The UniFi Lite I ordered arrived yesterday, and in good geek fashion everything else was ignored so I could play with it - well once the kids got put to bed.

Physically the unit is very light - this will make for easy temporary installing with 3M OnCommand strips, and smaller then I expected. The Lite unit really is smoke alarm sized, and more discrete (once the blue light is disabled) then I expected, which will help with WAF and therefore placement options. This is a big win for me.

Configuration is very different from a traditional WAP or home router, but nothing a regular nerd shouldn't be able to handle. If you remember that you are configuring a system, and not an individual device, it goes a long way. I expect that adding a future AP will be even easier as it will inherit a lot of the existing config. At this stage I know I've not even scratched the surface of what the software can do, and I suspect that is the case for most home users of this product.

Performance wise the Lite's signal was marginally stronger on 2.4ghz then my existing Asus N66 when using inSSIDer* on a desktop two floors up. Unifi does report that the 2.4ghz band is ~50% utilized in my neighborhood, but that 5ghz is barely touched. Checking the devices in my house many of them are 5ghz capable (phones, chromebooks, work laptop), those that are not include the kids Kindles (sorry kids), Roku (within line of site of the router), Raspberry Pi (it's fine on 2.4) and the above mention desktop ($20 to replace the mini PCI express card to add AC and BlueTooth).

All in all a valuable exercise, and well worth the $77 investment for the piece of mind of knowing what I'll need to do to get solid wifi in our new home.

Thanks everyone!

* Agh! inSSIDer has gone away, or at least their free Home version. You can still grab version 3 of the Home version from some download sites, though it lacks AC support.