Going back quite a few years, Ubiquiti has dabbled with LTE services as a way to provide a seamless backup experience for UniFi networks. The original UniFi LTE was launched in 2021, but was somewhat limited as it was locked to AT&T and had expensive data limits to boot.

Ubiquiti has also branched out in the past with LTE on the UISP side of the business, which is still going - but has been somewhat deprioritised, as UniFi has become the main part of the business. The UniFi Mobile Router devices have also launched since, with three separate models now available.

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In 2021, Ubiquiti then added the U-LTE Pro, which was much more flexible, unlocked and made it available outside of the US for the first time. The U-LTE Pro was then made available in the US a few years later in 2023.

However, it wasn't until recently when Ubiquiti started to take 5G connectivity a bit more seriously, as the company now offers a few UniFi 5G devices designed to act as dedicated high performance backup devices - or even as primary WAN sources. Up until the recent addition of the new U5G for $99, Ubiquiti has had two rather expensive offerings with the UniFi 5G Max and UniFi 5G Max Outdoor, both retailing at $399 in the US.

What about the new UniFi 5G Backup?

With the latest announcement of the UniFi 5G Backup, Ubiquiti has made a very small solution available for just $99. It does have few drawbacks, but as a simple, affordable and easy to deploy solution, it should work well for a lot of use cases.

Compared to the more expensive offerings, the U5G connects over 5G RedCap, in addition to LTE. RedCap stands for Reduced Capability and isn't capable of the high end speeds and capacity that standard 5G can achieve. Instead 5G RedCap uses much smaller channel widths, less antennas for simpler MIMO and consumes much less power as a result. This simpler design reduces the cost of the hardware, which is likely the contributing factor as to why Ubiquiti can offer this device for much less than the other models.

On 5G, the U5G is capable of 220 Mbps for download and 120 Mbps upload. When compared to the 5G Max is much less but the U5G is much smaller and more affordable. For reference the 5G Max can achieve 3.4 Gbps download and 560 Mbps upload.

The U5G uses a standard physical nano-SIM and eSIM. Ubiquiti in the US is offering data packages through T-Mobile for $60 per year with 10GB of data included. In the EU and UK the device is not yet available to purchase, but it is likely to be fully unlocked.

The new U5G is now available to order in the US for $99 and is labelled as coming in June for the UK for £94.80.