No one (at least that I have found) has as mature/slick looking a controller as Unifi. And once I realized that I rarely changed settings for my core network,

No one (at least that I have found) has as mature/slick looking a controller as Unifi. And once I realized that I rarely changed settings for my core network, particularly on my AP's, I really started to broaden my search. A friend turned my onto the Grandstream APs (I thought they only did phones?!?) and I have to say so far I'm really impressed. They are a bit uglier than the Unifi UFOs and the update process for the firmware that shipped with them was an utter nightmare to figure out - but now that I'm past that I'm very pleased with them. They seem to be a lot faster and more stable than the Unifi equivalents. I've set up a lot of UBNT kit, been heavily involved in the forums and their beta products - but the quality and timeliness of firmware updates has really fallen off the last five or so years. Unsurprisingly about the same time they shipped all the firmware coding overseas. One of the biggest reasons I was a huge proponent of them was the constant and tight interaction of the developers in their community forums. That also fell off a cliff around the same time. The market is ripe for someone else to step in. Surprisingly Cisco, with their small business line, has one of the better looking contenders. No subscription - and I didn't need anything (not even an email) to download firmware updates or the controller (!!) Not your fathers Cisco! Their controller lags Unifi, but not by much. I scored a router and switch off of ebay just to dabble and it was pretty promising. I haven't looked at it for a while; I probably need to fire it back up and see if it's matured any. In the end for firewall I went back to OpnSense. Unifi switches are OK but their one year hardware warranty, frankly, sucks. If I were to by new switches I'd probably just go back to netgear. Their lifetime warranty is pretty hard to beat. I've had them replace 10 year old switches with nary a blink of the eye so it's not just lip service.