The best of the best. I don't know what exactly concerns the friend with the previous review.

Ubiquiti offers professional equipment at affordable prices. It is suitable for small and medium-sized businesses (rental rooms, restaurants, etc.).

There is no competition for me when it comes to what Ubiquiti offers. Microtic has cheaper products, but they don't even come close to Ubiquiti's management, design, and overall ecosystem.

This specific product is flawless. You have your own recorder that you pay for once and that's it (no subscriptions to cloud or anything), and not only that, but you also have the ability to remotely manage the entire network (cameras, access points, router, switches, everything) in a state-of-the-art interface. Ideal if you have a business and need to make changes remotely.

The heating issue that the friend mentioned is not a problem for me. It uses its aluminum frame as a heatsink. Even after 4+ years of use, with over 7 cameras and 12 access points on it, I haven't had any problems.

It should be noted that it has updates every 30-40 days, which shows that the people and the company are serious, and the updates are actually significant and not just for show, meaning they don't subtly push you to buy new equipment for new features.

Personally, I switched the hard drive to an SSD because I wanted more capacity due to the number of cameras, and I decided to "upgrade." It does have better responsiveness now. If you only have 2-3 cameras, there's no need.

The friend's comment about it not being suitable for continuous monitoring of cameras outside the network is correct, as it will greatly affect your upload speed on conventional connections. This is completely normal for obvious reasons (streaming 7 cameras in full HD or 4K is difficult. Even a Zoom call can strain the bandwidth... since we live in Greece). This doesn't apply if you're monitoring locally.

Also, something important is that if you have multiple recorders, they can all be grouped under the same application, and you can simply view all your cameras from different installations. You don't need the headache of logging in with different passwords, applications, and whatnot.

It also runs machine learning for object recognition, which provides you with notifications if it detects something, etc.

Let's not forget that you run the recorder locally for the paranoid (and not without reason) about personal data.

Anything below 5 stars is unfair because, as I said, there is no competition.

The price is completely justified.

If you now want something more "professional," it is provided by the company and you will have to pay for it, or you can go for a much more specialized solution (€€€).

It was purchased to free up a computer from being constantly on in order to record material from the G3 Pro camera. However, it heats up, probably due to continuous recording from the 1TB hard drive. Initially, I placed it on large coasters as legs to keep it cool, but it remained warm. As a passive cooling method, I finally placed it on top of an aluminum square surface (from a sign) and used the coasters as legs, and now it doesn't heat up. Everything is placed, no construction needed. It should have a stand or a fan or at least a cooler. As time goes by, the purchase of it (or the Dream Machine Pro) will become almost mandatory if material projection from a desktop is needed, as the UNIFI VIDEO application for Windows virtual server on a PC has been discontinued. Now it is only available on Android/iOS unless a legacy application for Windows is found with various risks. It does its job, but I think it struggles and it shows sometimes in the framerate. I don't know if it's a processor issue or something else, but since I placed it on a cooler support, the situation has improved significantly. Now, what it offers is known to those who are already interested in purchasing it: If you have Ubiquiti products such as Unifi cameras and Access Points, instead of running them on a virtual server on a computer that will store all security settings and statistics, you can use this small dedicated server to do your job and control it remotely. It does not include a power supply, so you will need an 802.3af PoE or a Quick Charge 2.0 USB charger. It does its job, but its performance did not impress me. With any browser I tried to have LIVE VIEW, I can't say it always works flawlessly, while the G3 PRO is perfect from its side. Maybe I should have gone for the Dream Machine Pro, but it seemed overkill for just one camera.

EDIT: I'm coming back. I think the 3 stars are a bit unfair. In all the time I have had it to view it from Android, it is flawless. It is a very reliable device for archiving. That is, to record and review from a distance whenever needed. It slightly hinders the live view. I would give it 3.5 stars if I could. It shows its teeth on mobile/tablet, not as an intermediate for a monitor