nuke the wi-fi from orbit. it’s the only way to be sure –
Amplifi Alien’s specs look pretty good, but $ 380 is a lot to ask for a router.
Ubiquiti’s consumer brand Amplifi has launched a new Wi-Fi 6 product line called “AmpliFi Alien.” The original Amplifi products were typically sold as three-piece Wi-Fi mesh kits, so we got a little excited when we saw a price tag of $ 380 forAlien.
Unfortunately, that price is for a single router, not a kit — which means that Amplifi Alien, like Orbi AX , is still in stratospheric “you probably don’t want this yet” territory where price is concerned. We have a sneaking suspicion both these price points are a bit of a gouge, since TP-Link’s BroadcomBCM 6750– based (AX) Wi-Fi 6 router is already available for under $ 100.
Like Amplifi’s earlier products, Alien features a small touchscreen on the router which can display the time, speed-test results, and offer some simple direct network control. Its power and WAN ports are recessed inside the base of the unit with a cable-management tunnel, but the four LAN ports are arranged along the back side of the barrel, opposite the touch screen.
Under the hood, Alien offers 5GHz 8×8 and 2.4GHz 4×4 radios, and — curiously — a Wi-Fi 5-only 5GHz 4×4 radio. Given the marketing copy, we expect that Alien will use the Wi-Fi 6 radio for backhaul in a multiple-router mesh setup. We think it’s an odd choice to include a Wi-Fi 5-only radio instead of sticking with Wi-Fi 6 on all three bands, though.
Amplifi describes these radios as delivering 7, 685 Mbps total capacity and Alien as covering “twice the square footage” of Amplifi’s previous mesh Wi-Fi efforts, complete with a bar chart demonstrating the difference between 2 and 1. However, as we have exhaustively covered in the past, Wi -Fi marketing numbers areuseless. We won’t really have any idea of how good Alien is until we’ve gotten a unit or two to test.
Alien hasn’t shown up on Amazon yet, but it’s available directly at the AmplifiWebsite.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings