Comment by tiffanyh
2 days ago
What issues did you encounter when using Unifi?
From what I’ve seen, Unifi seems like the closest to an "Apple-like" experience - especially given how much more robust their capabilities are compared to most other providers.
The idea that Ubiquiti pushes out buggy software as production-ready and that we're all their beta testers is a pretty common meme on their subreddit.
> … pushes out buggy software as production-ready and that we're all their beta testers is a pretty common …
this is such a pet peeve of mine lately. companies are doing this all over the map now, from cars (especially self-driving), games, network equipment, entire software suites… and on and on.
i absolutely did not opt in to be a beta tester as a random human on public ways. i did not opt in to be a beta tester for your search engine results. i did not opt in to be a beta tester for the games i spend $90+ on. i did not opt in to beta test your company’s network equipment which we paid full price for.
build and closed test your products with interested parties who explicitly opt-in and quit forcing and charging us to be experiments in your company’s r&d.
I hear this talked about in the past but is it still true today?
I've at least never experienced it (and I stick to the Stable/Release channel).
I have 4 AP, 9 cameras, NVR and Dream Machine - I guess I got lucky over the 2.5 years I've had Unifi.
In my experience they got a lot better in the last 2-3 years with reliability and polish. I never really had any problems prior to that myself, but I know they definitely did used to have a much more deserved reputation for buggy releases.
I bought a UDM about two years ago, and it was a real mess for about 6 months. It was hanging every few weeks which required a hard reboot- which was shocking, because this was my first attempt at upgrading my network to more expensive and capable stuff, and for the previous 20 years, had never had an issue with my network equipment hanging or rebooting. They were going to RMA my UDM, but then they had me install a special release as a last try, and it worked, and everything has worked well since then.
That said though, do I really need these features? The biggest draw was having a proper AP to put on my ceiling instead of my old google wifi pucks. The upgrade from wifi 5 to 6e was not noticeable in any way. I spent 3x the money and really have nothing tangible to show for it aside from a cool UI to log into, which was never necessary prior because everything Just Worked.
Also- this may be my fault for not reading the fine print, but the IDS stuff on the UDM only works at 600mbps, and I have a gigabit connection. People in Unifi forums will tell me I am the idiot for assuming that, but it has gigabit ports, its 2023... I just ass/u/me/d that everything would work without issue at line speed and wouldn't have to read the spec sheet like a lawyer.
Anyway, its fine in the end. I would never buy anything cutting edge from them again, I want anything to bake for at least 6 months after release, which is usually how long it takes for their "shipping" stuff to become actually available anyway. I will stop whining now :)
The v8 firmware for the U7 Pro APs has been a mess.
Having used Unifi for 10+ years, they really have improved their firmware/software by quite a lot.
You can easily turn off automatic updates. I check the forum before I update. Haven’t had any issues for 10+ years.
You're correct, but the running gag is that every version released as production is a beta.
It's been awhile since I used Unifi, but regardless of the label they put on their binaries, things felt like beta. That doesn't mean I had issues per se, or things I couldn't work around. But it may be missing things, almost certainly missing promised features, rough around the edges, etc.
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Same, never had an issue. And I also skip the latest couple of minor versions most of the time unless there’s a security bugfix. Gives the updates time to bake.
I haven't found that to be the case on Stable channel.
(I do notice people on forums love to use Early Access update channel where... YMMV).
I couldn't get my Elgato Key Light Air (or whatever its called) to work on my Unifi network - something was amiss with the WLAN settings that others reported was specific to unifi.
I didn't like how they stopped supporting on-prem Unifi Video server, and only allow you to use it with a hardware appliance now.
They moved beyond "just build good product" and into unwanted cloud services and closed ecosystem.
If this is a re-opening of some of their self-hosting, then great. They're back to par, I guess?
> Elgato Key Light Air (or whatever its called) to work on my Unifi network
I also have struggled with this, and spent many hours bashing my head against a specific setting in PFSense that requires a plugin to enable.
Then, I thought to try updating the firmware on my Unifi WiFi AP, and have had (almost) no problems ever since. It has taught me to think twice about spending $100+ on a piece of niche electronics that can only be controlled if it is compatible with your WiFi...
That was definitely the case. It's not always the case anymore.