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My Review: The UniFi USW-16-Lite-PoE
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The Lite series of switches from UniFi were not initially well received, many compared them to the Gen 1 US-8-150W, US-8-60W and USW-16 switches. All of these had a pretty decent PoE budget and with the US-8-150W and USW-16 the ability to run either 24v passive or 48v Active PoE and whilst that’s not an unfair comparison I was surprised that so many were dismissing these new products without first thinking about how much of the PoE budget they were actually using! There was also a soreness over the fact that only 50% of the ports had PoE but then, well, the clue is in the name after all, it’s Lite!
Here’s the tech specs over at techspecs.ui.com
So the 16 port has a meagre 48watts of PoE+ output across 8 ports but let’s look at this a little deeper. PoE+ is enough to run pretty much any IP phone which generally only take a watt or two. PoE cameras again can take 2-4 watts and even the U6 WiFi line like the U6 Mesh take between 5 & 7 watts on average so a nice mix of devices is still achievable. They have been rock solid in my experience and with the advent of our own D2F racks mounts for 10″ and 19″ racks they’re a really nice easy and cheap introduction in to the world of UniFi switching. Sure, they’re not comparable to the Gen1 USW-16 or the Gen 2 version but then if you need that kind of PoE++ output then you need to break open that wallet no matter who’s switch you’re buying…
Is this an enterprise switch? Nope, not at all but for a home or small business that doesn’t need Fibre, 2.5G or oodles of PoE budget then I think this is a great switch, keenly priced with all the layer 2 features you might need in this environment. You know what else I like? The integrated power supply so no messy power brick kicking around that place.
Sold? Why not purchase one of our brackets to go along with your switch?