The Ubiquiti AmpliFi Alien is an expensive black Wi-Fi 6 Internet tube that promises super-fast wifi and a unique and enjoyable user experience that is as intuitive as these things can probably be. The touch screen on the main unit is perhaps as intimidating as possible, with a Matrix-green vertical reading full of graphs and numbers, but I think most people who want to easily understand their content. I like to imagine, looking at the physical design and the user interface decisions of the software, that someone asked Ubiquiti if it was committed to the color green, and the company responded with wedding photos, since its zoom ceremony held responsible until the dark tone. As green as it is, the whole case is remarkably friction free, geeky and luxurious, in a way that only things that cost a lot of money can.
But really. This thing is worn out. A single Alien sells for $ 380, and you can add an additional $ 320 for the fabric unit, with its almost non-existent surface and a single Ethernet LAN / WAN port. if you’re thinking of just buying the main cylinder and supplementing it with smaller AmpliFi units, think again, Bucko. This dog is only compatible with other Alien routers! That said, it is not expensive compared to other Wi-Fi 6 mesh systems, as long as you are comparing apples to apples. With a total of $ 700 per pair, it’s only $ 50 more than the Wi-Fi 6 Netgear Orbi, while the Linksys MX10 Velop costs the same $ 700 if you buy two (a single Alien is actually more cheaper than a single Velop). The specifications of each are impressive, and the only consensus opinion among them seems to be that all it cost a lot of money, which, yes, but it seems that Ubiquiti tries a little more to soften the blow.
When you start to open the package – it looks like you’re removing an energy cell from a starship or something – and you take one of the extraterrestrials coated with soft, heavy material out, it’s pretty obvious that Ubiquiti wanted it. to feel that you made the right choice by giving in to the 0% financing agreement with your credit card. Even the one minute setting seems prodigal, with pleasant tones emitted by a speaker much better than it should be and a MeshPoint configuration that is as easy as connecting it. The AmpliFi app is great, and while not exactly bad with options, it still offers a fair amount of configuration options compared to other mesh alternatives. I love, for example, being able to not only turn on or off the status LED and the touchscreen, but also adjust the brightness and set an evening schedule.
When I sit down to review a new router, I usually have to block an entire afternoon just to troubleshoot all smart home devices that don’t connect until I reconfigure them, which brings with it all kinds of frustrations in a smart home, and irritates my family. This is the first time that I set up a new router for review and saw all over 35 wireless devices just connect. I spent the next week hoping something went wrong and it just never happened. Such lust!
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Now, there are some commitments to be aware of. First, although you have a tri-band router in the business, one of these bands pushes only 5 GHz 802.11ac, while the other 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands do 802.11ax. Alien uses this 802.11ax 5 GHz band as a wireless backhaul for communication between the two routers, which means that you’ll share your traffic with your backhaul traffic. The workaround is to use ethernet to backhaul or skip the fabric configuration, but most people don’t like using long Ethernet cables if you’re not already there or buying a mesh router and not using the mesh. In addition, there are no USB ports found on the AmpliFi Alien, nor Ethernet ports that offer speeds greater than 1 Gbps. For most people, these things don’t really matter – gigabit internet is still very difficult to find, let alone anything faster than that, and if you are honestly thinking about buying this router, it is quite likely that you are not using it for direct connection storage or to try to get your internet from a 4G cell signal. Still, we like our options, don’t we?
Listen, here’s the thing: my internet plan is not incredibly fast. It is definitely not slow by today’s standards – 300 Mbps is more than enough to stream multiple 4K videos at the same time, while listening to music, while play while yelling at tubes to say how many half cups are in a cup. My old 802.11ac mesh network offers me fast internet at all points in my yard. It turns out that you don’t buy a Wi-Fi 6 router because 802.11ac is a slow standard. You do this because Wi-Fi 6 is a much better multitasking.
For this, you can blame Multiple User Multi-Input Multi-Output (MU-MIMO), and its equally memorable cousin, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). Thanks to the increasing presence of wearables and smart home devices, our networks are growing in complexity, as is the demand we place on our network hardware. These acronyms bring order to chaos, allowing your router to send broadcasts to each of your many devices across multiple spatial streams (great for games or video calls) or simultaneous slightly displaced data packets intended for multiple customers on a single channel. OFDMA, which uses the latter technique, is particularly cool and that’s why 802.11ax is so good for a home where tons of data packages from smart home devices are circulating. If you want to read about it, I recommend this explainer, and if you want good views, I like it this video.
There is no indication that Alien does any of this particularly better than its primary competitors, however, and a few others reviewers I found it missing. I have not personally tested its more direct competition yet, but I have tested other Wi-Fi 6 routers and, for them, the numbers were reasonable, but not exceptional. With an Alien, I was seeing full ISP speeds up to 15 meters away, outside my home, but about a third the capacity of 25 meters behind, with some trees and other things in the way. Adding a MeshPoint, I saw a stronger drop at 15 meters, but better speeds in my yard. In relation to the other faster Wi-Fi 6 router I tested – the Archer AX6000 from TP-Link – download speeds were slower from 15 meters, although upload speeds remained close to the maximum possible all the time.
Of course, the numbers don’t tell the whole story, and in any setting, I was impressed with how little I thought about my connection. Because of the holidays, I lived with the Alien system during a particularly demanding period, as my wife and I are at home and we do most of everything – streaming, games, video calling. During all this time, I did not do exactly any network troubleshooting and it was glorious.
In addition to the performance of the network, I was immediately delighted with the little extravagances you don’t see on a normal router. Brightness adjustment for the touch screen and LED ring at the bottom of the cylinder. A router direction switch, so you can ensure that a device remains connected to the gateway unit as long as possible. A speaker with which you could legitimately listen to music, but that you will almost never hear outside of the initial setup. Touch feedback on the touchscreen. A Pi-Hole-style DNS ad blocker that Ubiquiti doesn’t even promote – it’s just there, waiting for you to find it.
It even has a VPN that allows it to route traffic through its home network before it goes to the Internet, masking its IP address as it passes. Like hand-stitched leather in sophisticated automotive upholstery, none of this is necessary; it’s equivalent to rich books with mahogany and leather cover. But they are the types of features that you add to your list of good to have when looking at other routers, and they may be just enough to take this one to the top when comparing it to your main competitor, depending on how you feel some of your omissions – a USB port for directly attached storage is missing, for example, or the lack of WPA3 or a low-power smart home hub wireless protocol like Thread, yet.
Many of these features are already in AmpliFi HD. And really, that’s all the Alien is: an AmpliFi HD, but More. Wider coverage, with twice the area of its predecessor, much higher total traffic capacity in theoretical 7685 Mbps (against 1700 Mbps in HD) and 8×8 MU-MIMO – that’s more than twice the MU-MIMOs! It is future proof, even if it anchors perhaps a little more in the now than you expect.
Overall, the Alien mesh system has a lot to offer. It’s fast, reliable and I don’t have to think about it – as far as I know, those are the three pillars of Good Internet, and all the rest is getting dressed. Does this justify the price? Of course not, but I am willing to bet that for those who spend money on the AmpliFi Alien, it does not tend to be an unfortunate purchase.
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- It is incredibly expensive.
- It is incredibly luxurious.
- The Alien includes a touchscreen with tactile feedback, buttons for the various lights, a built-in VPN and a built-in ad blocker.
- The lack of USB or Thread is a pain in the neck at this price. But not entirely forgotten.