Ubiquiti released the UniFi Travel Router Long-Range on August 28, and we have already had a few people ask us whether they should grab one. It is a small device, about the size of a deck of cards, and it sold out on the Canadian store within a couple of days of launch.
So is it worth it? For a specific set of situations, yes. For most of the Wi-Fi calls we take around Norfolk and Brant, no. Here is how we separate the two.
What the thing actually does
The Travel Router Long-Range (Ubiquiti's model name is UTR-LR) takes somebody else's internet connection and turns it into your own small network. It can pull its uplink from a Wi-Fi network, from a wired Ethernet port, or from a phone over USB tethering. Everything you own then connects to the travel router instead of to the hotel, park or plant network directly.
That matters more than it sounds. Your devices sit behind one login and can see each other again, so a laptop can reach a printer and a tablet can find a Chromecast, which almost never works on a shared guest network. Ubiquiti built it to handle captive portals as well, meaning you accept the hotel's terms once on the router rather than on all six of your devices.
It runs Wi-Fi 5 with 2x2 radios, has a pair of gigabit Ethernet ports and a small status display, and powers off USB-C at 5V/2A. The power adapter is not in the box. The Long-Range version's differentiator is a foldable antenna, which is why it is a few millimetres thicker than the original model. There is a WireGuard VPN client built in, and it will run standalone without a UniFi account or be adopted into a UniFi site if you already have one.
Who we would tell to buy one
Seasonal trailer owners. If you are on a park's shared Wi-Fi at Turkey Point or Long Point, this is the cleanest way to get a normal, private network in the trailer without arguing with the park's system.
Anyone who travels for work and is tired of logging six devices into hotel Wi-Fi every night.
Contractors running a site office. Tether it to a phone, plug the laptop and the label printer into the Ethernet ports, and the crew has a consistent network name from job to job.
Renters who cannot touch the building's wiring. It is not a full solution, but it is a reasonable holding pattern.
What it will not fix
It cannot make a bad uplink good. If the campground Wi-Fi is saturated at seven o'clock on a Saturday, a better antenna gets you a stronger signal to a network that is already out of capacity. Signal and throughput are different problems.
It is also Wi-Fi 5, not Wi-Fi 7. That is a sensible choice for a travel device, since battery-powered phones and laptops on the road do not need 6 GHz, but do not buy it expecting current-generation speeds. We wrote about where Wi-Fi 7 genuinely helps in Wi-Fi 7 for normal people.
The big one: it is not a house. One pocket router with 2x2 radios will not cover a century farmhouse or a shop with a steel wall down the middle, no matter how good the antenna is. If you are trying to solve coverage in a building you own, you want access points in the right places, fed by cable. Our post on how many access points a house actually needs covers the arithmetic, and mesh versus wired access points explains why we push wire so hard. Josh also has a piece on his own site, why good Wi-Fi starts with wires, if you want the longer version.
And if what you actually want is eyes on the cottage over the winter rather than better Wi-Fi in it, that is a different build. We covered it in cottage monitoring without monthly fees.
One practical note: no PoE and no battery. It needs a USB power source wherever you put it.
What it costs, and what we would quote instead
We sell the Travel Router Long-Range from $157, and the standard Travel Router from $129. As with everything, the final number goes in a written quote before we order anything.
If the honest answer to your Wi-Fi problem is the building rather than the road, the numbers look different. A Wi-Fi survey with a heat map starts at $395 and tells you where the access points have to go before anyone buys hardware. A Cat6 drop installed starts at $195, or $245 for Cat6A. Technician labour is $135 an hour locally and $150 on the Hamilton to Oakville side. Outside our Norfolk home zone there is a visit minimum, $395 for locations 31 to 60 minutes out and $595 beyond that, and the day's work counts toward it.
Our take: buy one if you travel, camp seasonally or work out of a truck. Do not buy one hoping it fixes the dead spot in your back bedroom.
If you are not sure which problem you have, that is a fine thing to ask us. Have a look at what we do on the network side, or get in touch and we will tell you straight whether you need a $157 gadget or a couple of drops and an access point. We work across Norfolk, Brant, Oxford and Haldimand as well as Hamilton, Burlington and Oakville.
Sources
- Introducing UniFi Travel Router Long-Range
- UniFi Travel Router Long-Range tech specs
- UniFi Travel Router Long-Range, Ubiquiti Canada store
- UniFi Travel Router tech specs
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