Tech
This $230 ultra-nerdy router is what I’d buy if mine died right now
Control. Can’t find much of it in life, but I strive for it on my home network. After some early life experiences with cheap, basic routers, I currently run a more complex setup. But it’s not without its headaches, so if I had to get a new router right now, I’d buy Ubiquiti’s Dream Router 7. Which happens to be discounted by Ubiquiti on its website for an all-time low price of $230 during Black Friday 2025.
This rare deal is for all my fellow nerds. Lazy fellow nerds. Or ignorant, in my case.
Why? This Wi-Fi 7 router costs the same as (or even less than) a higher-end consumer model with a similar user-friendly interface, but provides far greater flexibility in configuration.
The spec page for this router reads like acronym soup. Sure, the obvious boxes for a router are ticked—Ethernet ports, built-in Wi-Fi, firewall—but how they’re implemented makes the brain tingle pleasantly. (On the hardware side: One PoE, one 10Gb WAN, one 2.5Gb WAN, and three 2.5Gb LAN ports; multi-WAN support; OpenVPN and WireGuard support; advanced QoS and NAT; and far more.) You can add over 30 additional UniFi networking devices like access points, cameras, and doorbells, with up to a maximum of 300 users.
It also functions as a limited NVR (network video recorder), with your choice of up to five HD, two 2K, or 4K cameras supported. The Dream Router 7 comes with a 64GB microSD card pre-installed for recording.
A view of all connected devices in the Ubiquiti dashboard, circa 2016 from Troy Hunt’s blog. The interface is still this clean and streamlined!
The software support is even more fun. (My idea of fun.) The Ubiquiti dashboard lets you create a virtual local area network (VLAN) in just a minute. You can also play with automations, dive into policy-based traffic routing (e.g., more custom parental controls for managing your kids’ network use), and more. And the dashboard interface makes both settings and statistics easy to understand. (You can read up on how this works via security guru Troy Hunt‘s blog, which is how I was first introduced to Ubiquiti gear.)
Earlier versions of the Ubiquiti Dream Router had some buggy issues (like dropped Wi-Fi), but users in the last few months have reported rock-solid stability on the newest firmware.
The Dream Router 7 is a quick online purchase, with much faster setup. To me, that’s the dream, for real. Especially at this rare Black Friday price, since Ubiquiti gear seldom goes on sale. Heck, in the past, popular products often sold out at list price.
