You get what you pay for. Would you rather have a few years old used Benz or a new Kia? I'll leave it at that.
I can answer both actually... if those were my only two choices I would take my chances with the Kia, I will not own another Benz outside of warranty, our prior '14 ML was one of the biggest pos's I have ever had. i will have been in IT for 16 years as of June 8, I'm currently a systems engineer. I have purchased/ used/ supported many of the HP Pro-Curves ,Linksys, Cisco and Juniper switches over the years, from $300 24 port non mngd to $3k modular switches. They are designed for server racks/ server rooms, power consumption is generally high, they are noisy due to multiple fans and sometimes multiple power supplies. 95% of the features that the management console provides a common home owner or even small business user would never understand or need. it's much like a home user buying an actual used enterprise server.
for me it's all personal preference, I have had both a 48 port and 24 port managed ProCurve in my home rack (retired from my office), but watching the LCD read out on my battery backup showed that the 48 port switch alone was pulling the same amount of power as my actual
blue Iris PC (hp sff 800G1) so I swapped it with the 24, which wasn't much better. The 24port's fan started squealing after about a month in service. even when the fan wasn't squealing I could hear it running as I walked down my stairs to the basement, I still had to walk around a corner, 10ft down a hall and then another corner before opening the closet door where the rack is at. The Asus is dead quiet and uses only a few watts-Asus is a well known vendor in the industry, maybe not an HP or Dell or Cisco, but still high on the charts. but judging by your signature you already know this.
Using a PoE injector module versus and all in one solution allows a lot more options as far as equipment goes. My PoE injector is 1 year old without a single hiccup, if it breaks I spend $30 to replace it, if im concerned with longevity I buy a second one and split the load up then shift the load off whichever fails first. If my switch blows up I can Prime a new one within 1 -2 days or go down to the local best buy, walmart or staples and buy a replacement versus waiting for someone on the other side of the country to get off their butt, package it, then try to figure out the slowest and cheapest way to ship it to me, just to receive a product that is already at minimum halfway through its useable life and may or may not work correctly out of the box. may or may not lock up every few days, may or may not have come with the mounting ears etc.
Would I run this set up in any of my office environments? hell no. I will let the company spend $1600 on new catalyst switches.
again all personal preference, many people outside of the IT world do not know these options exist, they believe their only option is a used enterprise switch when they may be able to just throw some injectors on a switch they already own and save a bunch of money and headaches along the way.
. not everyone needs more than 2/3/4/5/6 ports of PoE to justify buying a dedicated PoE switch or want/ are able to house a big rackmount style switch. In my case I have an 7 camera system but I have a total of 18 wired ports between audio/video, AP's, computers, irrigation, alarm etc, so I need the larger switch but not necessarily the PoE on all of it.
