Contrast with:
(1) eero has no web UI (ONLY mobile phone!) and almost zero network configurability. You can't set a hostname for instance for DHCP. You can have exactly one main and one guest network. You don't get to configure anything about it though. Etc.
(3) I bought a Linksys replacement for my Eeros to get 6E -- I returned it to the store due to how horrifyingly bad the Web UI was and how bad the "app" was too. AND it also had flaws like inability to have reservation IPs outside the DHCP pool range.
Apple is actually the opposite of Ubiquiti -- they don't want you to be able to configure anything or have any visibility into anything. It either 'just works' or just silently fails or fails with "An error occurred."
https://www.historytools.org/docs/reasons-to-avoid-amazon-ee...
I use both mikrotik and ubiquiti at home. The mikrotik is necessary for a few things the ubiquiti can't do, but mostly it's a wash.
Incidentally mikrotik tends to be behind ubiquiti for rolling out new wifi stuff
True, however before I was running a UniFi household I did quite enjoy Apple's Airport equipment. Back in the day it felt like they were the first time I had consumer networking equipment that I wasn't forced to reboot regularly to resolve issues.
Ubiquiti at home because it is light years better than any consumer brand
Ubiquiti is one of the few companies doing prosumer hardware - and doing it extremely well. They give you access to advanced, raw configurations without necessarily having to go "full enterprise" deployment. They also have solutions for just about everything.
That being said, I generally have moved towards other Wifi solutions as I've grown weary of tweaking Ubiquiti all of the time. I found that I could get better top-end performance out of Ubiquiti gear, but really struggled to hammer out poor performance in edge cases. Particularly, with jitter and random latency spikes.
My consumer mesh wifi system gets nowhere near it's advertised performance, with little way for me to tweak it. However, I rarely need "full performance" and it doesn't suffer from the same random glitches.
This is unprecedented and much appreciated.
I now exclusively use open-source projects with a strong history and community - or used high-end enterprise gear that I pick up when it reaches EOL so it's dirt cheap. Stability has been so much better, even with the most advanced configs I ever created.
But I might pick up an R720 just to play with -- that's a different echelon of gear.
Thanks for the tip.
802.11ax ("wifi 6") is as good as it gets, with [eg] their wAP AX.
They get a lot of stuff right, though. They run RouterOS, which is a custom userland for Linux that is intensely flexible. Approximately any routing-esque function a person can dream up that can work with a Linux kernel can be made to work within RouterOS.
The form factor of the wAP AC/AX boxes is really very nice -- they can blend well in on a wall (inside or outside), attached to a pipe, or whatever. I've got a wAP AC on the wall of my living room, for instance. I use another one when "camping" off-grid, zip-tied to the leg of an easy-up awning.
It's ostensibly just an access point, but it doesn't have to be. I mean, like: There's two ethernet ports, but they exist without a preconceived function. Want to use it as a router, with hardware WAN and LAN ports? How about with VLANs and a managed switch instead, so it works with just one cable? Eleventy-five different SSIDs? Bridging networks with wifi? Using station mode to leech bandwidth from the cafe across the street, and perform firewalling and NAT and VPN, so you can use it in your apartment -- with only one box? Sure, no problem. Whatever it is, it works.
Power is flexible. All of the bits to use passive POE are included; or it can just plug in with the included DC connector; or it can use proper 802.3af PoE.
I don't know how it compares to something from Ruckus, but I'm much more pleased with it than the Ubiquity gear that I am presently taking a break from fighting with.
Another example, I had Frigate set up on a home rolled NAS. Again, it worked alright, but it always stole time from me. It always needed a little maintenance or tweaking or thinking. I bought a UNVR and modern Unifi cameras. Adopted, zero thinking or management from me. I still retain control of my data and it respects my privacy. It isn't perfect, but at the price point it solved meaningful problems I cared about in both cases. Yes they are commercial products and not open source, but they are priced reasonably to my eyes (the UCG ultra was actually cheaper than the netgate). That makes me a happy customer.
I have run their wifi APs for over a decade with no problems. It's not perfect, I know there are still privacy concerns. No company is really perfect, but they are good to me.
Meanwhile, Apple still hasn't fixed bugs that I reported to them between 2012 and 2014 while working for one of the largest universities in North America as a level 2 tech.
They have tried to go subscription based licensing but that can be conflicting for companies who just want decent reliable network gear in all the above market segments.
I fit in the prosumer category and have about $10,000 in gear and while it's great for my needs I don't see myself ever spending money for network gear subscriptions.
I've done this using an android phone, usb-c hub w/ethernet nic, and and edgerouter lite before.
The biggest missing piece i see is the option for an external antenna.
Their wired stuff is a total scam since Edgerouter fell off, though. The same functionality exists on a $50 netgear managed switch (or wired router, etc.), and the shitty unified configuration interface doesn’t justify the markup at all.
Meanwhile, the quality of their competitors’ tools for managing multiple switches without manually configuring each one, individually, over SSH or via a graphical tool is not necessarily amazing.
For example, it’s been a while since I used Ruckus Unleashed (the low-end management tool from an very upmarket vendor), but I think UniFi Network (the management tool) is a good amount better than Unleashed.
I really wish the people who put so much effort into software like OpenWRT would put some of that effort into managing multiple devices in a nice, unified manner. The tooling could be so much better.
There is OpenWISP: Leveraging Linux OpenWrt, OpenWISP is an open-source solution for efficient IT network deployment, monitoring & management.
Au contraire!
I got tired of the refrain "are you messing with the network again?" in the evenings when the neighbors are all streaming Netflix and crowding the airwaves, so I installed several low power UI APs around the house and and popped my own DNS and devices to a separate VLAN.
No more complaints :)
I do wish Unifi offered more configuration in the ad-blocking department, but I'm hesitant to inflict anything but the most vanilla deployment on the remainder of the household..
Sure some of their hardware is overpriced, but they're pushing the limits of what's available in the 10 and 25 Gbe areas at relatively reasonable prices.
Ubiquiti 5 port managed switch: $30 https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-switching/products/u...
Netgear 24 port managed switch: $260 (with a 1 year subscription included!) https://www.netgear.com/business/wired/switches/smart-cloud/...
Ubiquiti 24 port managed switch: $225 https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-switching/products/u...
Sorry, but what markup are you referring to?
I'm sure you can find price differences at different products & tiers, but quickly glancing around it sure doesn't look like Ubiquiti has any particular premium markup.
Regardless having a self-hosted, buy-it-and-own-it, non-business friendly product line absolutely has value. I loved my mikrotik switches when I was just messing around, but the single pane of glass, central management is not insignificant when time becomes a more precious resource and you just need it to work.
I do wish they were even smaller (I've got one location I'd like to mount one inside a wall box, which is admittedly pretty niche), and I am never again touching UI's configuration software (even 10 years later I feel that wound), but, yeah... love these little guys.
I'm looking forward to getting more Unifi gear in the near future.
https://youtu.be/IStbaTQTBio?t=117
Aside from noise it's also not ideal for reliability in dusty environments.
They were founded by some people that left Apple.
Why did AVM or Netgear Orbi not get this treatment for "works", though?
Unifi is great for small IT companies providing network services to tens of costumers. Being able to manage everything remotely (and even batch things for all of your customers) is great.
Unifi is used by the tech-savvy homeowner that needs PoE for their security cameras and wants to control and configure their network without needing a network engineer.
There is now also TP-Link's Omada line at least which seems like the most comparable alternative.
1. Eero - great performance, no web config (only mobile app), cloud dependent, half the features paywalled for monthly subscription (eyeroll)
2. Linksys - confirmed piles of crap, a 6E mesh kit I tried last year performed worse than my 2018 Eeros so why bother. Config is even more limiting than Eero, the web UI is a slow disaster that times out constantly, and the app is terrible and the features are badly designed.
3. Netgear - sucks as parent comment explains
4. TP-Link - reputation is that it's bad but I haven't tried
5. Asus - never tried
6. Google - no doubt they'll kill and brick these at some point
Any others I'm forgetting?
Firstly, I can run the network controller easily in Linux (in Docker as it happens, but the image is third party - jacobalberty/unifi). It's happily running on Raspberry Pi.
Secondly, I've got one really old access point that is now unsupported for updates, but apart from that, there's no problem with controlling it along with the supported ones.
Also, I don't need a cloud connection though they do encourage using one.
I just checked and my new Wifi 7 APs don't run Debian though, they...
admin@BedroomAP:~# cat /etc/os-release
NAME="OpenWrt"
VERSION="23.05-SNAPSHOT"
ID="openwrt"
ID_LIKE="lede openwrt"
PRETTY_NAME="OpenWrt 23.05-SNAPSHOT"
VERSION_ID="23.05-snapshot"
.... OpenBSD 7.7 (GENERIC) #339: Sun Apr 13 17:52:27 MDT 2025
[email protected]:/usr/src/sys/arch/octeon/compile/GENERIC
real mem = 536870912 (512MB)
avail mem = 521142272 (497MB)
"Just works" means you can enjoy other parts of technology, like what you do with it, instead of just getting and keeping it working.
Honestly they are nothing like Apple - like just look at their mobile apps - how many do they have - 10 ? To interact with the same gateway just for slightly different use-cases. Not to mention that the functionalities are hard to decipher
You can do the same with Mikrotik and a ton of configuration, the pitch with Unify is that it "just works".
So, implying that Unifi is the only company that does this in an easy way is misleading marketing.
Comparing against Mikrotik is a very low bar.
I would guess they are chinese...
I need to figure out if the 5G box can be powered like that too
This product is aimed at those people who want something nicer than the 5g router bundled with their plan.
5G in my city is 650 Mbps and is honestly cheaper than fiber, but my fiber has better jitter (and can go up to 2 Gbps). For a lot of people, 5G would be more cost effective.
:(
* Dream Router 5G Max: The Fully Integrated UniFi Experience *
https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/internet-solutions/colle...
If it’s fine if you want to build a golf cart, just don’t pretend it’s an ATV.
In August they changed their plans so you’d need to cancel and re-subscribe.
Fiber is less expensive than and more than 10x faster than starlink, in fairness.
Our 5g towers seem to run off the fiber lines, so it’s not really a backup (and gets overwhelmed anyway).
I’m considering getting fiber in addition to starlink, but I wish they’d just buried the lines.
I see telephone trucks repairing downed lines we’d rely on many dozens of times a year. Digging a trench would probably pay for itself in a year or two.
I know some people running independent community fiber ISPs. Digging trenches can be a nightmare depending on the neighbourhood. You can have property ownership issues, other utilities being present, permit nightmares, different ground/soil types, etc. That ignores the fact that when somebody else digs they can hit your lines and repairing that is a pain.
Digging is better, though. But it’s not necessarily as easy as one may think.
Where I work just acquired new property and are deploying a new site. It took 9 months, from date of first contact, before the ISP could come out, bore under the road, and run fiber to our building from two poles away. And that's just a short ~500 feet underground run.
I couldn't imagine the amount of permitting and logistics involved in trying to bury an entire run across town.
Overall, it's much nicer. No ugly telephone poles, don't have to worry about weather, just reliable, strong service. But to think it pays for itself in 2 years is laughable.
Now I can't decide if I need a 3rd WAN.....
No, those are different. They are describing a femtocell. I still have one site with a T-Mobile one. It basically VPN’s to T-Mobile’s network core through the cable ISP, uses GPS to check its location for licensed spectrum, and then broadcasts its own LTE signal. It does not boost/repeat the signal of a nearby tower, it runs its own.
For most use cases WiFi should be the better solution. VoWiFi works well for calls. Should be enough for home and office use.
Private 5G networks usually need internal eSIM cards, you can't just let public devices roam into the private 5G net.
Benefits of 5G over WiFi: much better roaming between APs, higher distances, and better congestion management if there are hundreds of devices connected to a cell.
I’m honestly tempted to get it for my house. My ISP downtime is pretty low but it does happen every once in a while, at the most inopportune times, which impedes working from home.
Having a wireless backup would hopefully cover those downtimes
At the same time I would never recommend anyone get 5G internet as their primary service if you have other options and especially not from one of these cheap providers.
[1] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/wiring-a-home-with-fiber/
[2] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/vyos-router-update/#wan-f...
How are you handling updates? Do you update on a fixed cadence, or do you build your own LTS? Or do you just take a random nightly and stick to it?
Initially I thought this is going to be a huge pain. I have many interfaces and also pass-through hardware like the SFP28 card. I made a copy of my primary router vm and added fake interfaces with the same MAC addresses. I then went through the update procedure which was very simple.
in vyos vm:
wget https://community-downloads.vyos.dev/stream/1.5-stream-2025-Q2/vyos-1.5-stream-2025-Q2-generic-amd64.iso -o vyos-1.5-stream-2025-Q2.iso
add system image /mnt/iso/vyos-1.5-stream-2025-Q2.iso
# follow prompts
reboot
# boot screen will offer two version now, old and new
You do loose any custom configs you may have. In my case it was fstab changes and my cron entries.
Interesting fact that EdgeOS from Unifi was a fork.
That's how I got started with it, my first "proper" router was an ER-X. It's sad they abandoned the Edge product line to move everything to the UI first Unifi one that still doesn't have all the features (specifically, conditional routing for address groups/ipsets).
I adore VyOS
Interesting option.
I am cautiously optimistic that this means even if thousands of these devices suddenly "light up" in an outage, the infrastructure should be able to handle them, right? Thoughts?
The problem with this setup for me is that it doesn't work with uplink that sometimes becomes unstable yet nominally working, and in general LTE fallback triggers slowly.
Are there any prosumer-friendly options for connection bundling, which can balance uplinks continuously?
They support load balancing (e.g. 95% WAN1, 5% WAN2) and SLA monitoring (ping/packet loss/jitter) with some voting options on what triggers a swap.
I think pfsense has similar options for WAN balancing if you don't like UI for routing.
I have a T-Mobile backup home internet plan, and when I had a rack set up, it was my failover from fiber. The Dream Machine Pro did auto failover and failback flawlessly. However, I recently moved, and am redoing my homelab so I have no rack right now; internet is from a Dream Router, so I don’t have auto-failover. I doubt I’d buy this for the small window of time I expect to be in this situation, but if you didn’t have or want a rack, an AIO with failover would be great.
https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052548713-WAN-Failo...
The 5G unit itself also has its own failover with support for two 5G SIMs.
"All are equipped with dual SIM slots, with one SIM replaceable by eSIM, and are fully unlocked: any major carrier, any type of deployment, with one piece of hardware."
You can also see the excitement in the subreddit where people are already in the Unifi ecosystem: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1pe5xh4/explore_p....
I have a network cable from my secondary WAN port on my dream machine running to my first story roof where there’s a wall mount ready for starlink to be plopped in.
I wish there were cheaper 10gb switch from Ubiquiti. The link Agg is good, but still pricey.
I discovered the same thing the hard way myself recently (in Norway); turns out that cell towers only has enough battery for ~24-36 hours (if you're lucky).
However, someone messing with the fibre to my house is a bigger possibility than power outage, so I'll probably end up with this 5G product. :)
Seems an odd omission for a ruggedised outside modem - the Unifi also seems to not support external antennae.
(I'd also prefer a unifi version just so it fits in the with rest of the networking infra I have in the mökki.)
If you mean the standard routers (like the Rutx50), Teltonika itself sells external enclosures with antennas. https://www.teltonika-networks.com/products/accessories/ante...
Seems weird to cripple the product by not allowing me to (optionally) disable the internal antenna and instead use and tune an external antenna. And I suspect that is likely to make a difference when you are on the edge of coverage, but you know exactly where the relevant cell tower is, a few km away.
Enterprises? Thousands, tens of thousands of employees? Generally cost isn't prohibitive at the scale so bigger ecosystems with more support make way more sense. Even their enterprise switches aren't really equivalent to Cisco, Arista, Juniper, etc enterprise offerings. They're inching forward, though.
When he was with a larger company, cisco and juniper were the only options.
I see tons of small businesses (mom & pop, restaurants) with a UI AP or two, of course, but that's not what you meant, I don't think.
The places that COULD use UI often just don't care, and want the cheap toilet paper (netgear, ebay whatever) since cost discipline can be critical. I think there's a niche of biz with enough margin that networking/cameras get sold together and they don't insist on lowest price. My guess would also be the MSP that is quoting the job also heavily influences whether UI is used, plenty of dinosaurs out there.
Bigger places want routing, network virtualization, etc from the big players you mentioned. UI doesn't want to mess with BGP, spine-leaf, sd access/wan, etc. There's also like the 24/7 support options they want, and access to the partner/VAR/contractor networks so you have tons of options. The sales deals and dinners unfortunately factor into this too...
What I did noticed is so many fast videos right next to text. I didn't even bother to read it (without firefox read mode) because it makes me a bit dizzy.
If you are in a situation you need multiple wireless APs but can't run ethernet to them (like renting etc), I'd probably pass on a Unifi system personally.
Edit 2: I have eero now. The nodes seem to have some proprietary protocol that sends clients to the best node as you walk around the house. I can’t setup Vlans or do power user stuff, but my WiFi actually “just works” now. I don’t think I’ve touched it once after initial setup.
I’ve never heard of it being enforced, and blatant violations of it are the norm.
media.autoplay.blocking_policy
media.autoplay.default
Not everyone wants to fix old hardware and configure linux on their weekends
I thought this was Hacker News.
The point I'm trying make is that there is more nuance than a simple HN user stereotype.
I would challenge you to try supporting your family using your home network doing esoteric things, the juice is not worth the squeeze. I can give my wife the UniFi login and she can figure things out well enough on her own, and it lets us easily integrated networked devices that don't serve network connectivity (e.g. IP cameras) into our day-to-day as well.
Do I think UniFi is bar none the best gear? Absolutely not. Do I think it's a "good deal"? Maybe. Do I think it's better than the alternative uses of my time, that I'd rather spend doing other stuff? Abso-fucking-lutely, which is why I have been buying it for years.
(I've been using Mikrotik LHG LTE6 kit devices for years now)
In locations where you're at the edge of coverage, and your phone is not getting anything at all, it's great.
I sometimes suspected that the modem in these LTE / 5G routers is less well tuned and tested with various network than what you have e.g. in an iPhone.
The Mikrotik LTE6 device is a Cat.6 LTE device, so up to 300/50Mbits, and since some time ago, all iPhones are Cat.20 and 5G and all that stuff.
But that's not the only important thing. The frequency band support for the modem is very important. Not all networks nor even cell phone antennas work on the same frequencies, so even when connecting to antennas of the same company, depending on the antenna you connect, it'll have different bands enabled depending on the hardware or the connectivity they have there.
You have to check the specs for you modem [0][1] and see what bands are supported, what bands are supported in the antenna your connecting to [2]... Depending on the category of your device [3], and the channels that are allowed to be used at the same time, the congestion, the interference, and... it can happen than a consumer phone downloads faster than a dedicated industrial modem, if the available frequencies aren't the most favorable.
--
0: https://mikrotik.com/product/lhg_lte6_kit#product_specification
1: https://www.apple.com/iphone/cellular/
2: https://www.cellmapper.net
3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-UTRA#User_Equipment_(UE)_categoriesIs there a Mikrotik 5G version though? I am still waiting for that.
Actually, it seems one of the advantages of the new Ubiquiti devices over Teltonika/Mikrotik/Gl.iNet is that they actually have 10 Gbps SFP+ and 2.5 Gbps ethernet ports.
I just kinda wish multipath TCP or something similar would be more in use so you wouldn’t notice a swap in connection mid air.
> For tougher environments or deployments with poor indoor cellular coverage, the outdoor model maintains the same high performance cellular connectivity with improved antenna performance in a durable IP67 rated enclosure. It is built for rooftop installs, off site locations, and mobile deployments where reliability is critical. Just like its indoor counterpart, you can also connect it via any PoE port, anywhere on your network, greatly simplifying cabling requirements.
And the first image they show of the outdoor model is it installed in a fixed location on a rooftop.
>Built for rooftops, remote sites, and vehicle based setups
They are insinuating if you actually read their press release then you would not state it was targeted only at stationary deployments.
Based on the spec sheet 2 out of its 6 antennas are directional, this is probably a 4x4 modem so it must have some way to switch 2 antenna from directional to omni.
(6) Embedded cellular antennas, including (2) high-gain for downlink: peak 9 dBi, 85°x85°
Typically these modems are 4x4 mimo so it must have some method for switching the 2 directional with 2 of the omnis in it based on which ones is needed.
https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/integrations/u5g-max-outdoor?...
Can it really be that much faster?
Ubiquiti makes some good hardware but their software is full of terrible bugs.
Either way, having modems that are fully unlocked for Stateside usage for once is a nice touch. Their LTE line was essentially AT&T-locked, or unlocked but only supporting AT&T in the US, so this is a nice improvement.
After the 2.4GHz wifi issues with UDM I swore I will never buy them again.
If both of them go down, I doubt 5G will matter much. Not like I have a big UPS in the house anyways.
> 2.5 Gbit/s PoE to upstream switch
Can anybody explain to me why these supposedly premier networking devices are lacking so much in bandwidth? I get it that mmWave is really only ever realistically going to hit 2.5G over the air, but is there any reason why they're not willing to provide at least 10G copper, or an actual SFP port? Hell, even Macs support 10G these days. I never understood this. Do they mean 2 Gbps downlink per client, or per device in total? If it's the former, 2.5G wired seems like a major bottleneck to any serious consumption.
If a single client at 2 Gbps is all the promise of 5G amounted to, well, it would be disappointing to say the least.
10Gb interfaces also tend to run quite hot and be a bit power hungry.
This is a device that needs to be in a location with good 5G reception, so it makes sense to be PoE powered so you can put it near a window or in the location that gets the best reception, and only run a long ethernet cable. And, although I don't like it too much, 2.5G or 5G NBASE-T is the nearest thing that covers 5G speeds.
The 2Gb downlink speed is the 5G downlink, the max for the whole 5G connection, so 2.5Gb ethernet is enough for that.
The better reason to put a 10G transceiver in this would be that some (cheap, honestly garbage) SFP+ transceivers can’t negotiate anything between 1G and 10G. But I’ve only seen that on bargain-bin hardware so I don’t know that they should be designing products around it.
Portability and heat. You can get a small USB 2.5G adapter that produces negligible heat, but a Thunderbolt 10G adapter is large and produces a substantial amount of heat.
I use 10G at home, but the adapter I throw into my laptop bag is a tiny 2.5G adapter.
I knew it runs hot before I deployed it, but I wasn't aware that you have to wait for it to cooldown before unplugging, or you get burnt.
For 5Gbps and higher, you'll need another PCIE line - and SOHO motherboards are usually already pretty tight on PCIE lanes.
10GbE will require 4x3.0 lanes
3.0 PCIE is irrelevant today when it comes to devices you want on 10G. I'm pretty sure the real reason is that 2.5G can comfortably run on cable you used for 1G[1], while 10G get silly hot or requires transceiver and user understanding of a hundred 2-3 letter acronyms.
Combine it with IPS speeds lagging behind. 2.5G while feels odd to some, makes total sense on consumer market.
[1]: at short distances, I had replaced one run with shielded cable to get 2.5G, but it had POE, so it might contribute to noise?)
(But PCIe 3.0 of course is from 2010 and isn't too relevant today - 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and 7.0 have 16/32/64/128 Gbps per lane respectively)
It's alright except for some shenanigans with DHCP trying to compete with the router, I fixed that by just disabling DHCP on the AP if I recall correctly.
Speeds are pretty much as advertised on the box, the main thing using wireless is the TV as it has a 100mbit LAN port and it it's always smooth sailing. VLAN-separated SSIDs work great as well.
That said, I have some concerns that the OpenWRT AP firmware is not as optimized as the Unifi firmware is for that specific hardware. Mostly for wireless performance, but I also don’t want to hit some weird CPU bottleneck.
Have you looked at Mikrotik? They offer a more traditional autonomous OS w/o controllers and both a nice CLI and a powerful GUI tool.
Edit: The SIMPoYo eSIM Physical Card (see https://www.gl-inet.com/campaign/simpoyo-cards/ ) seems really cool, may even be nice for a phone.
Having to explain to relatives and such that “yeah you actually have to divide that by 8” is a hassle and I get tricked by it subconsciously at times as well.
2 gbps meaning 250 megabytes per second is a SCAM. A marketing sham at it’s finest.
“I have 100 mbps download” meaning “I get 12.5 megabytes download per second” is ridiculous!!
The only industry that talks in bytes/s is parts of the storage space, because they relate to files, that are measured in bytes/s. And even them use both: the data link is in bits/s (e.g. SATA 6 is 6Gbps, NVMe uses the same bits/s than PCIe (1)) while the drive is usually in bytes/s (µSD cards, NVMe SSDs, etc).
When you look at the industry at large, throughput is virtually always measured in bits/s. HDMI is in bits/s. Video codecs measures bitrates in bits/s. Audio codecs measures bitrates in bits/s. PCIe is in bits/s (1). Ethernet is measured in bits/s. Wifi is measured in bits/s. You get the picture.
The good thing about keeping it consistent is that values are relatable. Streaming services naturally talk in bitrate for the video quality, and your ISP also talks in bits/s. You can compare the two numbers. Bytes/s is only really useful for on the spot jobs that you do once, like transferring photos from an SD card to your computer. Otherwise, it's just a unit.
(1): ackhstually pcie measures speeds in transfers/s because they include the 8b10b/64b66b encoding overhead and TLP overhead but I digress.
A byte per second is no more intuitive than a nibble per second or a bit per second. You might be used to byte as a power user because of storage, but I assure you that to regular people “256 gigabytes” is a meaningless number as well.
Did you know there is an entire post category for ads and self-promotion? https://news.ycombinator.com/show