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Networking · Ubiquiti EdgeRouter

Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X

15owners with an opinion
70%of verdicts positive
1/3positive/negative since 2024
2 yrslongest happy owner
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for ease of use and reliability; criticized for performance and noise.

What owners wrote

Recommends itOwned 2 yearsStill going
I've been running the (relatively) well known EdgeRouter-X (aka ERX) + Unifi AC Lite setup for a couple of years at this point and I haven't had any issues with it. The ERX is tiny, sips power and can route traffic with QoS turned on at ~100-120Mbps (without QoS it routes at 1Gbps). The wireless access point provides good 5Ghz coverage for an average two bedroom flat (placed centrally in the flat). Both devices support Ubiquiti's old PoE standard and the ERX has a PoE passthrough port so I power both with a single PoE injector. The QoS feature of the ERX was a life saver in our old flat where the best connection we could get was DSL (~16Mbps). Without it we couldn't have worked from home during lockdown (two developers constantly in meetings and pulling/pushing Docker images and npm packages :) Now we've got fibre but I'm still running the same setup because it worked so well in the past (with the ISP's fibre modem in front of the ERX).
Doesn’t like it
Mikrotik. Past experiences include Cisco (bad incentives, they make a lot of money from certifications and licenses), TP-Link (broke the case physically when pressing a button, was left without updates after some time), Ubiquiti (could not handle the load of my home network. I had the edgerouter-x though which is weak)
Neutral
My only unsolved networking mystery was that my computer would experience high packet loss when a Roku in the other room was streaming Netflix. My PC and the roku device were both wired to two different ports on a router (iirc an Edgerouter X running openwrt at the time). This didn't repro when the roku streamed other services (hulu/youtube tested), only netflix. This also didn't repro if the roku was connected over wireless (connecting to an AP wired to a different port). Just opening netflix also didn't repro, the roku had to be actively streaming a netflix video. I never ended up solving it, I just worked around it by making the roku connect over wireless. It did take me forever to figure out the problem though. For a long time I'd be in one room getting frustrated with my computer while someone was innocently watching netflix in the other room.
Doesn’t like it
Maybe if one doesn't actually understand networking nomenclature or interop, sure. After owning a few EdgeRouter X models I can safely say that the whole lineup a was half baked proof of concept at best. Ubiquiti used two different chipsets in the EdgeRouter lineup, both had data corruption issues with hardware acceleration that Ubiquiti couldn't fix… because they simply cobbled together some open source projects and called it a product. One ran so hot that they'd reliably cook themselves. Because EdgeOS was Vyatta based, it used an end-of-lifed version of Debian (maybe this was eventually remedied?). The PoE models provide non-standard passive PoE, if memory serves the initial batch had PoE enabled by default on some ports = fries unsuspecting devices. They're cheap and nasty, but they mostly worked.
Likes itStill going
Been using OpenWRT on a Ubiquity EdgeRouter X for years and it runs great, using adblock directly on it as well, granted there are no nice statistics for adblock like on PiHole but the important thing is that it does the job. Have a separate dumb AP also running OpenWRT which needs upgrading and the next router must support OpenWRT it has practically become a required feature
Doesn’t like it
If you run adguard home with long blocklists on a consumer-level router, this will cause big delays, simply because the blocklists are large and eat all available memory and lots of processing on any dns request. I've kept de blocklists in adguard home small, and then it works fine, but if I add hundreds of thousands of blocked domains, it gets painfully slow on my Edgerouter X running OpenWRT
Neutral
I use an EdgeRouterX. It is also made by Ubiquiti but the Edge series is quite different from Unifi, seems more to be targeted at maybe ISPs, it has a built-in management UI and does not require (or work with) a Unifi controller. I also use a Zyxel switch with PoE to power the U6 Lite. I think the main point is that it should not and does not matter what you use. You can mix and match anything you want if those devices work on their own and do not require any central management. I do not need or want some Unifi controller and being able to look at data about my devices and being locked into their products, I just want devices that want that I configure once and forget about them.
Recommends it
It really depends on the functionality and performance you want. Given the price range the performance side will be on the low end. I would recommend moving up your price-point (if at all possible) and buy something slightly more capable that will last, potentially, longer. Protectli [0] and Qotom [1] are popular among the OPNsense[2] / PFsense[3] / Untangle[4] firewall distros with respect to small form factor devices. If all you want is a cheap "router" with a bare bones feature set for Internet edge routing I'd recommend a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X [5]. At $59 it's the best piece of hardware you're likely to get for the money with total control and less big-brother. If you can't find one email me at my HN username at counterbrea dot ch. I have a few different unused EdgeRouters I could send you for the cost of shipping. [0] https://protectli.com/ [1] https://www.qotom.net/product/list-58.html [2] https://opnsense.org/ [3] https://www.pfsense.org/ [4] https://www.untangle.com/ [5] https://store.ui.com/products/edgerouter-x
Recommends it
I'm currently using a Ubiquiti Edgerouter X (previously an ERLite) for routing/NAT and a UAP-AC-LR for WiFi (along with an OnHub in bridge mode, for AB testing). Previously, I used a UAP-LR reflashed with "normal" OpenWRT as I hated their controller/config software, but now there's Android and iOS apps for basic AP configuration. EdgeOS (a Vyatta fork) isn't as user friendly as other "consumer" routers, but every tech friend who owns one has fallen in love with the price/performance and feature set.
Likes it
I used to run a modified advanced tomato (advancedtomato.com) on a few Asus routers. But the build process is terrible and I got sick of maintaining it. Looked at openwrt and lede, but still a pain to maintain. I recently decided on the ubiquiti edge router x ($49), ac-lr access point($90), and pihole($50) on a raspberry pi for DNS. The pi also runs DNS crypt. But now everything gets regular updates and the firewall config and stats on the edge router are great.
Recommends it
I know others have recommended this already, but I would also say that your best bet is to buy some Ubiquiti hardware. An EdgeRouter X + UniFI Pro dual-band AP is on the order of $200 from Amazon and has way, way better functionality than SOHO hardware of same price point, with the principal issue that it is enterprise hardware, and is very much not point-and-click to set up. I think the tradeoff in functionality and build quality is worth it, though. I recently replaced my PC router running pfSense with an EdgeRouter X - at ~$50 the power savings alone will probably pay for it in less than a year, and the only thing I can't do with it that I could do with pfSense is create a standalone OpenVPN endpoint - so I'm moving that functionality to a server that was running anyway.