UniFi Lite Switches - 8 & 16 Port 

I Love that wall art of the Ethernet cable wires.

The older 8 port US 60 is also only AF POE while the newer lite is AT POE so +1 for the Lite

I wish the 16 port had a SFP port. Still looking at getting 1. Thanks for posting

Ubiquiti should implement a power requirements tool on their site so it's easier to know which switch to buy.

i just want ubiquiti to come out with a 2.5gbps switch for about $109

I have the 8 port version of this arriving today, and if it work out as expected I may end up with a few more. This will end up either serving my desk (I have a few too many things there) or my entertainment center. Each of these locations usually only needs one or two POE ports for my use case. (Phone and APs). I do have Cisco switches that I am moving from (3560 24 port POE) which are overkill for daily use at home.

Watching Crosstalk UniFi, before bed is like reading a bedtime story 🤣🤣🤣

Called the lite switch but more power than the Gen 2 16port PoE Switch. Makes you wonder why this one is regarded as the lite

It's interesting to see people prefer plastic cases over sturdy metal ones.

8:20 I think US-8-60W only support 802.3af but not 802.3at ??

Two comments on the comparison with others: The UniFi switch has a higher total PoE power output than the cheap switch. And I'm a bit surprised that you didn't choose a MikroTik switch to compare with - when I sometimes consider switching (pun not intended) away from UniFi, MikroTik seems to be the best option, as they are also a prosumer brand but are a bit cheaper than Ubiquiti.

having watched a lot of your videos i set up my system using unify access points with a raspberry pi as a controller , i stayed away from the switches because they are quite expensive , well here in the uk anyway , but have taken a lot of inspiration from you

I have the switch lite 16. The max PoE budget is actually 45 W despite having a 60 W power supply. This is on their spec sheet as well as the management section within UniFi. It’s a great switch for home use. I’m very happy with it. I have two raspberry pi’s with PoE HATS, three G3 flex cameras, a cloud Key gen 2, as well as the LTE backup all using about 22 W (about half).

I'm on the Unifi line except for security and routing. My NVR and Cameras are not on the protect system so I use the dumb POE switch for all my cameras since they're on a separate network. The dumb POE switches have a place in a network, you just need to find a home for them where you don't care about the central control.

Very nice Chris! I feel that these 2 new devices would go well the users who purchased either of the UDMs for a vanilla setup, even thought they have the advanced features. It's a device that somewhat matches the aesthetics of the UDM and would keep the theme going in other rooms of a home. I could my see my brother using the USW-Lite-8-PoE for more wired connectivity and adding an AP in another room to supplement the UDM, in your case the R2Dream2 (hehe), that he currently has. For myself, I would use the USW-Lite-8-PoE as a desktop switch for desktop wired needs, however I would lean more towards the rack mountable devices because why not! Of course this is all opinion but also food for thought. Thank you for the video and information!

Make a photo copy of the bottom of the old switch to use as a template to mount it.

The 16 port Lite switch seems ideal for my home setup. I need more than 8 ports. The PoE will power the access point. I can't have fans because it will be in my lounge. And I want to play around with the SDN software to separate out all the IoT stuff. I did look at TP-Link's Omada but there is no switch like this. One thing I would like to know is: how much power is drawn at the outlet? I'm in the UK and electricity is expensive. Peak power usage of 60W when everything is in use is fine. But when we are sleeping I want as little power usage as possible, or else it starts to cost real money just to run it! Example: 60W 24/7 costs £15 per month to run in December 2022 in the UK. About the same as a Netflix subscription!

Plot thickens with the Netgear GS310TP. 8x POE+ and 2x SFP for $122 on Amazon. Looks like ubnt is loosing the bang for the buck edge they've had for years. All the newer releases seem to be downgrades of the older stuff either by taking out stuff or going with plastic construction.

I like the smaller US-8-60, it fits a 10inch small patching rack (on a shelve) and looks great in there. This new one is even more a desktop switch, and I am not a fan for the plastic look en feel. Not bad, it depends for what and where you need this one.

I was in the market for an 8 port PoE switch and almost bought the old "hot-box" model. I've been using this new 8-port for about a month and absolutely love it. It's a great option for powering the more high-power PoE equipment like the Pro APs if you have a small deployment. It's powering one Pro AP and a 5-port switch, being fully populated with non-PoE clients otherwise. Not a single issue since it's been deployed, even have a bonded connection to a 2-port NAS. It's a great switch for about $100.

I still prefer the old us-8-60w over the lite version of it. I find the sleek metal design sexier than white plastic look.

The power cable is also different. The lite has no external brick which I prefer.

Holy crap, it took me 12 minute to figure out you were wearing a sl1pg8r shirt! Nice!

Maybe doing the “downgrade” in Unify Controller would stop the mis-reporting of BigNAS ...?

I have 8 port lite and 5 port lite switches. Initially when I adopted both switches were showing random users appearing and disappearing. In this stage I was using Synology router. As soon as I upgraded to UniFi USG, both switches starting showing correct users and since then never have had that problem.

The way a switch looks is not usually in my mind when wanting to buy a switch. Sure, Unifi can be managed remotely, but with VPN connectivity, which most companies will use even in 2020 when this video was released, the remote management is not a big deal. Central management is nice to have, but if you know the IP address of the switches, not a big deal. The main thing here is to note that ALL of the switches in the same price point were advertised with a lower PoE power budget than 60Watt, with the exception of TP Link, which was only advertised as 63Watt anyway. The Cisco had only 45Watt and the Netgear advertised as 55Watt. In the price point, that makes Unifi a compelling option still.

Correction - The US-8-60W was only ever PoE 802.3af, 15w per port on ports 5-8. Not PoE at

Why I like Unifi??? For the ease of managing it. Compared to managing my Netgear GS724Tv4, Unifi comes easy to understand (to me). Also the central managing system (controller) makes work on your LAN way simpler than an non-central manages LAN system. Even I (a professional taxi-diver with IT as a hobby with zero training on LAN management) was able to set up a full Unifi LAN with VLAN for my IoT stuff on a 500/500 fiber ISP line without a ISP supplied modem/router.

Yaaaaaysss So glad to see them expanding their line of more affordable switch.

I got managed Netgear GS-305e and unmanaged GS305 for managing connections in my little studio apartment. They are plugged to my Edgerouter X. They should be good since I never fully load them and they look nice.

Hi Chris! I would like to know if there is any difference in regards to the heat dissipation between these switches compared to the older ones. I live in Brazil and the weather here is very hot (39°C/102°F right now... Not even summer!!). It worries me if you think about using them in a home environment, where we don't want to have the noisy fans or a permanent air condition room only for that reason. I am a great fan of your channel. Congratulations for all content you create!

For me I needed more ports but I did not want to add another power cord. I have a edge router poe so I picked up a us-8 so I did not loose a POE port but I gained 8 ports of non POE and have no extra power cable. Something else to think about that you did not mention. Also love your content it helped me set up my edge router when I first got it. Love my wifi with my AP-AC-pro meshed to a AP-AC lite (for my next door neighbor to have internet)

What would be great Chris is during your reviews of PoE switches, would be to use a laser thermometer to give external temperatures of the devices. The older US-8-60W & US-8-150W run really hot to the touch. Have a standard PoE load like 2 WAP's and 2 phones to see how they handle it. The Lite 16 PoE looks great for my use case my office desk, currently have a fanless Cisco C3560CG-8PC-S which is a great switch, massive overkill for my use feature wise but I need more ports as it's full.

The new switches support POE+ at also in the lite-8 version while the us-8-60w was only poe af.

I'm using the 8-port lite switch on one side of my home office serving my NAS, powering the nanoHD for downstairs, and to power my Flex Mini which is on the other side of my office for my computer and printer.

Are you going to do a review on the new unifi talk phone flex and unifi access products?

Hi Chris, do you have a video on unifi Mac filtering setup? I can’t find decent info on how to do this. All you’re other videos are a big help! Thx!

I had nothing but a nightmare with the 16 port version. Both units I had within 12 hours lost mgmt to the cloudkey2 I have. But since they were outside of the purchase window.. couldnt' return to UBNT for refund. They did RMA the units. But can't trust these in the network... even though it's my home network. Caused too much drama when they dropped out as lost vlans. There is a serious flaw with these.

Almost a year later, and the network map is still not showing correctly. :(

I wish there is a switch with the same form factor that supports 10GB uplink and the rest can be 1GB. I have a 3 floors brick house (running cables is a nightmare), having a small form factor switch with 10GB uplink (SFP+ or even Cat6a) will make me run only one cable to each floor without any 1GB bottlenecks. The form factor is important because you don't want a huge rack mountable switch in each floor, with Unifi Lite form factor you can hide the switch in the ceiling or wherever you want. Ethernet cables are getting thicker and thicker, 5e

Great video, I would love to see an idle power draw comparison between the new lite switches and the older models.

I just ordered the 8 port Lite and surprisingly, 3 years later it's still at 109 dollars. Not a bad deal at all.

Great vid - thanks! Can we get some info on temperature for the new Lite models please? Do they have a sensor, do they run hot, etc.?

I wonder if they improve the cooling? I have the previous generation I have to run fans with! Otherwise I wouldn't be interested in them??

Perfect video Chris, thanks. Was looking forward to your recommendation re the 8-60W vs the 8 POE Lite. 👍

I really like your videos. They are easy to understand and makes my journey with Unfi simple.

Chris, how is the cooling with these? I have a US‑8‑60W which is passive cooling and the case gets rather hot to the touch.

The 8 ports version is dead in the water, can't get it anywhere since 1.5 years. The 16 ports is available, though more than twice the price. Ubiquiti products are hard to get lately.

Some of those Netgear pro switches had nice magnetic feet that allowed you to just fling it in the rack and it stuck to the steel of the cabinet. Great.

I like that these are Unifi central managed. However the 16 port unit quickly becomes underpowered if you add 8 POE devices when some of those are IR cams or downstream IW units with POE passthrough. I think 8 POE ports on the 16 port unit is fine. There just isn't enough power provided to run 8 POE devices unless they are each power sippers. It's a very intentional (and artificial) choice Ubiquiti made to cut the features (power) in order to drive you up to more expensive gear. Also, if the PS fails, it's internal on the 16 port unit. Good luck quickly replacing it. I like the look of Netgear stuff (and older Ubiquiti gear too). I'll take metal any day over plastic. Metal does not yellow or crack, and metal conducts heat away better. I don't show off my switching gear to guests (uh, if you do then you have very unique guests) and the metal units are more compact in my home IT cabinet.

The Ubiquiti stuff has grown on me. When I first started messing with it, I HATED the way the ecosystem was. Having a cloudkey or some other dedicated controller makes all the difference. I wish they had more rack mountable 8 port full poe switches, with ALL ports being PoE. Most of the NVRs I install are rack mountable, have their own PoE switch and fit perfectly on those smaller 18 inch deep racks. The main issue in some cases, I'm not able use an NVR with built in PoE since it needs to be in a location away from the PoE switches.

Chris thanks for all your videos, you have given me the knowledge to learn and upgrade my home to UniFi as well as use that knowledge on my side hustle to install this technology for customers. The lite switch and flex switches are perfect for my home. I use the gen 2 16 port in my rack, but utilize these extra switches in bedrooms to give more wired connections. I picked up one of the 8 port lite switches and utilize the POE to power a G3 Bullet and G3 Pro camera. Works great!!

I would like to know, how hot does the lite 8 feel, in comparison to the us-8-60w supplying the same load. I imagine it getting just as hot, but the heat trapped in the plastic case, so it feels cooler?

Chris, could your bignas be showing as a client due to pihole running on the NAS? Some sort of a DNS issue? Just curious since you were running pihole on your Synology NAS in it's video.

How hot do the new 8 and 16 port "lite" switches get, please? Want to use one in a closed cupboard, and have held off the older units due to the heat they generate. Thanks in advance.

For desktop switches, I don't really see a problem with having half of the ports non-POE. But for rack mount switches, I don't get it. I spent a lot of time running structured cabling and need the flexibility of having all ports be POE. That's why I love the US-16-150w. The gen 2 switches look great, but I can't justify the price of the pro models (they're the only ones that have POE across all ports)

Thank you so much for going through the actual options in the control panel. I've been thinking about buying this over the rack mounted version because I only need a few PoE devices but wanted link aggregation to my main 48 port switch. Ubiquiti's webpage doesn't list aggregation as an option for this model in it's description, unlike they do for the rack mounted version. Other's who have gone over this device haven't talked about it, and you mentioned it so that's a like from me!

I by far prefer the looks of the old metal cased one and I'm not sure I would trust that flimsy plastic mount either.

I like the new Lite devices.... oh a fun fact... size 10 head screws are the match to what UniFi ships with their equipment for mounting. 10$ on Amazon and I got 100 of the little screws... just in case ;)

Yeah, I bought the Switch Lite 16 PoE at the beginning of August to replace a dumb Netgear 8 port switch. It works great but I can't use any of the managed features on the switch through Unifi because my Dream Machine requires firmware 1.7.2 to see the switch in the Unifi interface but only the Dream Machine firmware version 1.5.6 is in the repo....guess I'll just have to wait until the new firmware version is published in the repo.....

Hi Chris, I just bought a 16 port PoE lite, and the poe ports wont even flinch wheconnecting a poe divice

I would like to change my current US-8-60W for 16 port lite to get more than 1 ethernet port to rooms in my house. It would leave some unpopulated, but would serve me better and look nicer on the wall.

What about backplane throughput for these lite switches? Is this less then the Gen-2 can handle?

i would really like to see a 8 port multi gig switch (2,5gbps or 2,5/5gbps) from unifi. keep up the good work chris and greetings from germany

What is his Intro Music?

Chris I don’t typically comment on RU-vid videos but these switches have frustrated me because of the POE power budget UBNT Has allocated for its essentially second generation switches. You are correct in stating that both the devices only have a 60 W power budget but what I find amazingly absurd is that for essentially the same price as the first generation you’re getting less POE because that 60 W budget is shared with the switch itself and if you look in the specs for 16 lite it actually has less of a POE budget than the eight lite because of the additional eight non-POE ports . Where as the first generation on those four ports that are POE you get the full 60w divided between them with no loss due to its additional four non-POE ports but those old switches do run hot where as the new light ones definitely aren’t as bad. I just don’t see how they can justify the price with less Poe power and this seems to be consistent along all of their second generation POE switches it’s like they’re forcing me to buy the top of the line POE Pro in order to have a decent amount of poe budget. I apologize for any misspellings or nonsensical sentences as this was dictated to Siri as I was driving by the way I also love your channel thanks for everything you do.

Interesting. Thanks for the info. I am not too invested into Unifi but considering it.

I've seen similar issues with UniFi Controller showing clients attached to the wrong device. This happened for me when, and only when, I had a switch (with clients) plugged into the 2nd port on an AC Pro, bridging the connection. This happened consistently until I removed the switch from the AC Pro. It looks like in this video you may be doing something similar with a couple access points daisy chained (not 100% sure). Perhaps there is a bug or this confuses UniFi.

I bought a few of those Netgear switches. If you don't want to manage vlans, they are ok, but if you want to do any layer 2 stuff, the web interface is SUPER slow and frustrating...

Hey As i read it, the unifi 16 lite has a 45w POE buget not 60 watt.

Nice video. Question, where did you get the picture of the ethernet cable in the background?

I have 3x of the 60w gen 1, would like to get the Lite instead cause they are wallmonuted in rooms. Badically a white switch looks better on a white wall

Can you easily mount the switch with the ports facing downwards? The "original" metal 8 port version is not so easy to wall mount (as you noted in your presentation).

8:30 The old switch does not have a thermal sensor, maybe the new one does with the new look.

I've had good luck with BV for an inexpensive add on switch BV-Tech 18 Ports PoE/PoE+ Switch (16 PoE+ Ports | 2 Gigabit Ethernet uplink) - 19" Rackmount - 135W - 802.3af/at $116 on amazon

Doesn't the old USW-8-60W only do 802.11af and not 802.11at? That would be a reason to go for the new one.

Hey Chris, do you think the same lite version treatment will come to the USG? Like do you think there will be a USG lite too?

That NAS balanced like at 3:50 - arggh

I’m about to start my home’s journey with Unifi. I have 2 WiFi 6 lites on the way, 2nd gen cloud key, UniFi Security Gateway and a UniFi Switch PoE 8 (150W).. the question is, should I stick to the 8 switch 150 or exchange it for the UniFi Switch Lite 16 PoE? I just don’t think I’ll ever max our the Lite 16 with what I plan to do... thoughts?

I saw reviews that the older silver models get exceeding hot when PoE is enabled.

Is there a rack mount bracket for these lite switches?

Hi Chris, i am planning to install 3 g4 camera's , a g4 doorbell and the cloud key gen 2. The shop recommended the UISP EdgeSwitch 8 150W is it ok or do you recommend an other switch

What is the maximum length of cat6 cable for POE to power an access point? I'd like to power a second Access point without buying another POE switch.

These are exactly what I'm looking for. If only I could actually buy the damn things in the UK!

So rather annoying. Received mine today just to find out UDM stable release still doesn’t recognize them. I think shipping a final product and needing to CLI update your controller for full use is pretty poor form. I’m a unifi fan, but this seems like a crap move

Hey Chris - it's interesting you should have seen some weird stuff going on with your Unifi Map and your NAS. I recently found on my Unify Map several iPhones and Hwawei devices connected directly to my USG !?! Completely bypassing the Switch 8 60w PoE. AND ... they kept reappearing even after unauthorising them. Even stranger ... they still showed on the map even hours after the guests had departed. I know you have friends in high places (lol) within Ubiquiti ... is there a bug? Are there Gremlins in their system?? Did I take a screen shot?!? Hmmm. BTW - I had massive issues when updating to v6xx - Thanks for the vid - I wthough I was going mad!!! Since downgraded back to 5.12.x?x. Cheers for all your vids. Brilliant. Richard from north Wales!!

I read while in the forums a while ago that the lite series is not so capable with stp as the “silver” series is, has there been any upgrade to implement it fully?

sorry for the silly question... I'm really new to these. I'm planning to buy USW-Lite-8-PoE for my home .... to connect to 4 (IP5M-B1186EW-28MM) amcrest brand cameras .... those cameras are normal POE, but unifi switch is POE+ ...... is it ok to connect POE cameras in POE+ port .....?

I like the look of Switch8-150w and Switch8-60w better that those new Lite versions, they look cheap plastic to me. I also like Switch8-150w, but it gets very hot, how about Lite models?

Does the switch have its own web GUI? What if I am using the switch with UNVR. UNVR only has the 'Protect' application.

I was reading on UI.com that the maximum temperature is -15 to 40° C (5 to 104° F) Is it possible that it can survive -20F at times? My area is usually 10F plus during the winter unless there's an artic cold front. Plan to install in my barn for cameras unheated or insulated

US-8-60W is 802.3af only, so lite version is an upgrade in that regard

Can you do custom port profiles with this switch?

Would you feel comfortable mounting one these new Lite switches upside down under a desk? Love the T568B art on the wall!

This might be a dumb question but can I use a unifi device that is POE af on a POE at port?

Got a Dumb Question!. Its not like a ERX ? where you have an web interface! A Switch is only an extension for any router like ERX / Portal / TPLINK / Dlinked Any switches out there have a Web interface with POE available for Ubiquiti products??? Nov 25- 2022. 1147am cst

hi thankyou for your videos, is it possible to time schedule vlan networks on the unifi switch, im using udmpro -us-8-50w

I have a Netgear Poe switch, 8 ports 4 with POE. the GS108PE I think. it went for 90 euro's it is "managed" but not from a central point, also the management interface is designed from a purely engineerings view, where unifi is a lot more simple + Poe is not managed, it's always on can't reset devices, Wish the Lite 8 switch was available when I got it, using it as an office switch for 1 phone and access point, don't need that much poe ports

Hi Chris, any recommendation for dual isp set. Up for load balancing and fail over. can handle 2x 500mbps bandwidth

Do these support downlink trunking of vlans? The mini flex doesn't and I couldn't tell on this one.