Ubiquiti AmpliFi Alien AFI-ALN WiFi 6 Tri-Band Wireless AX Router with Additional Meshpoint

Updated review 1st Nov 2022 – one year onI’ve had the Alien for a year now. I purchased at £660 but I see it is now £860 (on Amazon – looks to be cheaper on the Ubiquity store). I now have FTTP so can make use of the speed, so I’ll update the review. I’ll just stick to pros and cons so it’s less wordy.Pros:- Transfer speed between Alien and Meshpoint 10 metres apart on different floors at opposite ends of the house is a consistent 350Mbit/s. My FTTP package is 300Mbit and I typically get 315Mbit download all the time.- The Meshpoint is upstairs and gives me wifi to the shed at the end of our garden – about 20 metres. Total length of coverage from front to back is about 50 metres with two points.- When I first set them up I was using an old wifi router as a modem. Even though I had disabled wifi and ran it in bridge mode, I think this was causing interference as now with the fibre installation and a dedicated modem the connection between the two points as measured by the app is optimal – close enough to be stable, but not close enough to have devices switching between them constantly.- Looks smart and would not look out of place in any home.- Fantastic options for network management. Can have 2x 5Ghz SSIDs plus 3 2.4Ghz SSIDs – including one dedicated to IoT devices – at the router. Then you can have 1 more of each additionally at the Meshpoint. Plus a dedicated SSID for guests with options to adjust total number of guest connections, and a time limit to switch it off automatically.- App is great. Easy to use. Gets regular updates.- Handles a lot of smart devices with ease- Super reliable. Never caused a problem or required a reset.Cons:- Price. At £660 it was somewhat competitive with other brands at the time, but still a compromise as I wanted something that looked nice. At £860 I’m not sure. I expect you will find it cheaper elsewhere anyway!- Similarly, if you want to expand with another Alien to use at a mesh point (you can’t buy the meshpoint separately) it’d be another £400.- From reviews I’ve seen I believe some other mesh systems offer better outright speed. I can’t speak for reliability however.- Again I think the router display is unnecessary and I would have preferred to save £50 – but I’ve seen some people love it, and I guess if it is positioned in your office it makes some sense. I’ll stick to checking everything on the app though.- Only one UK plug was included in the package (see the first paragraph of the original review)-------------------------------Original reviewThis will be good for some people and rubbish for others. Pros and cons are at the bottom.The worst bit was that only one UK figure of 8 plug was included in the package, so I could plug in the router, but not the mesh point. Two EU cables are included in the box. After delivery I had to contact Amazon to ask for a second cable, they couldn't send one so offered a partial refund for me to order my own. No drama but at this price point it is unacceptable to not arrive ready to use.I live in a small-ish 2 bed house and needed a mesh system to get decent WiFi upstairs. I did not want cables run all over the place so APs connected with ethernet were not an option, and nor was re-locating the router.The area where the phone line comes into the house is in a prominent area in the living room. For this reason I had to avoid the giant spider-like routers which offer the strongest signal with external antenna.Therefore, I needed a solution that was aesthetically acceptable, but offered reasonable features and decent enough signal. The Alien does a good job aesthetically, both the router and mesh point are small matte black cylinders, with a green LED light around the base, which can be switched off if preferred. They would fit in any room without looking out of place.The display on the router is totally unnecessary as the app gives you the same information, plus more, and you don't need to squint at a tiny screen to see it. Some people may appreciate it more than I do, but I just have the display off permanently.With the two points approx 30ft apart on separate floors, the signal between them is at the bottom of what is acceptable (-60dBm, or 'Good'), according to the AmpliFi app. The signal is at least consistent but the range is worse than I expected given the price.I am still on 80Mb internet so cannot push the gigabit capability to the internet. A speed test through the app on my phone, sat right next to the mesh point, shows transfer speeds of 250Mbps up and down. If I get 300Mb fibre, this is acceptable, but I understand other systems with external antenna offer better performance, and there would be little point going above 300.The app is pretty decent, which is just as well, as the web interface is essentially non-existent, merely a single page of options which you probably won't need.To summarise:Pros- looks good and would fit in any room, doesn't need to be hidden away- decent app to manage network and devices- options to split SSIDs at both router and mesh point, 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz- so far it has been very stableCons- from a pure performance perspective, this is poor value- no real web interface- router display unnecessary, would have preferred no display and a lower price tag- only one UK plug included in the packageOverallIf stability and/or aesthetics are more important than outright performance, this might be your best option.

Within 6 months the radio module of the router failed. This is one of the headline selling points, i.e. fantastic WiFi coverage, etc. but seems to be a recurring problem with these products which Ubiquiti have so far been unable or unwilling to sort out.My units came through L W Enterprises Ltd, trading as Wholesale Velar, which is not one of the Ubiquiti franchised dealers within the UK. Ubiquiti are being very tricky so far with the status of their supposed warranty probably as a result of this and so I cannot give any positive perspective on this except to warn other potential buyers. I don't have any faith in an acceptable outcome.

Probably one of the best you can buy but yes expensive. I have had many Mesh wifi setups i started out with Zyxel Multi X and to be honest this was probably the best ive ever had outside of WIFI 6 bulletproof. I decided to upgrade. I originally went Tenba but the lack of 3d channel backbone annoyed me so i returned it. I moved to the massively expensive Netgear Orbi 6 but man they were bad, not so kuch coverage but reliability. When i had them Netgear had a real issue with DNS, th router has some proxy/cache internal that basically gave u dead pages on first search a quick refresh fixed it. 1000s of posts on Netgears forum about this, i presume the latest firmware fixed it, but i had enough.Amplifi is great as is all Ubquiti products there costly but worth the investment. Management is simple either from mobile phone or PC/MAC browser and interface is consumer orientated, if you have even logged into a proper Ubuqiti access point their quite complex, but these are simple.Speed wise no complaints rock solid Wifi nothing to complain about.My only 2 slight negatives are160mhz Wifi which is great, does switch off when it detects my cars radar when i start it up, which if detected has a requirement to disable , but to be honest i was only playing with it, so ive not really noticed much benefit from ticking that box.2nd is the lack of vLAN, this isnt an issue for most but if your UK based and want the new City Fibre setup and not be strong armed into using the supplied router, your router needs to be able to support vLAN 911, which the Aliens dont. This isnt a massive issue but you just need to pop it in bridge mode and its fine... just an extra box needed for the Fibre termination.

I use to previously use the NetGear Orbi AX6000 but use to constantly have drops in connection, i have a 3 bed semi detached and never use to get proper speeds from Virgin or BT on WiFi or Ethernet. So I changed over to this after 3 years of using the NetGear and the speeds have been fantastic and consistent! Where i use to have connections dropped with this I dont even get any buffering or lag! Options to optimise devices for streaming/gaming on devices it’s totally worth the money!