Ubiquiti UniFi Switch Pro 24 PoE: Specs, Pros & Cons
Ubiquiti's spec sheet for this switch claims 88 Gbps of switching capacity and, two lines further down, 44 Gbps of non-blocking throughput. Both figures are honest, and they measure different things. Twenty-four gigabit ports plus a pair of 10G SFP+ cages come to 44 Gbps in each direction, and the larger number counts both directions at once. Every vendor presents it this way. It is still worth knowing which of the two describes the traffic your network moves.
Underneath the arithmetic is a 1U rack switch built for a UniFi site rather than a generic one. All the copper ports deliver power, split between the standard PoE+ tier and a smaller group at the higher PoE++ tier, and the two SFP+ slots handle uplinks to a gateway or a core switch. A small touchscreen on the front shows status without anyone opening a laptop, and there is a DC input for Ubiquiti's redundant power supply if the rack justifies one.
The thing to understand before buying is that this is not a switch you configure by browsing to its address. It has to be adopted by a UniFi Network controller (self-hosted, or running on one of Ubiquiti's gateways), and everything from VLANs to port profiles lives there instead. For an existing UniFi site that is the whole appeal: one interface, consistent policy, no per-device web pages to remember. For anyone not running UniFi, it is a large and awkward thing to own.
Layer 3 appears on the feature list and it is real, but narrower than the phrase implies: inter-VLAN routing for locally defined networks, with a static route table to match. Treat it as a capable access switch with some routing convenience attached rather than as a router substitute, and it will not let you down.
Category strengths
Where the Ubiquiti UniFi Switch Pro 24 PoE beats the median
- More PoE ports ?24 vs 4 (median)
- More total ports ?26 vs 10 (median)
- A much higher PoE budget ?400 W vs 135 W (median)
- A much higher switching capacity ?88 Gbps vs 40 Gbps (median)
- More gigabit ports ?24 vs 0 (median)
- A much higher forwarding rate ?65 Mpps vs 32.73 Mpps (median)
- More SFP/SFP+ ports ?2 vs 0 (median)
- Has rack-mountable ?
- Has cloud management ?
Where the Ubiquiti UniFi Switch Pro 24 PoE trails the median
- A much higher power consumption ?50 W vs 26.5 W (median)
How this VS Score was computed
Score 88: each known spec is measured against the median of all network switches (17 products), then weighted; 50 means level with that median. In classes of six or more, a value beyond the class’s 10th–90th percentile range counts as that limit, so one extreme product cannot set the scale. 92% of the scoreable weight could be used; unknown values, features not applicable to this class and proxies (battery capacity where a rated life exists) add or remove nothing.
| Specification | This product | Cohort median | Score weight | Points moved |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total ports | 26 | 10 | 2 | +100.0 |
| Gigabit ports | 24 — capped at the class’s upper range (16) | 0 | 1.5 | +75.0 |
| Switching capacity | 88 | 40 | 1.5 | +75.0 |
| PoE ports | 24 — capped at the class’s upper range (16) | 4 | 1.2 | +60.0 |
| PoE budget | 400 | 135 | 1.2 | +60.0 |
| VLAN support | Yes | 59% of the class have it | 0.8 | +40.0 |
| Forwarding rate | 65 | 32.73 | 0.8 | +39.2 |
| SFP/SFP+ ports | 2 | 0 | 0.5 | +25.0 |
| Management level | Fully managed | Smart managed | 1 | +25.0 |
| Link aggregation | Yes | 53% of the class have it | 0.5 | +25.0 |
| Quality of Service (QoS) | Yes | 62% of the class have it | 0.5 | +25.0 |
| Cloud management | Yes | 50% of the class have it | 0.4 | +20.0 |
| IGMP snooping | Yes | 60% of the class have it | 0.3 | +15.0 |
| Rack-mountable | Yes | 35% of the class have it | 0.3 | +15.0 |
| PoE standard | PoE++ (802.3bt) | PoE+ (802.3at) | 0.8 | +13.6 |
| Power consumption | 50 | 26.5 | 0.5 | −11.5 |
| 2.5G ports | 0 | 0 | 1 | +0.0 |
| 10G ports | 0 | 0 | 0.8 | +0.0 |
| MAC address table | 16 | 16 | 0.3 | +0.0 |
Not scored: Jumbo frame support (standard for the class (100% have it)); Fanless (unknown: not scored); Metal housing (standard for the class (87% have it)).
Editor’s note
The PoE budget is where the real limit sits, and it is not the port count. Ubiquiti allocates 400 W in total, which sounds generous until you notice that each of the eight PoE++ ports can draw up to 60 W on its own. Load only those and you are at 480 W, past the ceiling, before a single camera or access point is plugged into the remaining sockets. In practice you plan this switch around a power spreadsheet rather than around the number of holes on the front panel, and anyone deploying high-draw hardware (PTZ cameras, multi-radio access points, door controllers) will run out of watts long before they run out of ports.
The other expectation worth setting concerns routing. Ubiquiti ticks the Layer 3 box, and the DHCP server, relay and inter-VLAN routing are useful for keeping local traffic off the gateway. But the static route table holds two entries. Two. That is perfectly adequate for the job it was designed for and hopeless if you pictured retiring a router.
Build quality is what the tier suggests: a steel enclosure, proper rack ears, NDAA compliance for buyers who are required to care, and a redundant DC input. Idle draw is modest, which is not nothing in a rack you are paying to cool.
Its appeal comes down to whether you are already inside the ecosystem. Controller-driven management saves real time once you are running more than one site. Bought for a network without UniFi, it brings integration you will never use, and the first evening goes on discovering there is no local web interface to log into. That is a deliberate design decision rather than an oversight, but it surprises people.
Specifications
Quality bars show where each figure sits between the lowest and highest of the 17 network switches this VS Score is measured against.
Ports
Power over Ethernet
Performance
Management
Design & power
Networking assessment
What the specification table does not say on its own: what this device needs to connect, what speeds are realistic, what costs extra, and where it falls short. Every statement below is read from the verified sheet or written by an editor — nothing is estimated.
Test environment
Research-based assessment: this brief is derived from the manufacturer’s published specifications for the Ubiquiti UniFi Switch Pro 24 PoE and the documents listed under Sources and verification. We have not run this unit on our own network, so nothing here is a measurement of ours.
Connection requirements
Management level: Fully managed. Expect a web interface or cloud dashboard to configure it, which is where VLANs, link aggregation and QoS are set up.
Ports: 26 in total, of which 24 are Gigabit.
PoE budget is 400 W shared across the powered ports — add up the draw of the cameras, phones and access points you intend to hang off it before assuming they all fit.
Throughput expectations
Switching capacity is 88 Gbps, enough for every port to run flat out at once — the usual case for a home or small-office switch.
Jumbo frames are supported, which helps large file transfers between NAS and desktop.
Firmware and subscriptions
Firmware is not something you download and flash here. The switch is adopted by a UniFi Network application – self-hosted, or running on one of Ubiquiti's cloud gateways – and updates are pushed to it from that controller. Ubiquiti lists UniFi Network 5.10.5 as the minimum version for this model, so a controller that has been left alone for a long time will need bringing up to date before it will adopt the unit at all. No licence or subscription is attached to UniFi Network itself, and the controller is also where port profiles, VLANs and PoE behaviour are configured.
Set-up and day-to-day management run through the manufacturer’s cloud service, so that account’s availability and privacy terms are part of the product.
Security support
VLAN support allows work, IoT and guest traffic to be separated on the wired side.
Security-update cadence is not something manufacturers publish as a specification; see Support and updates below.
Known limitations
One specification is not published by the manufacturer and is shown as Unknown rather than guessed.
Support and updates
Ubiquiti's support is documentation-first: a help centre, published release notes, per-model firmware history and an active community forum, rather than a phone number. For a rack switch that is usually enough, because the failure modes are well documented and the forum is genuinely knowledgeable – but if you need somebody accountable on a call while a site is down, budget for a reseller or integrator contract alongside the hardware. The published firmware history is worth reading before you buy, since it shows how long Ubiquiti has kept comparable switches receiving updates.
Sources and verification
Where the specifications come from
- Official product pagetechspecs.ui.com
- Support and firmware documentationui.com
- Retailer listing (cross-check)amazon.com
Verification
- First published
- Specifications last checked
- Sheet completeness
- 21 of 22 specifications verified; the rest show as Unknown and are never estimated or scored
- Page type
- Product specification page — Compiled from the manufacturer’s published specifications and the cited sources; this is not a hands-on test.
- Basis
- Research-based: specifications and editorial text were compiled from the documents listed here and the manufacturer’s published data. We have not tested this unit ourselves; where independent measurements are mentioned they belong to the linked publication.
Network Switches with similar specs to the Ubiquiti UniFi Switch Pro 24 PoE
Ratings & reviews
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The bottom line
The Ubiquiti UniFi Switch Pro 24 PoE earns a VS Score of 88, above the median of the 17 network switches it is measured against (a score of 50 is level with that median).
- Who it’s for
- Someone already running a UniFi site who needs rack-mounted PoE++ capacity and wants port profiles and VLANs handled from the same console as the rest of the network.
- Who should look elsewhere
- Anyone without a UniFi Network controller, or expecting to configure a switch from its own web page, because there is not one and adoption is not optional.
- The trade-off that matters
- Controller-only management removes per-device configuration entirely, which is a relief across a large site and a dead end on the day the controller is unreachable.
- The main alternative
- TP-Link Omada SG3428MP covers similar ground with a comparable PoE budget and, unlike this one, can still be configured standalone if you would rather not commit to a controller.
The VS Score is calculated from the weighted specifications above, each measured against the median of comparable network switches — a shortlisting guide, not a substitute for your own priorities. See how we score.
