly demanding time, as my wife and I are both at home and we do more of just about everything – streaming, gaming, video calling. During that entire time, I solved exactly zero network problems, and it was fantastic.
Besides the network performance, I was immediately charmed by the little extravagances you don’t see in a normal router. Brightness adjustment for the touch screen and LED ring on the bottom of the cylinder. A router control switch, so you can keep a device connected to the gateway unit for as long as possible. A speaker on which you can legitimately listen to music, but which you will hardly ever hear outside of the initial setup. Haptic feedback on the touchscreen. A Pi-Hole style DNS ad blocker that Ubiquiti doesn’t even really promote – it’s just there, waiting for you to find it.
It even has a VPN that allows you to route traffic through your home network before it goes to the wider internet, masking your IP address. Like hand-stitched leather on luxury car upholstery, this is not necessary; it comes down to rich mahogany and leather-bound books. But these are the kind of features you add to your cool stuff list when you look at other routers, and they might be just enough to push it over the top when comparing it to the main competition, depending on how you feel. with some of the omissions – it lacks a USB port for direct-attached storage, for example, or the lack of WPA3 or an energy-efficient smart home hub wireless protocol like Thread.
Many of these features are already on the AmpliFi HD. And, really, that’s all the Alien is: an AmpliFi HD, but Lake. Wider coverage, twice that of its predecessor, much greater total traffic capacity at a theoretical 7685 Mbps (versus 1700 Mbps on the HD) and 8×8 MU-MIMO – that’s more than twice the MU-MIMOs! It’s future-proof, even though it might anchor itself a little more in the now than you’d hope.
Overall, the Alien mesh system has plenty to offer. It’s fast, reliable, and I don’t have to think about it – in my opinion, those are the three pillars of good internet, and everything else is dressing. Does it justify the price? Hell no, but I’ll bet that for those of you dropping money on the AmpliFi Alien, it’s usually not a regrettable purchase.
Readme
- It’s unbelievably expensive.
- It’s incredibly luxurious.
- The Alien has a touchscreen with haptic feedback, switches for the various lights, a built-in VPN and a built-in adblocker.
- The lack of USB or Thread is a bummer at this price. But not completely missed.