Spent $300 on a wifi booster for my van and it worked worse than the $30 one I bought off Facebook Marketplace

3 comments

3 Comments

Whoa, hold up, three hundred bucks?! You're telling me the expensive one was actually worse? I feel like that's gotta be some kind of scam or maybe you just got super unlucky with that particular model. It's wild how sometimes the cheap stuff just works better for no good reason. I mean, what even makes a wifi booster cost ten times more than another one?

wren_mitchell3d ago

My neighbor had the exact same problem with a cheap booster that went kaput after two months, so I swapped him for an older Netgear I had lying around and it's been solid ever since. @charles_coleman nailed it when he said the expensive gear sometimes needs a specific setup spot or a firmware tweak before it stops being flaky. Once I moved that three hundred dollar unit to a higher shelf and updated the software, it finally ran circles around the budget one.

charles_coleman5d ago

Nah man, you gotta think about this different. That "cheap stuff works better" idea is a trap. The expensive one probably has better parts inside, like a faster processor or better antennas that just don't work great out of the box. I had a similar thing with a mesh system once where the cheap model seemed fast for an hour, then dropped signal constantly. The high end one needed a firmware update and a specific spot in my house but then it never got flaky. Sometimes you are paying for stuff like metal casing that helps with heat, or better software that stops it from crashing when five devices connect at once. That cheap one might work for now, but give it six months and see if it still holds up.