The IT Nerd

I’m the proud owner of a Linksys WRT1900AC router and it has performed well for me for the most part. The only issue is that I have a couple of dead spots in my condo where signal strength is questionable with some devices like my MacBook Pro where the signal strength is lower than it should be, or it is bordering on unusable with devices like my iPhone 6 where it gets either low signal strength or it loses the WiFi signal completely. Now to solve that problem, I turned to Linksys and their WRT004ANT High-Gain Antennas.

Now let me explain what high gain antennas are. They are a form of a directional antenna that allows more of the transmitted power to be sent in the direction of the receiver, increasing the received signal strength. When receiving, a high gain antenna captures more of the signal, again increasing signal strength. Plus they are less prone to interference. That makes s high gain antenna an option for people with coverage issues such as myself.

The first thing that I need to point out is the size of the antenna:

On the left is the WRT004ANT high gain antenna. On the right is the stock antenna that the WRT1900AC came with. Size matters when it comes to this sort of antenna. Thus the bigger, the better.

Installation is simple, Simply unscrew the stock antennas and replace them with the high gain antennas. That took five minutes.  Now Linksys says that by using these antennas, they will give you the following:

• 1.5x gain on the 2.4Ghz band
• 2x gain on the 5Ghz band
• More wireless range and performance across the horizontal plane

So, does it deliver? The answer is yes. Rather than use all sorts of fancy tools to prove this, I will use my iPhone 6 which is on the 5Ghz band placed in a location where I know that the signal strength is weak to illustrate this as that is how the average user will determine if these antennas work or not. The picture below is before I did the antenna swap:

You’ll note the WiFi indicator only has two out of three bars. Typically, this is the best that I get, assuming that I can get a WiFi signal at all. If I can get a signal, I often have problems maintaining it. Here’s what it looks like after:

You’ll notice that I now have full signal strength. Same device, same location. The only variable that was changed was the antennas. I swapped antennas back and forth several times and got the same results every time. Plus the WiFi connection was solid and I did not drop it once with the high gain antennas. I would say that the WRT004ANT antennas deliver when it comes to their claim to improve signal strength. When it comes to speed, I didn’t observe any changes in terms of speed. But I didn’t expect any because that’s not what a high gain antenna is for.

A couple of notes that I need to point out before you run out and hand over your credit card:

• For best results you need to have them pointing straight upwards.
• These antennas are really intended to increase signal strength on a single floor. That’s perfect for me but you live in a multi-floor dwelling, you should try a range extender instead.
• You don’t need to have a Linksys router to use these antennas. The connector is a RP-SMA connection which many routers use.

Speaking of handing over your credit card, let me get to the price of these antennas. They list for $129.99 which is a bit pricey. But in my testing they worked as advertised so it’s hard not to argue that it’s good value for money if you’re trying to address WiFi signal coverage issues on a single floor environment such as a condo or a small office.

This entry was posted on July 23, 2015 at 10:34 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Linksys. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.