Amidst all the CES emails this year, one came from Ubiquti Labs, and that set about a chain of events that led to this review and a revival of the coverage of networking products from TechPowerUp. The AmpliFi Teleport kit is a very interesting product too, and testing was lots of fun as well. For one, it is not a standard router or even a mesh Wi-Fi system but, rather, a router and then another one too. This second network device is a portable hardware VPN solution you can take with you when traveling, for access to your local network for files or content online that is geo-blocked. Hardware VPNs are not new, but AmpliFi is aiming to make the process as simple as possible, and is thus expanding the market multifold. Their own marketing material brings up usage cases, such as grandparents visiting family, but wanting to see local shows and keeping up with local news, for example, although a more realistic case is just for the traveling professional - salespeople, executives, or marketing reps even. Someone needing access to files, not having to worry about encryption along the way, and either not tech savvy enough to set up their own solution or just not having the time.

As a standalone unit, you would need the AmpliFi HD mesh router at a minimum, and that is why this kit comes bundled with both. Ubiquiti Labs got into the mesh networking game early on with mesh access points to go along with the router to provide 2/3 or even more nodes and expand network coverage dramatically. If you already have their mesh Wi-Fi system, the Teleport unit is a lot easier to justify even at $99. If you do not, then things are trickier since you now have to make a decision about replacing your router setup with - or at least adding on as a bridge or node if applicable - the AmpliFi router as well. AmpliFi did not make it easy with a set US power plugs either, which really is mind boggling for what should have been an international audience for the taking and not having to need adapters again.

Setting up both units was a real pleasure, and the included quick start guide as well as the app (or even the web browser, should you go that route) walk you through everything. This is a smart-device first system, as with many other such networking products designed with aesthetics and the user experience in mind, and that also means some things that you might want to see are not to be seen here yet. No firewall integrated here, nor extensive QoS rules to set, for example. In addition, I would like to see the addition of a "trust mode" for the Teleport that bypasses the need to log in to every device you carry, and perhaps only on one trusted device with others automatically logged in. Similarly, it would be nice to see an iteration use USB power rather than a power plug to get around the socket compatibility issue and get the Teleport closer to the clients as well.

Ubiquiti Labs is promising consistent feature and performance updates, and my experience has been true to their promise with over four updates in the four weeks of testing across the two devices already. They also said a major throughput improvement is incoming, especially for the Teleport, and widely accepted encryption standards will be adopted as they come along. For a product with a hardware warranty of just a year, however, time will tell how long the software updates keep coming in. As it is now, the AmpliFi Teleport kit is for a subset of users and, despite the current shortcomings preventing it from being a great device, it is good enough to warrant interest. I know I will certainly be using this in my travels.