I haven't heard a lot about them, but what I have heard about the Edgerouters has generally been favorable. If I'm not mistaken,
@jgreco has some experience with them. I'm running a pfSense box, which works well and doesn't draw much power, but it doesn't sound like you're interested in that.
Nothing seems to do QOS well without quite a bit of tinkering. This includes the EdgeRouters, which I'll toss out some commentary on.
The EdgeRouter-X is the cheapest in the Ubiquiti lineup, and it is a great little general purpose low speed router. It has a faster CPU, more ports, and is about half the cost (~$50) of its bigger brother, but it does NOT have accelerated packet processing capabilities. Because of the faster CPU, I think it may be better at things like VPN.
The EdgeRouter Lite is a ~$100 3-port affair that will do full wire-speed routing (and I'm pretty sure wire-speed NAT'ing as well) which is a great choice especially if you have an Internet connection greater than 100Mbps.
They both have web management portals that allow you to do basic firewall and VPN stuff without too much drama. For the more experienced user, they are Vyatta based routers with a CLI.
If you're buying Unifi gear, that is, the Ubiquiti wifi stuff, then there's also the USG Unifi Security Gateway to consider, which is an EdgeRouter Lite that's been extended with additional firmware features to do deep packet inspection. I haven't figured out what is so "Security" about it, since it seems to basically be a fixed-configuration NAT platform with DPI, but it does create some very impressive stats and insights into your network if you're a home user.
And as for UniFi wifi gear, if you're not cost-sensitive, and especially if you can run wire for multiple access points, look at this. Most people buy one of these stupid all-in-one "router" affairs, and then maybe try for wireless bridges or wireless mesh, but that's basically going to be disappointing. In the old days with 802.11b, you could probably have a single AP that covered an entire house without too much trouble, but the new 802.11ac really requires that you have an access point near you if you want to be able to get "good speeds". The Ubiquiti AP AC Pro's are something like $600 for a 5-pack. Ubiquiti will be happy to sell you a Unifi switch and a Unifi USG that all magically works together and gives you lots of cool stats and options, but you don't actually need those bits... just the AP's and a VM running the Unifi management software. Put access points all around your house at strategic points and run wire back to your switch. There's no comparison between wireless mesh and a real wired AP setup.
Still, in my old age here, I've found I just don't have the hours in the day to roll custom stuff for friends and family anymore, so I've been leaning heavily on Ubiquiti as the preferred go-to. The Unifi USG, a decent PoE ethernet switch, and a bunch of wired access points can give you an extremely high performance home network at a relatively low cost.