I bought a couple of NOS Cisco 1815i running mobility express for about $50ea. sets up nicely, will go "flush" against the ceiling (the edges aren't beveled) for a slightly cleaner look.
Once you set the "main" unit set up, the subsequent units are just plug and play. I guess they run LLDP/CDP to advertise themselves. They also have plug and play Mesh functionality, although I haven't had the chance to set that up. The GUI is relatively effortless but spartan. The CLI is pretty funky past the initial configuration wizard where it runs a AP-type shell which you can then also step back into a lower level Cisco CLI. From the CLI the configuration choices are limitless and frankly somewhat daunting, because it's awfully easy to screw something up there.
Rangewise, it was about the same as my UAP-AC-Lite and just below the UAP-AC-Pro, however I lost my controller several weeks back and one fine day my ICX6250-C12 switch rebooted and the UAP lost my config & SSID, even though that wasn't supposed to happen. But then again, that's the case with Ubiquiti - works fine until you hit a snag somewhere.
I seem to have a wall in one of my rooms somewhere with some shielding inside, because all the APs lose 80% of signal despite only being 20' away. Quite annoying and probably going to setup the mesh unit there since I have no cabling run.
Was tempted to try out the Ruckus, but the pricing on the Cisco units were pretty decent. So maybe next time?