DON'T Buy A Wi-Fi Range Extender!

I’m not in the basement but I am watching this on the Toilet

I used a cheap extender so my mother-in-law's doorbell camera could connect. As many others have commented, extenders can be a very cost effective way to extend wifi to stationary devices.

I think there's a place for WiFi repeaters as well. I live in a shared house and the router is almost on the other side of the house (different floors as well) and I was interested in better signal in my room only. I am not saying a WAP isn't better but for this specific thing, also given the fact that it would have been pretty hard to move wires about from the router, this has definitely been the easiest solution for me, and it definitely fixed my issue. The signal and speed is fine for what I need.

Use them as a bridged mode and you will be surprised. You can wire a 2nd router to the extender and disable the radios on the extender to use them in a bridge mode. The Dlink DAP 1860 is a champion which is one of the only 4x4 range extender that can get you speeds close to 650 Mbps+ even if the router is a bit far. Works really well with Netgear routers

as some other comments say, I too disagree. Couldnt move my parents router from the corner it was in, got a range extender and placed it in the center of the house, now everywhere they get wifi and no need to switch what the devices connect to. its just a matter of what your situation is and whether it will be useful to you.

One good use for a range extender: many of them have a fixed ethernet port on the range extender, so if you need to "wifi enable" a device that only has an Ethernet port, these can work great! (Not all range extenders have an ethernet port). Think of this as a wireless ethernet cable, rather than a range extender.

There's one advantage that wifi extenders have that wasn't mentioned. For devices that need a hard-wired connection (like i do) wifi extenders usually have one or two... & they do it in a snap. It's great for a location that's too far from a router. It's cheaper than a mesh, and requires minimal knowledge.

I got one of those mesh WI-FI systems. 3 main units (living room, kitchen, side room upstairs) and I could buy more from the same company. The only limitation is that the base one I have only has 2 Ethernet ports on it (one in one out) but it's worked so far. Plus the app is actually pretty good and tells me when a new device joins the network.

Fun fact: ASUS's range extenders can actually be reconfigured to work as mesh nodes with other ASUS routers if you update them to AiMesh firmware.

Agreed that extenders are pretty bad for, well, extending your wifi. However, one overlooked use is to use them as a bridge. They can be useful if you want to wire up a security camera, for example, without routing ether net all the way to your main router.

As a professional WiFi installer, hardwiring a mesh system is by far the best situation. I do a ton of short term rental and residential and have found so many extenders that do weird stuff. They randomly reset, disconnect and reboot. If the customer doesn't want to spend money, I will do my best to move them to a best case spot. But still I get calls at random about them still doing their weird stuff. Updates can help, but its a shot in the dark. Good luck everyone.

If you can't route an Ethernet cable to some APs, use your AP in range extender mode, provided you can maintain line of sight and/or -45ish dBm of signal strength from the host AP. Most of your configuration issues and ssid issues will be resolved.

Just started the vid, but a wifi extender was the cheapest way to get the wifi to extend to the bedroom. Works like a charm. Curious as to why we shouldn't buy them lol... Edit: just finished the video and I have a few issues with your conclusions. The downsides of different access points and roaming are understandable for mobile devices, but a total non issue of you just want your computer or console online in a far room. I've also never had a signal strength issue with my extender either, it just works. I did my research years ago when I bought it, and I also concluded that a mesh wifi system definitely would be the best way to go. Those however can cost $500 to well over $1000. My wifi extender cost me $40-$50 and completely solved the issue. So in the end it depends on what you need your extender to do and what is your budget. If u just want your stationary device online in a room with poor reception a wifi extender is the way to go imo. Unless you just have money like that lol

“Don’t buy range extenders just throw out your router and buy a new one” “Buy lots of access points you can run Ethernet to” great advice if I wanted to throw hundreds of dollars at my network I would just pay someone to run Ethernet to all my Ethernet capable devices instead.

Mine does the job. I get stable connection to it at the far end of my house when I don't to my router. I know its not ideal, maybe buying a different router in the first place or relocating it would have been better, but I'm pretty sure for my specific circumstances it was the cheapest way for me to solve the problem I had without going back in time

Those are a must have for me! I don't see them as "extenders" but sort of "Wifi to LAN converters/switches" As someone who loves FreeBSD (and always picks up laptops with no Wifi drivers) and old computers from the pre-Wireless era, those are life saviours. The reason is that those always have a couple of LAN ports too, so they can pick up the Wifi signal and output by the cable.

As other comments have already said, Mesh systems tend to be a bit pricy, and many people don't have the money to spend on those and rather go for cheaper options to extend their wifi.

Bro, I'm trying to look at youtube on the toilet, not play counterstrike, my wifi extender works just fine and costs only 30 bucks. I don't need to drop 350 to 1000 bucks to watch quickbits on the crapper.

Half way through; honestly this sounds like an issue that could be fixed on the phone itself, by allowing the user to set signal strength thresholds to automatically swap instead of it being hard coded to stubbornly stay connected. Options for users to configure their device are really good. Unfortunately the market has decided "one size that works for the lowest common denominator only" is the only thing that should exist 😢

Extenders are actually incredibly handy if you use them to connect lots of low bandwidth IoT devices. I have lots of smart plugs/switches and like IoT devices and it would bog down my router if they were all connected. The bandwidth for them is so low it doesn't effect their speed, but not having them on my main network vastly increases the speed on the devices I actually care about