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Speed Test Comparison Unifi Wi-Fi 6 Pro vs UAP-AC-Pro access points

February 23, 2022

Ubiquiti recently released their Wi-Fi 6 access points and I was curious to see if it would increase my iPhone 13 Pro Wi-Fi speeds over the existing UAP-AC-Pro and UAP-AC-HD access points I was using. So this comparison review will cover the Wi-Fi speed differences I noticed when upgrading from the UAP-AC-Pro and HD to the U6-Pro-US (Ubiquiti Access Point Wi-Fi 6 Pro).

Differences between U6-Pro-US and UAP-AC-Pro

The Ubiquiti Wi-Fi 6 Pro (U6-Pro-US) is the newer, Wi-Fi 6, version of the previous Wi-Fi 5 Pro access point, the UAP-AC-Pro. Below are some important specification differences between the two wifi access points.

Speed differences in Access Points (U6-Pro-US vs UAP-AC-Pro)

Access PointThroughput Speed 5ghzThroughput Speed 2.4ghz
U6-Pro-US4800 mbps574 mbps
U6-LR-US2400 mbps600 mbps
UAP-AC-Pro1300 mbps450 mbps

There is a theoretically huge speed performance increase of 3500mbps between the UAP-AC-Pro and the U6-Pro-US at 5ghz and a smaller increase of 124mbps at 2.4ghz.

Radio changes

Access Point5ghz MIMO2.4ghz MIMO
U6-Pro-US4x4 MIMO2x2 MIMO
U6-LR-US4x4 MIMO4x4 MIMO
UAP-AC-Pro3x3 MIMO3x3 MIMO

So the Ubiquiti Pro and LR Wi-Fi 6 APs increase from 3x3 to 4x4 MIMO on the 5ghz radio band. The Pro actually went down from 3x3 MIMO in the UAP-AC-Pro to 2x2 MIMO in the U6-Pro-US. The loss of 2 MIMO antennas in the 2.4ghz band may not materially affect performance because many 2.4ghz devices don't support higher levels of MIMO anyway.

The Pro uses a Qualcomm chipset whereas the LR uses Mediatek.

Physical differences

The UAP-AC-Pro I have currently looks to be the exact same size, 197mm x 197mm x 35mm, as the new WiFi 6 Pro AP so I should be able to use the existing mounting bracket I have in the ceiling.

Below is a picture of the back of each access point.

UniFi Pro Access Point size comparison

The new Wi-Fi 6 access point feels a lot more substantial between the two. The new Wi-Fi 6 version increased in weight by about 10 ounces over the previous Pro to ~20oz despite the same outer dimensions.

The secondary RJ45 port and USB ports were eliminated from the back of the U6-Pro-US

Lastly, the new Wi-Fi 6 Pro requires PoE+ where the UAP-Pro could use either PoE or PoE+.

Real-world Throughput Speed Tests

I setup iPerf3 in server mode on a gigabit hardwired PC on my local network and used the iPerf mobile app with 5 streams to test the Wi-Fi speed of new U6-Pro-US, the UAP-AC-Pro, and the UAP-AC-HD using an iPhone 13 Pro (which supports 802.11ax and 2x2 MIMO). iPerf runs within the local network so it is unaffected by variances in your WAN internet speeds.

Access PointAverageMax
U6-Pro-US778 Mbits/s820 Mbits/s
UAP-AC-Pro508 Mbits/s538 Mbits/s
UAP-AC-HD438 Mbits/s598 Mbits/s

The U6-Pro-US access point has a 52% 5ghz wifi speed increase over the previous Unifi Pro based on the iPerf speed tests.

These tests were conducted with 5ghz Wi-Fi channel width set to VHT80 on the the UAP access points and HE80 on the U6 so that speed shouldn't be constrained by wifi channel width.

screenshot of iPerf iPhone speed test on U6-Pro-US

Final Thoughts

The Wi-Fi 6 version of the Ubiquiti UniFi Pro router, U6-Pro-US, was a worthwhile upgrade over my previous generation UAP-AC-Pro and even HD access points. The 52% performance increase in Wi-Fi speed on 5ghz puts the new access point on par with wired devices on a gigabit network in terms of download speeds.

Reddit user /u/mccanntech came up with this excellent specifications table showing the detailed differences of the UniFi omnidirectional access points. Visit their blog for more comparison tables like this one below.

UniFi Access Point Specification Table
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