hello and welcome back and have you guys noticed UniFi going a bit kind of Hardware released nuts of light towards the end of 2024 we saw them launch finally their network attached storage product then we saw a slew of new surveillance products in both II and non Ai and Camera related appliances all come to the for all and now in February 2025 we have seen the brand go absolutely nuts on their Wi-Fi 7 Series now across this table there's a bunch of devices but to today I want to talk about this one I want to talk about the UniFi Cloud Gateway fiber this is their new Gateway device again similar to that of a routa um this video should be going out at the same time give or take a few days as the UniFi uh dream router 7 and the UniFi Express 7 two different solutions for different kinds of utility this one arriving at 240 nicker is an incredibly bandwidth Rich device here arriving with the opportunity to scale up to mvme SSD storage inside it also arrives with four 2.5 GB ethernet ports there one of which rpe and we have three 10gbe connections two one one Lan and two of them being fiber one of them being Copper support and control of well over 50 UniFi devices and over 500 clients it also supports their surveillance platform protect which you can install inside on that SSD again it's an optional SSD we'll talk about the good and the bad about that later um inside there and that can support up to 15 cameras of HD quality eight cameras of 2K quality and five cameras of 4K quality they're all managed from this teeny tiny 250 nicker box the design of which is fairly you know it's unified looks exactly like what you would expect it's an external PSU as well helping to deliver that 30 W Poe Port there so straight away what the hell is this for why on Earth have they released the router the Express and the cloudgateway all at the same time all three boxes have very different Target audiences in mind the router is a more traditional home prer SMB you know light SMB solution there for managing wired and wireless traffic whereas the express box the little tiny one there that one was more of a Gateway device that you could scale up and remain affordable this is your high performance alternative to the express now it doesn't have any Wi-Fi capabilities and I'm reluctant to call this a router in any way it crosses the line a lot but this device is more about wired connections so let's talk about those wired connections now the 4 2.5 GB ethernet ports there it's great to see that they've not included any standard gigabit land there we've got 2.5g all across the board there are definitely going to be some users disappointed that there's only one Poe port on this I would say this is not trying to out Ed a Poe switch and I wouldn't see that power over ethernet port there as lacking being only just one port I would see it as an extra being included in here now what can you do with that Port well going back to this side of the table there's a plethora of things you can add you can add a range they've got a range of uh I believe four and eight Port Poe powered switches here you can also power them uh with USB if you choose um if you like you can go ahead and add cameras you can add Bunches of cameras but of course only one E port here means you can only establish one cable connection there alternatively and we mentioned the lack of Wi-Fi connectivity you can go ahead and add access points Wi-Fi seven access points at that and they've got several different variations all of which are Poe powered all of which have got 2.5 GB ethernet on them as well so you're not getting capped when you're connecting it although this is not a review of these alternatively you've got other access points like the wall and finally you've got scalable options like like G alongside the cameras adding AI functionality and they've got enhanced AI capabilities being rolled in with their surveillance as boxes that you add either as a one that enhances just the camera or ones that enhance your entire surveillance set up there the point I'm making is that Poe Port there I wouldn't look at that as wise there're only one I would say at 250 nicker something you're going to hear a lot I'm great to see that included now those three 10 GB EET ports there again mentioned earlier on two of them are W one of them is land later on during the software review I'll tell you one of the reasons I've got a bit of a problem with the way they've approached this but I will say right now that the fact that you can roll in your internet service provider there that's going to be greater than gigabit in a lot of places around the world directly into this is good I do think utilizing the 10g as our one is a bit Overkill and I'll walk you through that process later on but nonetheless having a fail over there as well one being copper one being SFP gives you quite a lot of flexibility and of course don't forget you can take hold of those SFP to Copper transceivers as well but do keep in mind they get quite hot I would never run two of those side by side apparently it has a 9.3 GB internal switching capacity which means it's going to be a to handle any one of those big ports coming in and dividing across the whole system again keep in mind that dualan W architecture there trunking them in the traditional sense isn't really going to work for you and although you can add you know things like Nas devices to these ports you can add high performance switches to these ports to spread out the wealth of that bandwidth keep in mind of course that this is not a router or a switch it is somewhere slightly in the middle now I want to talk about the M2 mvme slot here this does allow you to add m.2 mvme storage to this it doesn't have any Baseline storage above and beyond a small U uh drive that's taken care of the OS on this and again that is optional now some of you might not like the fact that it's a paid optional extra and they didn't include it you know hell they included an SD card with the UDR 7 but but I'm prepared to give them some slack 250 nicker for this and it's already a 2.5g and 3.1g switch with Poe I think it's fair to say given that it's also managed as well I wouldn't have expected them to include it I do have a gripe with that that I'll talk about later on but as you may already have seen this device has got no USB ports there's no USB that is the only storage inside and there's only one drive so that means no raid failover if that drive fails if you got your surveillance C recordings on there that's it's a bit of a pain and no way to locally offset that date you can't USB onto something else I'm not a tremendous fan of that now the internal Hardware in this that CPU it's an armm based processor there an arm not a huge surprise but I will say it's a decent enough one it's the um a73 it's a quad core 2.2 GHz processor in there and also arrives with 3 gig of ddr4 memory there inside now it's predecessor and other routers in the market right now either arrive with the duel or the quad call a53 which is a 1.7 GHz processor so there is a scale up there in capability with that it is still an efficient CPU but it is going to use comparably uh comparably more power compared to any of the other devices that came before it but it can get more done uh in terms of power consumption when the system's in operation well that's really going to depend on when all those ports are flying I wasn't able at least in this video to do my full testing and get it completed in time cuz I wanted this to go out at the same time as my other videos because I'm doing some deeper 10gbe Nas has testing on this and with the m.2 mvme something I'll talk about more later on in the software section but this review is kind of part one of a two-part series of reviews because I want to see just how much of the performance this device is actually promising it can realistically do slamming 10gbe on a Nas and particularly slamming this amount of connectivity on a Nas is okay in principle but you're going to have to be running something like this for quite an extended period of time before you really find any of the cracks so it's going to take a little bit more time testing this before we can really find out if it can deliver we may do another 3 months later or one month later on this when we include that testing but I think for now we want to learn about what the UniFi software that this arrives with is actually capable of so let's crack over to the desktop and go through that software now making our way onto the UniFi Cloud Gateway fiber we can see pretty much exactly the same user interface you get from the majority of kind of uh controller managed UniFi devices in particular things like the UniFi Express the UniFi router and of course this new Cloud Gateway um so although I am going to go into a lot of details throughout the course of this video I will also highlight importantly that I've already gone into a great deal of detail on the routa and the UniFi Express uh this week I believe if that video goes live so I recommend checking those out for an even deeper look into those I'm going to be revisiting this device in another video soon I probably touched on earlier on largely because this is a much more Hardware capable device and therefore I think although I do want to do a review on this this one more than any of the other devices in the new um U7 lineup from UniFi requires the deepest look at which is why there's going to be a follow-up video there but pretty much everything you see here is live information which is what I love about the UniFi uh kind of single pane of glass user interface here not withstanding you can see exactly all of the different domains or devices where traffic is going back and for forth to as well as the device you're connecting on but if you're using R Wi-Fi devices it can give you some idea about the connectivity that's going live then you've got the analytical stuff here at the top and again you can manage between different uh parameters there and again you can flick it between days weeks if I had the device for month I could do that and on the left hand side there get real time information about the device itself uh the Gateway as well as ining noes such as this Wi-Fi access point I've added or individual client devices now I touched on it ier on this device is incredibly close to that of a traditional router style but with no Wireless capabilities but you can get things like the U7 light which is about $100 I think 99 the date of launch and the U7 light connecting it via the poe Port that the device has allows you to add a Wi-Fi 7 access point within less than a minute or so you connect it and adopts it and it's there and then from that you're able to manage those Wi-Fi networks create multiple SSID manage to those SS ID passwords access security whether they're going to support mlo there for that Multi Band management and usage right the way down to if you choose to create an air gaps there for when it is activated and different Wi-Fi protocol for security all of which can be applied by adding that simple AP with the majority of it being hard baked into the ucg itself but it's the management of the physical lands that I think a lot of you are going to be interested in more than you know adding ssids via those uh UniFi access points so for example you can create plenty of VLS here for all of your devices you can bind them to physical ports if you choose bind them to individual ID uh IDs and devices moreover if you're go into the port and connections and we look at those physical ports we can get real time information about which VLS it is on as well as the speed and capability of each of those ports the management of these is just A1 so for example when you look at the VLAN over VI you're able to see which of those ports are assigned to which VLAN moreover when you look at the ports themselves case in point when we look at something like our Wan Port here when we look at the individual ports where we have got currently I'm using port five as a w which is a 10g you have got three 10g ports with two of the 10gs giving you the option of onean or Lan or taking advantage of them as a fail over and again you can aut to negotiate them up and down as much as I like all of this and I do like the fact that it's got a bunch of two .5 gigs as well I know this is going to seem like such a petty complaint but I don't like that I can't I don't like that I can't assign one of these 2.5 GB ethernet ports here as my Wan hello and just a quick correction here to the original video uh you can in fact use all of the individual 2.5 GBE ports as one if you choose during my original testing cuz I had two connections happening via the 10g W ports the option didn't present itself however if you select uh only one Wan port on the 10gb E the option to select a one option on the 2.5 gbit ethernet port will appear so apologies for the error there I just wanted to add this quick repair here and thanks again to the user that reached out to me on this era okay let's crack on with the video nonetheless I can't really critique the analytical information this device affords to managing your land there again we're looking at the insights of the uh again back and forth there we can look at the individual client devices that are assigned there and again remember these client devices can be connected via W wide connection or Wireless so for example let's dig into one this is a teram master Nas that I'm going to be using for 10g testing in the video coming very very soon we can see that it's connected over a 2.5 gig port cuz I've not attached it to one of the 10g ports yet on top of that we can find out that real time information about it and test the latency if we choose from there the long-term traffic and connectivity over time and then from that we can bind this uh device to a fixed IP address if we choose as well as create traffic rules for that individual device which can be very basic or pretty bloody extensive which will allow us to assign long-term rules to these individual devices not just a physical Port remember you can do both comes to the actual rooting of data throughout the system there's quite a lot of customization afforded to you not withstanding the policies there that you can see on screen and the fixed traffic Route if you choose doing again you can break that down to the usual stuff you associate with opening ports and routers but apart from that you can also go into the system settings and really dig deep not withstanding activating that a professional installer mode I've mentioned before that really opens the door to what you can play with on this by the way that extends to the wireless connections if you want to change your location or at least take advantage of frequencies that you're not traditionally allowed to use unless you are a professional installer and you do so at your own risk but managing things like SSH connections are all managed very very easily and I would argue in as userfriendly possible as they could actually be now when you go to the control plane of the system I've got mostly good news and I say mostly number one you can see straight away that you can go ahead if you choose to install those other UniFi applications um uh internal house and business communication ones there activating and connecting that uh Poe connected monitor creating the in space overview there and of course there's surveillance platform in protect and that sounds really good right well there's good and bad news there you may already know about this device one of the other things that makes it really really appealing at 299 is not withstanding that it's got three 10g connections but on top of that you've got the option of adding m.2 mvme storage now some users might be critical of the fact that this device does not arrive with an m.2 SSD included with it I would argue at 299 again 31gb ports I'm not really going to critique it for that reason I actually like the fact I've got the M m.2 storage option here I think it's super fast storage as well that's really good stuff supporting up to 2 TB apparently that's not my problem here my problem is twofold number one it is a single m.2 mvme slot there is no raid no failover and if that SSD fails you're going to lose everything you're installing on it and when it comes to some of those applications and services if you were going to use it for surveillance I would not want my surveillance footage to fail because there's only one SSD slot included but it doesn't stop there my other criticism is the fact that to install the SSD on this you need to get one of these an m.2 SSD try and this is what you use to mount the SSD which then slides inside the side of the system it's Carefree it's really straightforward it's almost screwless but you do have the little pin there on the top actually removing the little adapter only requires the pin that incl includes with the kit my issue is you can't install an SSD without this thing and this isn't included with your device you have to get this separately you have to get a hold of one of these because the system although it has the support of the m.2 mvme slot it does not arrive with the physical try that to me is cheeky as an optional purchase and I'm not really a fan of the way UniFi have gone about that it's not the end of the world but if you're going to add a facility to your device to add under m.2 mvme storage include the adapter don't make me have to pay 1520 nicker for a tray next up let's talk about security CU I'd say in almost every case this device has got some great default settings as well as great scale up in terms of what you might want to take advantage of later on so for example again things like intrusion prevention which can be set all the way down to dark web blocker blocker and malicious IPS from an existing database or you can go ahead straight into some of those uh traffic and firewall settings where you can really create a very unique kind of layout and protection methodology behind this Cloud Gateway for your business or your home devices there which go down to the MAC address go down to the IP or just go down to those external connectivity um settings now on top of that if you go into the VPN settings there we've already talked about this on my other video I really like the way that UniFi has approached VPN Management on the device with their teleport uh setting there again we talked about that more in the previous video but on top of that a l of the support of the third party VPN it would have been very easy for them to block a lot of this stuff out and they haven't so if you do have a preferred VPN that you use or more precisely a VPN that you perhaps want to use more as a third party just to you know have it across other devices maybe you've got an existing account you can get a lot of these built in some of the freeb ones as well the site site um kind of sd1 stuff configurable all the way from the ground up now let's say you've noticed uh maybe you got a notification from the device or you've just been happening to look at your device and you've spotted that there is a device on the local area network that you either don't recognize or you know does not belong to that local area network well number one you can go ahead of course and block a device at any time if you choose to it's very easy and from there that devices uh both Mac address and IP will be flagged moving forward there now if you're not sure you can dig a little bit more by going into the insights tab the Insight tab not only gives you some idea of those different sites and services that are being used on the internet and if you see something on here that you don't know you can go ahead and go hm I'm not so sure about that what exactly is going on with let's encrypt and that's to do with a Nas that I'm running but on top of that if you see something on the list that you don't like you can go ahead and write the way down to block the app or service if you choose to there moreover if for example you're using your device and you want to know about the upad load download and more precisely country and restrictions about what is going to be accessing how and when you can go ahead for example I can go into the last hour and I can see that the majority of services I've been utilizing there are based in the US but there is some pings over here going into some other regions let's look at that there we' got Switzerland and I can choose to block that if I choose to and again you can add that blocked goo list if I choose to and it's just nice to be able to see that in different ways whether it is that I'm looking at different devices and different con nection and what exactly is connected to them at any given time or going ahead of course to use that topography that all of the UniFi Network equipment arise with that allows us to see live where the internet is being used which devices are the ones that are taking advantage of the internet services and if a device has suddenly joined the network just how busy it is now frankly I could spend a lot more time talking about this software but again the risk of being repetitious to the other videos that have come out this week on unifor new Wi-Fi 7 setup I'm going to be slightly restrictive on that I am going to say in the following video after this one I am going to be digging deep into that 10gbe connectivity on this device I want to know just how well it handles the packet of data on those connections it's one thing to know that I'm going to be able to take advantage of 10g w but what I want to do is have both a client device and a NZ at full 10g I also then want to go into the settings and open up some of the uh jumbo frames and stuff like that cuz I'm pleased to say you can adapt all of that stuff on this device if you choose to you can go ahead and configure that alongside that 10g testing with jumbo frames opened up there at 9k the other thing I want to look at is failover on this device if you're going to have a device that's got two 10 point uh 10 gig ethernet ports there having dual 10 gig failover Port connectivity there is going to be very impressive for summer what I really want to know is just how well this failover takes and how reliable it can be I know you can do distributed as load balanc in there to take advantage of one or the other but I want to know just how quickly that failover actually happens there between the two and of course while we are utilizing this with a wireless AP and therefore we're not going to judge it too much on its Wireless capabilities I've liked what I've seen so far and the last thing I'm still waiting on my adapter to arrive so I can see just how well this thing handles storage I know there isn't the capability of something like a Nas there's no SMB file storage here but until I get that adapter r here and again might be a while sold out uh when that's there hopefully that will allow me to complete a lot more of the testing but overall I've always liked the UniFi Network management software and the ucg continues to knock it out the park is it perfect no but it is damn close as it can be on the whole I like this device if you're looking at replacing the router in your home or business and again you weren't earing towards an ISP route and wanting to go something premium look at how much Wi-Fi connectiv AC ity you actually need and if you are looking you know about integrating a UniFi setup into your home or business environment this is a very high performance and future proof option in the market right now the fact that you can include this and then add a Wi-Fi access point which by the way once you add one of these you can then start creating your mesh system this is only 99 nicker this is a Wi-Fi 7 mini node you can add that to that and then start adding them more perhaps with main to Poe adapters or with other switches along the road it's a great scale up item I know I keep banging on about the $249 element of this and I know that's not small change it is a decent amount of money but for what you're getting if you look at the price of 10gb switches in the market if you look at the price of high performance Wi-Fi 7 routers in the market with some of them with the basic level devices knocking out about 150 to 200 nicker and the more pricey elements at 4 to 500 nicker this serves as a really nice way to get a huge amount of localized bandwidth and the opportunity to scale up towards the Wi-Fi APS in your home or business environment and let's not forget thanks to those W ports there although I'm not in love with the fact that 2.5 GB can't be switched to a landan I have to acknowledge that if you're looking for a device with future proofing as you scale up the internet traffic going in and out of your building as well as managing the internal traffic as conveniently and in as compact fashion as possible this is hard to argue with is it as good as a rout not going to be for everyone but for a business that's looking for a high performance Network management device and pulling in some of those router elements I love it and for that reason I do recommend it let me know what you think in the comments the written review should be finished very very soon below along with the video that's already hopefully live on the express 7 and the UniFi dream router one of those two I definitely like more than the other but more on that later thank you so much for watching and of course there are links in the description to get a hold of this device and others over on UniFi so if you found this video helpful and if you were going to go to their store anyway make sure those two things are true please use those links it really helps us out cuz me and Eddy just us here at NAS Compares get a small commission and it allows us to keep doing what we do thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time