The Inexpensive UniFi 16port lite POE Switch Review & Lab Test

Look at the Mikrotik Netpower 16R, its waterproof and does Layer3 Routing on any port you choose.

I just got the UniFi Switch 24 POE last week. I love it so far. I think the switch reviewed here would have been a contender if I had known about it, but probably still would have gone with the one I purchased and received last week. I have 3 AP Lites at my house and a work IP phone that requires POE, and I'm planning on setting up a Zoneminder video surveillance system. I bought a couple POE cameras to play with and they work well on it. I also prefer to hardwire what I can with cat 6 instead of WiFi. So the 24 port was best choice for me. I have my Unifi Controller on an AWS Linux instance and I run my house and 2 of my daughters apartments with an EdgeRouterX and Unifi AP at each of those. I have 6 Unifi APs setup for my church for the past 4 years. So I'm running 4 sites on my controller. I really value Tom's reviews of these products. I was looking at getting the USG for my own home firewall, but he's sold me on the PfSense solution. I'm currently using a Linksys WRT1900AC with the radios turned off as my firewall at home, but I'm wanting to replace it.Thanks, Tom. I always give a like on your videos!

I want

Does it get hot?

What kind of switch would you need for the 802.11 ax (wave 2) standard? Would I need a switch capable of 2.5GBit?

First-time UniFi purchaser and recent channel subscriber here. I went with the UDM base model, 2 nano APs, and this Switch Lite 16 PoE. I’m really satisfied by the hardware.

I have it hidden away in somewhat of a network closet. No money for a rack yet.

But the software is really where they missed the mark for what I believe Pro-sumers want. I was looking for more control over my network compared to consumer brands like Netgear, and UniFi seemed like a good option. But I quickly found myself opening 15 tabs at once to troubleshoot connection and adoption issues, and after a few DAYS of research, found out that the most recent firmware had a bug that prevented the UDM from seeing the Switch Lite 16 PoE. And the issue was well documented on their forums for over 4 months. So there I was installing firmware after 4 days of troubleshooting an issue that was only discoverable on their forums when I had bought the hardware from their website, not even a 3rd party. I guess I expected at least a warning that the firmware the product shipped with would render the product unusable by the controller out of the box.

Anyway. It just soured my excitement for a product called “The Dream Machine” and now I’m forced to run beta software on my home and work-from-home network.

If they’ve pivoted into selling direct to consumer, then they should have expected the need to scale their support and QA before shipping the firmware.

Hardware is chef’s kiss

I set up my home network with a cloudkey, usg, and 3 AP Pros, but when it came time for the switch I cheaped out and went with TP Link due to the number of devices that required POE and my desired budget. I have about 16 devices that require POE plus another 6 or so non POE, so I just got two 16 port gigabit poe switches for about 400 total. The question is am I really missing out on very much functionality by not running unifi switches? In hindsight, I should have just spent the extra $80x2 and went unifi but now that's not an option without tossing my original investment.

I purchased the 8-port version direct from Ubiquity recently and I really like it. Same power budget, 4 PoE ports, HALF the price of the 16-port.

Powers a UAP-AC-HD with no issues, and still has a enough power budget left over for the rest of my equipment. Doers not get nearly as hot as the older 8-port PoE models.

That looks like good unit for my small house it looks easy to set up I have 800 sq. Foot house

internal power supply? no thanks..

$199, no thank you, i can buy lots of poe injector with that kind of money.

I have 2 HD wireless units and will be adding at-least 3 G3 cameras, does this have enough power to support everything?

if you do a short video, please dont use that intro thingie with it. outro is ok.

What are you thoughts about their PoE 24 port switch? My company’s IT guy suggested I upgrade my home structured wired home network with their access points, control unit, and switch at well over $1,000 investment just for equipment.

Complete garbage switch!! Don’t buy

why no rack ears

Zyxcel also has budget friendly Poe switches. Not a pretty ui. But they definitely work

Check out the Aruba Instant On 1930 series. The 8 port also has 2 SFP ports and similar price but with 124Wpower delivery. the 24 port also has 4x 10gb SFP+ ports.

Nice, I paid $190 for the 8-150W

I bought this 16-port POE lite (as my main switch) to power a Switch Flex in the garage which I want to then use to power a single AP like a rabbit-ear Mesh or maybe a Nano. Can this daisy chain work or will I have to now attach the power brick to the Switch Flex in the garage?

The new lite switches have 8 ports and 8 gbit/s backplane. Can this cause a bottleneck? Normally I expect the backplane to be at least double the ports for 1 gig switches. What ist your opinion?

Thanks! Would this have enough watts to support 2 APs (NanoHD) and 2 POE Cameras?

Does USW-Lite-16-POE work behind pfSense?  I've seen comments online about not being able to provision the device but there is not much detail.  Your video setup didn't show it's operation w/ the controller and it is unclear to me if you were using pfSense with that setup.

Unfortunately this 16 port POE switch failed just after two months of use, something I have not encountered with any of my network equipment over the last few decades. The problem is with the network interface, the switching engine seems to work normally. Curiously the Ubiquity on line store no longer lists the item and most e-shops no longer have these in stock!? Curious to see what happens with the RMA, in the mean time it is back to Cisco.

Why would you need this switch to be managed in the use case described? Wouldn't an unmanaged switch do the same job?

sorry for the silly question... I'm really new to these. I'm planning to buy USW-Lite-8-PoE for my home .... to connect to 4 (IP5M-B1186EW-28MM) amcrest brand cameras .... those cameras are normal POE, but unifi switch is POE+ ...... is it ok to connect POE cameras in POE+ port .....?

Still sold out everywhere ...

My home comes pre-wired with Cat-6 (7 ports). I have a NetGate SG-3100 & plan to upgrade to Fiber. Would I need this switch in addition to the PFsense? I was planning to use one of the Unifi 6 lite's and the PF sense to cover all devices (home security cameras, 9 x random devices). Would the Unifi 6 AC lites' need a cable connect to a PoE port?

I want to buy a Dream Machine pro but I don't want to buy a 24 port POE Pro switch from unifi to power a few cameras and a few access points. Do you know if this would work for a few POE cameras and a few AP? or will I need to get the pro switch?

Thanks for this video, question can I add my UniFi 8 port 60watt switch to it ?

This is what exactly what I want... Except it's not rack mountable 😔

45 watts is not enough, i'd hoped they would make this a 60 watt switch.

The switch seems to have a ton of problems. Any load put on it and it goes into a dead-loop. I'd def stay away from this switch until next revision. (I've found similar cases on reddit, where users are having problems with the switch and unable to factory reset it)

Great. Just had a used managed layer 2 switched delivered that i purchased from ebay for $35..Now it seems like I will purchase this switch instead to pair it with my Dream machine.

this would be great for a structured cabling can

Would this be sufficant to poeet 4 AP’s And 4 cameras

Is it okay to plug a non-poe device into a poe port? Thanks! :)

I have had this switch for ~ 4 months. While it "works" as a switch, and the price is good, it does not perform well within the Unifi eco system. This switch continues to alert in the controller console as disconnected, it is not disconnected as I do not loose connectivity to the Internet. What I do observe is high load (>4) and CPU (99 to 100%).

Thank you for this info, this is exactly what i wanted to know about this product. You got yourself a sub, keep up the good work!

Each AC-Lite AP can suck up 6.5W max so if all 8 ports are used, then that's 8 x 6.5W = more than 45W. That means this switch cannot power all 8 AC-Lite APs. Why does Ubiquiti cap this switch load at 45W when most likely this switch will be used to power these APs?

What about Unifi controller

First time buying a switch not sure what to get. Looking for something not expensive, I have ISP provided modem and router running 1 gig speeds. I have several devices that i want to connect (hardwired) including a dvr for home security cameras . I do not want to loose speed quality. I am new to this home networking thing just meed advice on what type of switch i need to but looking for at least 12 ports

Could it power two UAP-AC-LR ?

The smaller sister product with 8 ports (of which 4 are POE) has a 52W POE budget (13W/port avg). This 16 port model has double the POE ports (8) and a lower 45W POE budget (5.5W/port avg). I think there is a reasonable risk the power budget could be exceeded. My current POE cameras are ~8W each. A 6 Lite AP is 13.5W. A UAP-AC-IW is 7.5W (19W with POE pass through used). I realize these are max draws and nominal would be lower, but it adds up fast. It's handy to have the 16 ports but seems oddly under-powered. Also, the power supply is internal and may not be easily replaced if it fails. My Edgerouter X power block failed and was easily replaced in minutes. This looks nice for sure but make sure it will really work for you. For $20 more you can get two 8 Lite switches with more POE power and external power blocks.

Does anyone know if you can lock the port to a mac address. Thinking about getting the 16port and using the 8 poe ports for some cameras. Was hoping to lock down the poe port to the mac address of the camera connected to it?
Thanks.

Do we need the cloud key for this one?

Man, that’s a really review. Just what we need to know (excluding the SEF-merchandise 😂)
Thanks

Hi, does this switch issue DHCP ? I have an error saying I may have a rogue dhcp server ? Could this be my isp modem is issuing & this new switch :) ?

Will it better to add a bit more and get the usw-pro-8-poe? I'll lose 8 ports, but gain 2 SFP 10Gb and a lot more power! I think that 45W is verry low.

This switch needs a big update.... Increasing POE output. I maxed out this switch with just two access points.