To start, my use is to provide network access to multiple Wifi cameras installed around a farm and to have solid Wifi for my devices, wherever I am. I installed this product at the peak of a house roof, with wife's approval of course. I ran ethernet cable directly into a router where the traffic is isolated as desired. That is a different conversation.

The setup was truly easy. I really didn't have to think, much. I have worked on much more difficult products, so this was refreshingly simply. It took about five minutes to configure and then I was ready to install it.

For performance testing, I wandered around the farm fields with a Wifi only iPad and was able to stream online videos from one of everyone's favorite services, without any drops. Likewise, the cameras all have line of site views to this access point, so they work. It's like magic! I will note that Wifi coverage drops when passing the plane of the house structure, i.e. there really is not good coverage behind the house. You should plan on line of site coverage. I bought another one of these access points to use going the other direction! ;)

It is fully exposed to the elements, so time will tell. So far it has endured full sun, 60-70mph winds, significant rain and scary looking thunderclouds. It just works!

Writing this review after a few months of ownership. My current setup is an AC-PRO in the (brick house) and the mesh access point in my separate garage. I'm running the ubiquity mgmt software on a spare Mac. The distance is probably 60 feet between both access points and the signal is traveling through Sheetrock, Concrete blocks (house built in the 60s), brick, aluminum siding on both the house and the garage and plywood. Even with that I am getting 80mbps which is perfectly acceptable to run a roku, iPad, iPhone, Nintendo switch and Alexa at the same time.

So prefacing I am a telecom engineer and project manager by trade with a background in networking, however, I am going to continue from the perspective of a home enthusiast looking to set up a prosumer environment. Most importantly why? You can get off the shelf mesh gear now cheaper than what it would take to set up a system like this. Well if you are an enthusiast you want performance, reliability and integrity. Yes you are inevitably buying into an ecosystem but that's going to be the case no matter what.

Setup
Adopting this little bugger into the network was very automatic..like plug it in and it showed up in a few seconds within the Ubiquiti controller software to be adopted. That process took no time and a few minutes later my configs were done and it was mounted in my garage a few minutes later. I was honestly impressed at how well this worked. Assuming there's a private SSID they all use or perhaps bluetooth to allow this magic.

Installation
This comes with an excessive amount of mounting options and all needed screws, adapters, etc. It's about the size of a candy bar and the two onboard antennas can be adjusted and pointed back to home base. It's POE powered and comes with a wall adapter so you get the best of both worlds.

Operation
This is an area that I've found interesting. Given the construction of my house I've spent some time tweaking out the configuration and finally got it perfected. Any issues are definitely magnified as you'll see little quirks like devices joining the incorrect access points. One cool thing is that since you're running the controller software you can use the mobile app and make a ton of adjustments on the fly including having your devices reconnect etc. That's all a non issue though now as everything stays where it needs to be and my network experience is consistently 98%

So if you have an existing ubiquiti network and are looking to extend I would most definitely recommend the mesh access point although all of their devices support meshing now which presents plenty of options. Will likely be adding some plug in wall access points in strategic locations.

Do bear in mind you need the controller software running. If you are a enthusiast you likely have a server to throw it on. Otherwise a Raspberry PI works just fine. Oh yes privacy. You do not have to register with Ubiquiti or connect to them in any way aside from firmware downloads. This is unique at this point as all of the consumer mesh systems well ya know...

This is an impressive little unit for less than $100. It is an enterprise class outdoor access point, for the price of a mid-end consumer router and it has the form factor of a long and large pen (or the box of it). For the price, it is hard to beat the value. I use these for testing out a hotspot service at a marina and use several of them mounted on the halyards and masts of sail boats to extend coverage. All units are heavily exposed to harsh weather conditions, including rain, moisture and wind. They have not been up and running for too long yet but they haven't encountered any problems under almost constant rain for 48 hours.

Before I go further, let me tell what this is and is not. First of all, this is not a router. It is only an access point, meaning you will still need a router that does routing, NAT, DHCP, DNS, filtering and access-lists (if you need them) etc. Most consumer grade routers combine access point functionality with a router that does many other things, this will not have those (at least without specific add-ons). Also, based on the reviews and questions I have seen there seems to be some confusion about the mesh capabilities and how and where it can be used. Some of the answers I have seen were not correct, at least not for the current firmware as of this review. I will clarify them here:

1) This unit will work perfectly standalone, inside or outside as an AP (without router functionality as I explained above)
2) If you have more than one of these units, they can form a wireless mesh network. One of the units needs to be connected to a wired uplink, others can be connected wirelessly to that wired unit. You DO NOT need an existing AC AP Pro or other non-mesh Ubiquiti AP to form a mesh (some comments, even some of the older documentation from Ubiquiti implies the opposite, which initially confused me. I run a mesh with multiple UAP-AC-Ms and they work without issues).
3) If you have more than one of these units and can provide wired uplinks to all, they will also work greatly without a mesh. Having mesh in the name doesn't mean that these are built for mesh networks only. Mesh concept is interesting but make sure that is your only viable option before deciding to go down that path. Among possible wireless topologies, mesh is the least interesting from a performance perspective. If you have the possibility, wired uplinks will provide vastly superior performance to mesh as each mesh hop will halve the available bandwidth. Mesh is ideal if you have power but no connectivity at a given location.

You will also need a controller software to control these units. Ubiquiti provides the software for free and it is available for Windows, Mac and Linux (Debian/Ubuntu). These are not configured from a web interface. There is also a mobile app which I believe can be used to configure them but I haven't tested it, so I cannot confirm. The software itself is also pretty impressive and is an enterprise class wireless network management system. I manage all the access points in the marina from a controller I installed in the cloud on a Linux/Ubuntu machine. Certain functions for the controller requires additional products to be purchased (like Unifi Security Gateway) but those are optional. I am actually impressed that this software is free to download and use when you simply buy a $100 device. To obtain any real practical value from the software you will need to have several of these units though. If you have only one, the software is probably not going to provide much value and may even be a hindrance. The downside of this model for non-tech savvy users or simpler use-cases is added complexity. Mobile app version of the software may address this issue but you need to check the reviews of it separately as I haven't used it.

In terms of performance, as I mentioned, I use these in a marina, mounted on halyards and masts at about 30 ft height. And marina is close to several industrial complexes (to give you a reference, 641 neighboring access point seen over the last 72 hours as measured by the controller software). As such, there is a high degree of interference at especially 2.4Ghz, also some at 5 Ghz. Still the performance is pretty decent. Longest wireless uplink is made at 460ft line-of-sight with default rubber duck omni antennas at speeds 117 (Tx) / 234 (Rx) Mbps, which is more than adequate for this scenario.

Default antennas are ok but nothing outstanding. If I had one complaint, it would be to have slightly better antennas but I won't cut a star for it, keeping the price point in mind. Also another relatively negative issue is the lack of antenna options. These are dual band antennas and there are not that many options for dual-band antennas to extend the range. Ubiquiti itself doesn't have a dual band antenna for these units as of this writing, but based on forum discussions I understand they are about to announce one. I didn't play with the Pro version of these units as their form factor is not suitable for mounting on boats directly but if you need a more powerful unit, that's what I would look at. They have more powerful 3x8 dbi internal antennas, their max transmit power is higher and they are 3x3 MIMO as opposed to 2x2 MIMO for this.

All in all, I really think this is an amazing value for an access point that costs less than $100. Prior to this, I tested a Open Mesh OM2P for a similar Hotspot use case. Total price for one OM2P with the unit itself, weather proof case and PoE adapter is more than the cost of this and it doesn't come anywhere close in terms of specs or features. This could even be a replacement for consumer grade access points as long as the user needs multiple units, is a bit tech savvy and/or is willing to play with things and learn. This will certainly be more complicated to set up and requires some technical knowledge or experience.

Do not plan to use these wirelessly if you don't have an existing Access Point that covers the 5Ghz spectrum (like the original UAP, which is 2.4Ghz only).

I have 4 of the original UAP access points in my two story house and those have worked great for years. They finally solved the annoying spotty coverage in our wood frame, lath and plaster walled 1911 craftsman. Coverage in the backyard was still weak but I didn't care until I installed a wireless Yi Home camera to watch my chicken coop back there. It soon became clear I would need an outdoor access point.

I purchased this UAP-AC-M access point for it's weathproof-ness, and because it would connect via wifi so I wouldn't have to run a Cat6 wire out to the back yard. Unfortunately when I was trying to configure it last night I could only get it to appear on my Unifi Controller when it was hard wired to the LAN. It wouldn't appear as a wifi only uplink.

My suspicion was a conflict between the original UAPs, which are 2.4Ghz only, and this new Mesh AP which has 2.4 and 5Ghz. To test it, I connected the Mesh AP in place of one of my UAPs (so the Mesh AP was hard wired to the LAN) and then enabled the original UAP to uplink to the mesh via wifi. Bingo - now I had an AP that connected to the Controller via wifi only.

This is kind of a nuisance since now I will have to install my non-weatherproof UAP in the outdoor shed where I was going to install the weatherproof Mesh AP, but without buying another Mesh AP I don't have much of a choice. I'm hoping the sheltered spot where I put the 2.4 UAP will protect it enough to run for a couple years, at which point I'll pay for another Mesh-AP.

The great news is that adding the one AP fixed the poor connection in the backyard. My new wifi camera works great, and I get a strong wifi signal on my phone.

I continue to love, love, love my Unifi system. It was an investment to set up the whole thing (cloud key, security gateway, unifi switches, and APs), but it's lasted well and I love having the centralized controller to adjust radio signal strength, update firmware etc. Just be sure you have a 5Ghz enabled AP for this to connect through and you should be fine.

This replaced a 3 yr old model that i thought crapped out,left old one unplugged for more than a week and now it's working again,but i had already replaced with new one.Now with the old one I just managed to cover more area for my signal.Win win for me i guess.Does what it has to do.It's about 50 ft from my access point poweing 5 devices in my garage.We have awesome sports days in there.