Looking to make the jump from WIFI 5 to 6E and figured I’d use the opportunity to become more intentional with separation of concerns in my network and ditch my mesh system from Aplifi. I’m looking at a Mikrotik router & switches on a 1Gbps fiber connection.

Where I’m stuck is the APs. The consensus seems to be that Unifi is the go-to system but perhaps there’s other comparable options out there that people have had good experience with. Status quo below:

- ca. 100 sq ft apartment, mixture of concrete walls and a bunch of thin non-load bearing walls

- can run wires into bedroom / office / living room so PoE is totally OK. Can’t do ceiling mount, can maybe do a shelf-mount of some sort.

- the U6 mesh seems like the best form-factor for my requirements but it’s not 6E. I’m fixated on 6E also because of wireless VR.

- the U6 Enterprise looks good on paper but realistically the only way to “mount” that thing is on a 3d printed vertical mount from Etsy which is pretty goofy and is probably not doing me favors radiation-pattern wise

- I can run management software through Docker on my NAS if need-be

- I have quite a bit of devices in my home network: NAS, Music Streamer, Sonos, KEF Wireless speakers, Thread IoT Devices, two PCs, Laptops, Scanning Devices etc. VLANs sound like a good idea at this point. My PiHole installation shows 35 clients right now.

- single pane of glass management-wise is not a hard requirement

I’m not fixated on Unifi equipment by any stretch so what I’m effectively looking for is some suggestions on Wifi 6E APs that I can mount on bookshelves and not kneecap their capabilities, regardless of manufacturer (as long as they don’t phone home or I can block them phoning home).

Perhaps there’s other options such as the newer Orbi mesh systems with wired backhaul but they seem to be stupidly priced for what they offer.

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