Ubiquiti has just released some new equipment in the Ultra lineup of products. We have the UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra as well as the USW Ultra PoE switch. In this video, I'm going to discuss both of these products. And I'm also going to try to attempt to define where I think these products fit in Ubiquiti's overall product portfolio because at this point, there's a significant amount of overlap between a lot of these new devices. Which ones are right for you? Let's find out. The variety of networking equipment released by Ubiquiti can be difficult to keep up with, which is why I'm proud to announce the UI Product Selector. With the UI Product Selector, you can open up product categories such as access points, gateways, and switches, and then filter down to just the features you want. Then add those products to your list and get a shareable link that you can send to friends, family, or customers. You can find the UI Product Selector at uinotify.net and just click on the product selector, or you can find links to everything down in the description below. You may remember the first Ultra device that came out a few weeks ago, the UK Ultra, also known as the Swiss Army Knife Access Point. Now, I did a full video on the UK Ultra, so I'm not going to go back over all of that info here, but they did come out with a couple of new accessories for this product. First is the Omni Antenna and Desktop Stand Kit for $19, and they also now have the Panel Antenna Ultra for $39, which is a directional antenna that clips onto the UK Ultra and takes advantage of the RP-SMA connectors on top. But now we have the Cloud Gateway Ultra as well as the Switch Ultra. The UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra, model UCG Ultra, has an MSRP here in the US of $129. This device is a router and a firewall as well as a UniFi OS console all in one. It features a 2.5 gigabit WAN port and four 1 gigabit LAN ports. Now one of the LAN ports can also be configured as an additional WAN port in order to do internet load balancing and failover. The UCG Ultra has a 1 inch LCM status display screen on the front, and it has UniFi network on board, meaning that you do not need a separate UniFi network controller. It can manage 30 plus UniFi network devices and 300 plus client devices. And one thing you may be wondering is, why did Ubiquiti give the UCG Ultra a 2.5 gigabit WAN port when it only has 1 gigabit LAN ports? Now I'm not sure if they've given an official reason for this, but the way that I look at it is that the 2.5 gigabit WAN port is to ensure that there's absolutely no bottlenecks for your internet connection up to full 1 gigabit. Now if you have a full 1 gigabit internet connection from your ISP and you plug that connection into a 1 gigabit ethernet port, you're going to lose a little bit of that bandwidth due to ethernet overhead. You don't really ever see maximum throughput on any ethernet port. You can get close, but you're never going to hit 100% capacity. So by making the WAN port 2.5 gigabit, they're adding in additional capacity so that you can take full advantage of internet connections up to 1 gigabit. And if you happen to be lucky enough to have a greater than 1 gigabit internet connection, then sorry folks, this is probably not the UniFi console for you. They also state that the UCG Ultra can do full 1 gigabit throughput even with intrusion detection and intrusion prevention enabled. Which means the switching capacity, the ethernet ports, the CPU and RAM are all sized appropriately for that kind of performance. And I mean, that's okay to me, right? I mean, they price this thing at 129 bucks and if you're going to sit there and complain that like, oh, this thing should have 2.5 gigabit LAN ports, or if they have a 2.5 gigabit WAN port, it should be able to terminate 2.5 gigabit internet connections, right? Well, think about what you're saying, right? If Ubiquiti added in the switching capacity to make all of the LAN ports 2.5 gigabit, that's a more expensive switch chip, which is going to increase the price. It's going to increase the heat output, which may require them to increase the size of the device to dissipate heat. And then you'd have to give it a beefier CPU and more RAM to get the IDS IPS capabilities closer to the maximum throughput, which is also going to increase the price of the device and possibly the size. And then you know what you end up with? The Dream Machine Pro, right? The Dream Machine Pro has a 10 gigabit SFP plus port for WAN, 10 gigabit SFP plus for connecting out to faster switches and 3.5 gigabits of internet routing capacity with IDS IPS enabled. But guess what? It's 379 bucks. So to me, this UCG Ultra is really a great option for home users or small businesses with up to one gigabit internet connections. It's a really great price point for those use cases and it's an excellent replacement for the original USG, right? Remember this guy right here? In fact, this is the replacement to the USG that we've been asking for for a long time and it is a significant improvement. With the original USG, you had fewer ethernet ports, much lower overall throughput, and you had to have a separate unified network controller. Now, interesting side note, the original USG is no longer on Ubiquiti's official web store, but you can still find it on Amazon for like 371 bucks or just under 300 bucks refurbished. All right, so let's move on to the Switch Ultra. This is also priced at 129 bucks. The Switch Ultra, which is model USW Ultra, features one gigabit PoE++ input port and seven gigabit PoE plus ports. Now I love that they put the PoE input port on the back of the Switch. It makes this a great desktop Switch where you can run the power from PoE up from behind. And speaking of power, there are a bunch of different ways that you can power the Switch Ultra, and the type of power that you use determines the PoE output for the seven ports across the front. So for example, if you power it in the back with PoE+, you get 16 watts of available PoE. But if you power it with PoE++ or 802.11bt, you get 42 watts of PoE across the front. Now additionally, you can buy the base model Switch Ultra for 129 bucks with no power adapter, or you can opt for either a 60 watt or a 210 watt AC adapter. And this is funny because the 210 watt adapter is just a little bit bigger than the Switch itself. Now this increases the price if you need the AC adapter, but it also keeps the price lower if you don't. So with the 60 watt AC adapter, you get 52 watts of PoE output, and with the big honking 210 watt AC adapter, you get 202 watts of PoE output. I can see this being useful for powering up like handfuls of VoIP phones or surveillance cameras. Another thing that I really like about the Switch Ultra is that it has a magnetic mounting plate, which allows you to install it onto metal somewhere, right? It's gonna hold fast to the metal without being a permanent install. Could be really useful for like up in a drop ceiling. Now pricing wise, if you had one of each of these Ultra devices, you'd have the foundation for a nice home or small business network, and your total cost would be 347 bucks, or actually probably like 377 bucks would be more accurate, since if this was the only UniFi equipment that you own, you'd want at least the 60 watt AC adapter for the Switch Ultra, or they also do sell like a PoE++ PoE injector. Keep in mind also that this is US pricing I'm talking about. I know that the UK Ultra and I think some of these other Ultra products are actually a little bit cheaper internationally. Alright, so let's now talk a bit about where these products fit into the overall lineup of Ubiquiti devices, and more specifically, let's talk about the UCG Ultra. And I wanna focus on the UCG Ultra because there have been two other small form factor Ubiquiti routers that have come out recently. We had the Gateway Lite model UXG Lite, as well as the UniFi Express, which is model UX. Now it's confusing because these devices are all routers with WAN and LAN ports, and they're all priced right in the same neighborhood. And they're all pretty close to the same form factor, but there are different specific use cases for each of these models. So UniFi Express is the most expensive of these three devices, but that's because it comes with a built-in Wi-Fi 6 access point. But in reality, it has the smallest capabilities when it comes to throughput, features, and performance. It does have an onboard UniFi network controller, but it can only manage an additional four UniFi devices and up to about 60 client devices. It also does not have the ability to do any of the IDS IPS features of the other models. So UniFi Express is a nice all-in-one solution for very, very small deployments, right? Perfect for an apartment-sized dwelling or a very small office, like a tanning salon or like a real estate office with two or three employees. Then we have the Gateway Lite, which is exactly the same form factor as UniFi Express. But the Gateway Lite doesn't have an integrated UniFi network controller, nor does it have integrated Wi-Fi. What it does have is a lower price point, it's 129 bucks, as well as full gigabit performance even when IDS and IPS is enabled. So to me, the Gateway Lite is for installers. So imagine that you host your own UniFi network controller in the cloud, or you have a multi-site controller like the CloudKey Enterprise, you wouldn't need or even want Gateway devices at your client sites that have built-in UniFi network controllers, right? So the Gateway Lite would be a great option for those use cases. And then finally, we have the UCG Ultra, which does have an onboard UniFi network controller, and it has a more robust CPU than UniFi Express that can handle 30 or so UniFi devices and 300 client devices. It can do full one gigabit IDS IPS, and it has that 2.5 gigabit WAN port that won't bottleneck your gigabit internet connection. It's cheaper than UniFi Express, but it doesn't have an integrated access point, so you will need to have separate wireless. To me, this UCG Ultra should be the new standard for single-site deployments. If you're a home user or a small business, I mean, it's just about perfect, right? It's robust enough to handle most internet connections, at least here in the US, where let's face it, while a decent amount of the population has access to gigabit or greater internet connections, not many people actually have those speeds in their homes or businesses. Usually we see customers in like the 300 to 600 megabit range. And for those customers, this is a great device. You get some decent power to manage a good amount of UniFi and client devices. You get the flexibility to add in whatever additional switches and access points you need for any individual deployment, and you get it for a reasonable price. And while this only has UniFi network on board, you can still pop a UNVR into your network for protect surveillance, because that has its own UniFi OS running UniFi Protect. Now, if you have a greater than gigabit internet connection or more UniFi devices and clients than the UCG Ultra can handle, then you're going to have to upgrade to like the Dream Machine Pro or the Dream Machine SE. Editing Chris popping in here from the future, because I know that a bunch of you are going to ask about one more gateway, and that is the humble UDR, the Dream Router, AKA R2 Dream 2. The Dream Router is another all-in-one gateway device similar to UniFi Express, but with a $199 price tag and a number of improvements, including a four by four Wi-Fi six access point on top, four gigabit LAN ports, two of which are PoE capable, and an integrated 128 gig SSD for UniFi Protect surveillance storage. There's also a micro SD expansion slot to add even more storage space. One of the biggest differentiating features of the UDR, however, is that it can run multiple UniFi OS applications in addition to UniFi Network. So if you want to add on a couple of UniFi Protect cameras, or if you want to try out UniFi Access, you could install these additional apps, whereas with either the UCG Ultra or UniFi Express, you're going to get UniFi Network only. To me, this is a great step up from UniFi Express for not too much more money. I mean, imagine that same tanning salon or real estate office situation, but now we can tack on a couple of PoE powered cameras as well and have a little bit more robust access point. It's a great little all in one solution. I also like to think of the UDR as the mother-in-law router, and if you're like me and you end up being the tech support for all of your extended family, you could drop a UDR into say, your mother-in-law's house, and you'd be able to configure it remotely. It's got plenty of power for a single family dwelling, and again, you can tack on a couple of security cameras to keep an eye on the place. Now there are a couple downsides to the UDR, first and foremost being that it's a really popular device, and as such, it is rarely in stock. The other thing is that it's kind of an older model now, and it came out well before Ubiquiti was putting a lot of emphasis on IDS IPS throughput. So with a one gigabit WAN port and a one gigabit LAN switching backplane, the UDR is not going to get your full gigabit throughput with IDS IPS enabled, which may or may not be an issue depending on the speed of your internet connection. And if you're still confused about which UniFiOS console is right for you, then make sure you check out our brand new UI product selector. Just go to uinotify.net and click on product selector at the top. And if you'd like to keep this party going, I have hand selected a couple of videos on the right here for you to watch next. The top video is my recent full review of the UK Ultra Access Point. And the bottom video is my VLAN tutorial video where I attempt to simplify the complicated concept of VLANs so that everyone can understand exactly how they work.
