I’m currently in the process of building my dream home and exploring options for a new, cutting-edge network that can keep up with the demands of IoT and remote work. I’m currently using an Aruba AP12 in my apartment, but I can’t help but feel that it’s falling behind in terms of advancements. It seems like “nothing new” has happened in its development in recent years, and even the cloud controller it offers is starting to feel outdated. That’s one of the reasons I got really excited when I discovered the new lineup from Alta Labs with their cloud management.
So here’s the question:
While researching the best wireless access points for my new home, I came across the AP6 and AP6 Pro models. However, there seems to be a scarcity of reviews comparing their range performance since it’s still pretty new to the market. So, I’ve been pondering whether they are “on par” in terms of range or if the AP6 Pro offers any additional advantages in this aspect.
So, I turn to you, the community, for some insights! Have any of you had experience with either the AP6 or AP6 Pro access points? Can you shed some light on the range performance of these devices?
My primary goal is to achieve a reliable and far-reaching network that can effortlessly handle all my IoT devices, support frequent remote work with a stable network, and provide seamless connectivity throughout the entire house.
Congrats on building your dream home. I purchased a new build back in 2020 and its been quite the journey getting out of an apartment and having a blank canvas to put all the tech I want into it. I have been using the AP6-Pro for about a month now and performance/range has been great. Any changes made in the cloud are updated on the AP almost instantly which is a nice change.
Prior to Alta, I was running two access points from Unifi (U6-Pro and NanoHD) but I bought a single AP6-Pro from Alta and was surprised that it was able to reach all of my devices when the Unifi devices couldn’t. I do plan on adding another AP6-Pro in the near future to spread the load and not have a single point of failure. I work from home multiple days a week and my whole home is outfitted with IoT devices connecting into Homekit so I have around 60+ networked devices. I will say I have had a few issues with VLANs and traffic routing properly between them but the Alta team has been very quick to jump in and come up with solutions. A lot of the time I have fixed these issues myself with updated firewall rules and I think some of this is on Unifi since I am using the UDM-Pro for routing/firewall which I plan to replace if Alta comes out with something similar.
I suggest going with the AP6-Pro as it has 4x4 MIMO on the 5Ghz band and with the 4096-QAM chip, it will deliver better performance. The team at Alta seems very dedicated to brining the best products and features to market and my interactions with all of them have been great.
I’ve been using an AP6-Pro since before they were released and I’ve got to say: it’s one of the best WiFi APs I’ve used in my place.
As @JRosen mentioned, the changes pushed from Cloud to AP are crazy fast. You can test yourself by scrolling through TikTok and adding a filter.
I’ve also been impressed by the coverage and consistency of the speeds. It also passes “the wife test” which is what we all dream of as IT professionals.
The community on here and the team at Alta are also very supportive/responsive.
Thanks for sharing your experience! It sounds like the AP6 Pro is a great AP. I was also concidering a setup with 2x Unifi U6-Pro and a U6+, but is currently tilting towards the AP6 (non-pro). I think the 1GbE port, and my ISP speed will be the bottleneck, and therefore, if the AP-6 range is as good as the pro version, it might offer better overall value until I in the future upgrade to WiFi 7 and 2,5 GbE. Really looking forward to see the new Alta Labs switchesđź‘€
