Just a few words of caution - this doesn't directly compete with synoplogy. It's literally just a NAS box. That said, it's a NAS box at a awesome price / performance / capability point _if_ and only _if_ you are already in the Unifi namespace.
I would say you are almost always better buying this + a mini-pc then a synology at this point, or a Ugreen NAS + TrueNAS if you want to do amost everything a synology can do.
synology doens't even compete with synology anymore because all the new hardware requires locked in synology drives now.
It's creating a void that is getting filled with Ugreen, Minisforum, beelink, Aoostor for invoative platforms from China and classic competitors like Qnap, Asustor, Teramaster, etc for innovation for the small to mid-tier needs. 45drives in the larger spaces for folks wanting to manage things more on their own but have enterprise scale needs. Dell and HP have always competed on the high-end enterprise space and also becoming a better option, even though synology is so easy as an appliance.
Yes. Synology introduced the requirement to use first-party drives earlier this year and it was such an unmitigated disaster for them that they rolled it back just a couple of days ago.
If/when they launch a bigger unit than 8-bay, with ZFS, I’ll probably buy it. I’m already in the ecosystem and love it, and while my homegrown Debian-based NAS is rock-solid, I’d totally switch if they had a 3U or 4U high-capacity offering.
I’ve tried TrueNAS many times, and I just don’t like the UI/UX. It tries to ride the line between a walled garden, à la Apple, and “do what you want.” That doesn’t work, IMO. I really don’t like how it tries to do everything - I don’t want hyper-convergence, I want you to do one thing, and do it really, really well.
Literally my only hangup. I feel like I’m playing with fire with btrfs on Synology the longer I use it. Having ZFS would put my mind at ease, and I can relegate the Synology to backup duty.
I'm the opposite, I don't want ZFS with it's homegrown cache (ARC) that is separate from the system. btrfs has been solid, as long as you use it with dm/md raids.
I'm also waiting for bcachefs to mature a bit. It's already pretty great, but needs a bit of polish.
I'm waiting for erasure coding to mature, and I also want something like TrueNAS to support bcachefs natively. One other thing is support for attributes on single files, to tweak the CoW behavior for VM images.
Linux already has a memory cache that is pretty capable and tunable. ARC just ignores it. It's fine if you have a single-purpose NAS, but I prefer to use mine to host other stuff.
Yeah I’ve used them for years - I get some people have different experiences and people occasionally get lemons but I don’t remember the last time my UniFi gear was the source of an outage that wasn’t caused by my misconfiguration.
I’ve had only a simple / reliable setup experience with a great UX
Unifi WiFi has been highly reliable for me in simple set ups.
An elderly friend had high-speed Internet installed in his farmhouse. The lath and plaster walls were reinforced with chicken wire mesh, and ISP’s WiFi router box couldn’t penetrate it. I thought maybe he would need a few UAPs, but a single UAP-LR puck has been serving reliable Wi-Fi for 10+ years with no need for a unify controller. I’ve repeated this installation for other elderly and non-technical friends. I get absolutely zero service calls.
I know nothing about this particular product, but I would not buy anything from UniFi where you will be sad if it becomes essentially useless for any remotely nontrivial use case.
In recent days, I've encountered at least the following issues:
- Removing a fixed DHCP address from a device that is no present requires switching to the old UI.
- Gateway network traffic by client is flat-out broken.
- My particular combination of hardware does not support UniFi's speedtest. Dunno why. They don't care.
- Doing almost anything temporarily disruptive to the network resuts in long-lasting disruption as the controller re-adopts everything.
- Per-port switch settings are janky. They often result in the settings page and the actual applied settings not being in sync. And sometimes the port I want to configure is missing. (Seriously, the ports will be in numeric order except one is skipped. So maybe I have port 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Traffic is passing on port 4 just fine, but there is no port 4 as far as the UI is concerned.
- Network ACLs are a serious mess and often simply don't work, although I admit it's been a little while since I've re-tested this issue. (The ones above are all things I've encountered very recently.)
I'm sure I'm forgetting something. UniFi is... sort of featureful but not actually impressive.
I don't know answers to all of yours but the couple I do know...
- The fixed DHCP addresses are found under Client Devices. Click the Globe icon above the search box (To the right of the binoculars) to get the DHCP blade. All fixed reservations are listed, even for offline devices.
-For ACLs I've had great success with their new object based model that I believe came in Network 9.3. Settings > Policy Engine > Objects
I'm curious which devices you're using for both the gateway and switching equipment.
> The fixed DHCP addresses are found under Client Devices. Click the Globe icon above the search box (To the right of the binoculars) to get the DHCP blade. All fixed reservations are listed, even for offline devices.
This was almost the first thing I tried. It says "No Connected Clients" "Add new clients to see their usage and application data." For fun, I added a made-up client using that UI and there are still no clients. Oh, and the dialog to add a client doesn't ask which "network" to add it to, which is one of several examples of UniFi internal schema not matching reality. (Have fun trying to track down a client that has recently existed on two different VLANs. UniFi clearly has some fundamental architectural problems here.)
> -For ACLs I've had great success with their new object based model that I believe came in Network 9.3. Settings > Policy Engine > Objects
Huh, cute. This one is aware of VLANs. I wonder if it actually works well -- given the number of times I've seen UniFi misapply various security rules, I'm skeptical, but it would be handy if it actually works. It would be extra nifty if it worked seamlessly across wired and wireless networks.
1)It's been forever since I have used the legacy interface, so I google'd it it went away in 7.3, which was 2+ years ago, so it seems you may be on a very very old version of Unifi US. I'm running 9.5.18, and I can confirm that option no longer exists (or is needed)
1) Also on the current version, to remove a DHCP client you can click on Client Devices / DHCP, and remove there. I just tested that as well.
2) Gateway traffic by individual client, ip, zone, etc works fine, in my experience, but I am also using Policy Engines, which I don't believe is supported on the version you are using. Policy engines can apply QoS, security, or routing to any object - ip, subnet, any sort of logical grouping.
3) I agree that it used to have a lot of problems with re-adopting, but it's been a while since I have seen that - the only time I ever see a re-adopting screen is after a OS re-install.
4) Network ACLs where replaced with policy again, but again, that's pretty new - you may be running a old version.
Also add to this that they tend to randomly (soft-)EOL products. I've already been bitten by this twice (first by their early CCTV systems, then by their EdgeRouter series of devices).
Don't buy Ubnt unless you're ready to replace it by something else when things go wrong.
The Edge Router line has been what, 5 years old since any major update? But these are still being supported. The CCTV stuff was replaced, again 5+ years ago, but I have been using Unifi switches, and Unifi protect for ~10 years now, and have not had a problem. Unifi Protect also supports ONVF now, which means it supports third party cameras, which was part of the reason people didn't like protect originally.
> The Edge Router line has been what, 5 years old since any major update?
Where's the replacement for those anyway? From what I can tell, the new unifi routers don't even officially support SSH or Serial login, nor do they support the typical configure/commit/abort procedure, nor do they officially support loading/backup up config files, nor running custom cronjobs (which I need as German ISPs require even on FTTH a 24h reconnect, and if you don't schedule one, they'll schedule one for you)
I believe UISP stuff is intended to be the replacement for the Edge line. Haven't tried it yet, but my impression is that it's more similar to the Unifi line in terms of interfaces.
How does it have feature parity if I have no ability to change the entire configuration programmatically, on reaction to certain changes?
My ISP requires a reconnect every 24h, assigning a new IPv4 and IPv6 prefix after every reconnect. That means after each reconnect I need to update DNS entries via RFC 2136, update the IPv6 range for VPN clients, and reconfigure my DECT basestation with the new IP addresses.
Currently I've got scripts as part of the config bundle that use the vyatta configure CLI to update the configuration after every reconnect, which also run on a crontab timer.
EdgeRouter series got major 3.0 update in August 2025, just a few months ago. It took them a while but it got released after series of release candidates.
I mean it's a case of use the right tool for the job.
For consumer, it's overkill.
For pro-sumer, it's perfect, imo. You can start pushing the boundaries, here, but most will not for residential. If you are pushing the boundaries, you are probably savvy enough to roll your own solution or get into the actual, hard-core enterprise stuff.
For small businesses, it's similar to pro-sumer.
For enterprise, use something else.
But honestly, you could make it work for any of these, 99% of the time.
I fall squarely into pro-sumer and my setup has been flawless for me. It's got all the bells and whistles I could ever need while not being too overkill nor really that expensive in the grand scheme of things. I am planning on switching over from Synology to a UNAS for the integration with Identity.
It sounds like you are the exception for pro-sumer.
Unifi is what you swap over to once your time becomes more scarce and money more plentiful. At least in all the cases of my peer group.
It's far less customizable, and can be maddening sometimes if it doesn't Just Work(tm) - debugging it can be a giant pain. You will also be paying the Ubiquiti tax.
I simply redesigned my overly complex home network to be much more boring, and am okay with that. I don't want to tinker with my home IT stuff much these days - I want it to just work, and changes to be easy.
I've found Unifi Network and Unifi Protect to have come a long way in the past 3-4 years. They still drop hardware duds and software bugs here and there, but overall it's been a rather decent experience for the most part. I understand all the core level technology and configuration bits, but I simply do not have the desire to ssh into switches or whatever to configure a new port these days. Then open source NVR story is also just horrible even today.
It's also great for remote installs for other non-technical people/orgs I help out with. One dashboard I can just click on and go take a look to figure out whatever problem they may be having. And a new setup takes hours vs. days.
I’m sort of all for not wanting to spend much time fiddling with my home network, but the issue for me that UniFi doesn’t actually Just Work. It’s too buggy.
I choose to believe you but your experience and mine are apparently VASTLY different. I would even say I'm on the complicated side of pro-sumer in terms of my network. That is to say it's surprising and I think you might just be unlucky.
I've found the same. I've moved from a homebrew tinkerer's delight home network with pfSense running in a VM, Supermicro FreeBSD ZFS fileserver, hodgepodge of cameras etc. to a top-to-bottom Unifi Stack.
My time is worth a lot more now, my family appreciates very much that it "Just Works" (tm), and -- most importantly -- the cognitive load for me is a fraction of before.
That your network stack and your nvr stack was the same thing (and fully local) was a huge selling point for me. If you are only interested in network, you could probably get more customizable/hackable or cheaper (or both) alternatives.
I do not know of an alternative stack that does everything like Unifi.
Might be an appealing product if I just needed networked mass storage, but my home NAS (Synology DS920+) is also a home server, running a bunch of applications. I imagine Ubiquiti isn't going to start making servers anytime soon either.
I recently upgraded to a Minisforum N5 Pro DIY NAS (I run Alpine Linux with ZFS on it), and it's been great running backups and Immich in Docker. ECC RAM and 10G Ethernet are must haves as far as I am concerned, as is the freedom to use your distro of choice.
I’m surprised they don’t have their own Synology C2–type backup service. Instead, they list AWS S3, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi as back-end integrations.
We use Synology with VMware ESXi backups, and it’s a lifesaver. Unless they add VM support, I wouldn’t consider UI. I also wonder what their backup-restore timeline/search looks like.
EDIT: You know what grinds my gears on HN? Getting downvoted for a basic observation and never knowing what I said that sounded wrong to others.
It could be because storage data plane development is a complex and niche software engineering domain, and cloud storage itself is not a high margin business.
Just a few words of caution - this doesn't directly compete with synoplogy. It's literally just a NAS box. That said, it's a NAS box at a awesome price / performance / capability point _if_ and only _if_ you are already in the Unifi namespace.
I would say you are almost always better buying this + a mini-pc then a synology at this point, or a Ugreen NAS + TrueNAS if you want to do amost everything a synology can do.
synology doens't even compete with synology anymore because all the new hardware requires locked in synology drives now.
It's creating a void that is getting filled with Ugreen, Minisforum, beelink, Aoostor for invoative platforms from China and classic competitors like Qnap, Asustor, Teramaster, etc for innovation for the small to mid-tier needs. 45drives in the larger spaces for folks wanting to manage things more on their own but have enterprise scale needs. Dell and HP have always competed on the high-end enterprise space and also becoming a better option, even though synology is so easy as an appliance.
Didn't Synology just walk back the whole "first party drives only" thing?
Yes. Synology introduced the requirement to use first-party drives earlier this year and it was such an unmitigated disaster for them that they rolled it back just a couple of days ago.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/10/synology-caves-walks...
Discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45513485
Once trust is lost, it is lost for good.
Never buying Synology, they will do it again in various ways, same or otherwise.
If/when they launch a bigger unit than 8-bay, with ZFS, I’ll probably buy it. I’m already in the ecosystem and love it, and while my homegrown Debian-based NAS is rock-solid, I’d totally switch if they had a 3U or 4U high-capacity offering.
I’ve tried TrueNAS many times, and I just don’t like the UI/UX. It tries to ride the line between a walled garden, à la Apple, and “do what you want.” That doesn’t work, IMO. I really don’t like how it tries to do everything - I don’t want hyper-convergence, I want you to do one thing, and do it really, really well.
> with ZFS
Literally my only hangup. I feel like I’m playing with fire with btrfs on Synology the longer I use it. Having ZFS would put my mind at ease, and I can relegate the Synology to backup duty.
I'm the opposite, I don't want ZFS with it's homegrown cache (ARC) that is separate from the system. btrfs has been solid, as long as you use it with dm/md raids.
I'm also waiting for bcachefs to mature a bit. It's already pretty great, but needs a bit of polish.
I've been considering bcachefs multiple times. What's stopping you from using it?
I'm waiting for erasure coding to mature, and I also want something like TrueNAS to support bcachefs natively. One other thing is support for attributes on single files, to tweak the CoW behavior for VM images.
What do you have against ARC? It’s an extremely proven piece of tech.
Linux already has a memory cache that is pretty capable and tunable. ARC just ignores it. It's fine if you have a single-purpose NAS, but I prefer to use mine to host other stuff.
I still haven't found an official answer, do any of the UNAS 2 and 4 uses ZFS or at least BTRFS?
BTRFS
OH this is so nice to hear!
I love unfi system for my home lab it’s feature rich and just constantly getting better
I especially love it when the entire network is down after I changed the schedule for one WiFi network.
Or after everything, including the gateway trips over itself when I reboot one of the switches.
Or when it decides to run two APs, pretty much next to each other, on the exactly the same channel after a daily scan.
Or when I wake up to the WiFi down because it decided to turn on the automated firmware upgrade.
Yeah, they're almost out of the alpha phase.
lol u posted that before idk man I run a home lab different use cases
Yeah I’ve used them for years - I get some people have different experiences and people occasionally get lemons but I don’t remember the last time my UniFi gear was the source of an outage that wasn’t caused by my misconfiguration.
I’ve had only a simple / reliable setup experience with a great UX
Unifi WiFi has been highly reliable for me in simple set ups.
An elderly friend had high-speed Internet installed in his farmhouse. The lath and plaster walls were reinforced with chicken wire mesh, and ISP’s WiFi router box couldn’t penetrate it. I thought maybe he would need a few UAPs, but a single UAP-LR puck has been serving reliable Wi-Fi for 10+ years with no need for a unify controller. I’ve repeated this installation for other elderly and non-technical friends. I get absolutely zero service calls.
Anything you’d recommend instead?
You could always go with the buzzword bingo "secure network architecture designed for AI" by Cisco, whatever that means*:
“With intuitive technologies, we optimize IT experiences, secure locations, and seamlessly connect people, places, and things.”
https://meraki.cisco.com/
* What they say it means, here: https://blogs.cisco.com/news/the-ai-ready-enterprise-buildin...
It looks like their cheapest WAP (CW9172I) costs $1,300 + $250/year for licensing?
That’s not really an alternative.
I know nothing about this particular product, but I would not buy anything from UniFi where you will be sad if it becomes essentially useless for any remotely nontrivial use case.
In recent days, I've encountered at least the following issues:
- Removing a fixed DHCP address from a device that is no present requires switching to the old UI.
- Gateway network traffic by client is flat-out broken.
- My particular combination of hardware does not support UniFi's speedtest. Dunno why. They don't care.
- Doing almost anything temporarily disruptive to the network resuts in long-lasting disruption as the controller re-adopts everything.
- Per-port switch settings are janky. They often result in the settings page and the actual applied settings not being in sync. And sometimes the port I want to configure is missing. (Seriously, the ports will be in numeric order except one is skipped. So maybe I have port 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Traffic is passing on port 4 just fine, but there is no port 4 as far as the UI is concerned.
- Network ACLs are a serious mess and often simply don't work, although I admit it's been a little while since I've re-tested this issue. (The ones above are all things I've encountered very recently.)
I'm sure I'm forgetting something. UniFi is... sort of featureful but not actually impressive.
I don't know answers to all of yours but the couple I do know...
- The fixed DHCP addresses are found under Client Devices. Click the Globe icon above the search box (To the right of the binoculars) to get the DHCP blade. All fixed reservations are listed, even for offline devices.
-For ACLs I've had great success with their new object based model that I believe came in Network 9.3. Settings > Policy Engine > Objects
I'm curious which devices you're using for both the gateway and switching equipment.
> The fixed DHCP addresses are found under Client Devices. Click the Globe icon above the search box (To the right of the binoculars) to get the DHCP blade. All fixed reservations are listed, even for offline devices.
This was almost the first thing I tried. It says "No Connected Clients" "Add new clients to see their usage and application data." For fun, I added a made-up client using that UI and there are still no clients. Oh, and the dialog to add a client doesn't ask which "network" to add it to, which is one of several examples of UniFi internal schema not matching reality. (Have fun trying to track down a client that has recently existed on two different VLANs. UniFi clearly has some fundamental architectural problems here.)
> -For ACLs I've had great success with their new object based model that I believe came in Network 9.3. Settings > Policy Engine > Objects
Huh, cute. This one is aware of VLANs. I wonder if it actually works well -- given the number of times I've seen UniFi misapply various security rules, I'm skeptical, but it would be handy if it actually works. It would be extra nifty if it worked seamlessly across wired and wireless networks.
1)It's been forever since I have used the legacy interface, so I google'd it it went away in 7.3, which was 2+ years ago, so it seems you may be on a very very old version of Unifi US. I'm running 9.5.18, and I can confirm that option no longer exists (or is needed) 1) Also on the current version, to remove a DHCP client you can click on Client Devices / DHCP, and remove there. I just tested that as well. 2) Gateway traffic by individual client, ip, zone, etc works fine, in my experience, but I am also using Policy Engines, which I don't believe is supported on the version you are using. Policy engines can apply QoS, security, or routing to any object - ip, subnet, any sort of logical grouping. 3) I agree that it used to have a lot of problems with re-adopting, but it's been a while since I have seen that - the only time I ever see a re-adopting screen is after a OS re-install. 4) Network ACLs where replaced with policy again, but again, that's pretty new - you may be running a old version.
The legacy UI settings are available in Network > System > Interface in my UDM SE running Unifi Network 9.4.x
Also add to this that they tend to randomly (soft-)EOL products. I've already been bitten by this twice (first by their early CCTV systems, then by their EdgeRouter series of devices).
Don't buy Ubnt unless you're ready to replace it by something else when things go wrong.
The Edge Router line has been what, 5 years old since any major update? But these are still being supported. The CCTV stuff was replaced, again 5+ years ago, but I have been using Unifi switches, and Unifi protect for ~10 years now, and have not had a problem. Unifi Protect also supports ONVF now, which means it supports third party cameras, which was part of the reason people didn't like protect originally.
> The Edge Router line has been what, 5 years old since any major update?
Where's the replacement for those anyway? From what I can tell, the new unifi routers don't even officially support SSH or Serial login, nor do they support the typical configure/commit/abort procedure, nor do they officially support loading/backup up config files, nor running custom cronjobs (which I need as German ISPs require even on FTTH a 24h reconnect, and if you don't schedule one, they'll schedule one for you)
I believe UISP stuff is intended to be the replacement for the Edge line. Haven't tried it yet, but my impression is that it's more similar to the Unifi line in terms of interfaces.
They do support SSH and well beyond feature parity with the edge switches (finally). But yes, they are UI driven not text driven.
How does it have feature parity if I have no ability to change the entire configuration programmatically, on reaction to certain changes?
My ISP requires a reconnect every 24h, assigning a new IPv4 and IPv6 prefix after every reconnect. That means after each reconnect I need to update DNS entries via RFC 2136, update the IPv6 range for VPN clients, and reconfigure my DECT basestation with the new IP addresses.
Currently I've got scripts as part of the config bundle that use the vyatta configure CLI to update the configuration after every reconnect, which also run on a crontab timer.
How would I support this use case on UnifiOS?
EdgeRouter series got major 3.0 update in August 2025, just a few months ago. It took them a while but it got released after series of release candidates.
I mean it's a case of use the right tool for the job.
For consumer, it's overkill. For pro-sumer, it's perfect, imo. You can start pushing the boundaries, here, but most will not for residential. If you are pushing the boundaries, you are probably savvy enough to roll your own solution or get into the actual, hard-core enterprise stuff. For small businesses, it's similar to pro-sumer. For enterprise, use something else. But honestly, you could make it work for any of these, 99% of the time.
I fall squarely into pro-sumer and my setup has been flawless for me. It's got all the bells and whistles I could ever need while not being too overkill nor really that expensive in the grand scheme of things. I am planning on switching over from Synology to a UNAS for the integration with Identity.
It sounds like you are the exception for pro-sumer.
Unifi is what you swap over to once your time becomes more scarce and money more plentiful. At least in all the cases of my peer group.
It's far less customizable, and can be maddening sometimes if it doesn't Just Work(tm) - debugging it can be a giant pain. You will also be paying the Ubiquiti tax.
I simply redesigned my overly complex home network to be much more boring, and am okay with that. I don't want to tinker with my home IT stuff much these days - I want it to just work, and changes to be easy.
I've found Unifi Network and Unifi Protect to have come a long way in the past 3-4 years. They still drop hardware duds and software bugs here and there, but overall it's been a rather decent experience for the most part. I understand all the core level technology and configuration bits, but I simply do not have the desire to ssh into switches or whatever to configure a new port these days. Then open source NVR story is also just horrible even today.
It's also great for remote installs for other non-technical people/orgs I help out with. One dashboard I can just click on and go take a look to figure out whatever problem they may be having. And a new setup takes hours vs. days.
I’m sort of all for not wanting to spend much time fiddling with my home network, but the issue for me that UniFi doesn’t actually Just Work. It’s too buggy.
I choose to believe you but your experience and mine are apparently VASTLY different. I would even say I'm on the complicated side of pro-sumer in terms of my network. That is to say it's surprising and I think you might just be unlucky.
I've found the same. I've moved from a homebrew tinkerer's delight home network with pfSense running in a VM, Supermicro FreeBSD ZFS fileserver, hodgepodge of cameras etc. to a top-to-bottom Unifi Stack.
My time is worth a lot more now, my family appreciates very much that it "Just Works" (tm), and -- most importantly -- the cognitive load for me is a fraction of before.
That your network stack and your nvr stack was the same thing (and fully local) was a huge selling point for me. If you are only interested in network, you could probably get more customizable/hackable or cheaper (or both) alternatives.
I do not know of an alternative stack that does everything like Unifi.
Agreed 100%. Perfect prosumer / small business setup.
Same here, I’ve been using their EdgeRouters and UniFi access points for years with no issues.
90% of the product effort goes into out-appleing apple on their website
If that's the goal I think they succeeded, I could barely browse it on my old laptop.
What would you recommend instead?
Haters gonna hate
Might be an appealing product if I just needed networked mass storage, but my home NAS (Synology DS920+) is also a home server, running a bunch of applications. I imagine Ubiquiti isn't going to start making servers anytime soon either.
I recently upgraded to a Minisforum N5 Pro DIY NAS (I run Alpine Linux with ZFS on it), and it's been great running backups and Immich in Docker. ECC RAM and 10G Ethernet are must haves as far as I am concerned, as is the freedom to use your distro of choice.
https://www.servethehome.com/minisforum-n5-pro-review-an-awe...
They did not, but MikroTik has...
https://mikrotik.com/product/rds2216
I’m surprised they don’t have their own Synology C2–type backup service. Instead, they list AWS S3, Backblaze B2, and Wasabi as back-end integrations.
We use Synology with VMware ESXi backups, and it’s a lifesaver. Unless they add VM support, I wouldn’t consider UI. I also wonder what their backup-restore timeline/search looks like.
EDIT: You know what grinds my gears on HN? Getting downvoted for a basic observation and never knowing what I said that sounded wrong to others.
It could be because storage data plane development is a complex and niche software engineering domain, and cloud storage itself is not a high margin business.