Okay, I’ve been watching lots of YouTube videos about switches and I’ve just made myself more confused. Managed versus unmanaged seems to be having a GUI versus not having a GUI, but why would anyone want a GUI on a switch? Shouldn’t your router do that? Also, a switch is like a tube station for local traffic, essentially an extension lead, so why do some have fans?
Certainly not an expert here but the GUI “being there” means you can configure something about the traffic flowing through, maybe VLANs or QoS. That also might be why some switches have fans. Deciding what packet has priority or is allowed is a bit more computationally complex (read: heat generating) than just pushing a packet to the right address.
You might want a VLAN if you have a server connected to the same switch as your PC, but they shouldn’t “see” each other. If you didn’t have a VLAN there, your router or firewall can’t manage anything about the connection. Say you have a website and database on your server and only the website should be accessible by your computer, you’d be able to configure that with the firewall.