thirdrock44 Report post Posted March 6, 2017 How do you feel about the Winegard Wifi extender & is it worth the investment to have one? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kaypsmith Report post Posted March 6, 2017 The Winegard is a very good line as a whole. But that brand wifi extender appears to be rather pricey. A wifi extender does just that and there are other brands available, with the exception that other brands are not designed to be roof mounted. I use a hotspot instead of park wifi because most parks have pretty poor wifi coverage unless you are parked next to the park office. Any brand range extender could do the same job, just place it outside the RV once parked, and find an area that has the best signal to place it. Netgear and Cisco are both good brands, and the newest technology is the ones marked 1200 AC and higher, remember the higher the preceding # before the AC designation, the faster the device is, are the best available for individual use, because they use multiple radios to receive and retransmit the signal giving much faster speeds to the end user. If I was going to buy a booster for my use, I would use a cell phone booster to get the best of service for cell phone and hotspot use, because several parks that I frequent have poor cell phone service. Hope my little rant helps, and happy motoring. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BillAdams Report post Posted March 6, 2017 You would do much better with this setup for less than $100. http://www.outsideourbubble.com/secure-private-rv-wi-fi-and-making-a-better-park-connection-for-under-100 Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
-Gramps- Report post Posted March 6, 2017 I checked into it. It will increase a campground wifi radio signal and bring it inside your coach. It will increase the speed at which your devices, which would be secure behind the Winegard router, talk to each other and to the campground or other public wifi that you log it on to. This would work with Xfinity public wifi, Tengo Net, which is normally pretty bad, as well as other public streaming services. What it will not do is speed up the gateway that the public wifi you are using has. In other words if a campground is paying for enough bandwidth from their provider for 25 simultaneous heavy to moderate users and you happen to sign on with what appears to be a great connection as user number 37 the Winegard is not going to make it better for you than the other 36 people. Your connection to Facebook or whatever is still going to in a word, stink. It has been my experience that even with a great radio signal inside my coach, campgrounds just don't have enough bandwidth, the pipe is too small from Century-Link or Comcast or whoever. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RichNjohn Report post Posted December 17, 2017 Our new RV came with the Winegard Connect+ 4G. The Wifi booster appears to work about as well as the Radio Labs unit on our previous RV. The range is enough to boost a signal within the distance of most campgrounds but not enough to pull in hotspots that are farther away than maybe 1/4 to 1/2 mile away (at least not with any signal strength). I have never activated the 4G as it requires you to purchase a data plan through Winegard and you cannot (as far as I know) use a SIM from another provider. The Winegard plan looks expensive to me and I don't know how the coverage is. I'm sure they use a major carrier but they don't tell you which one. One thing that I don't like about the Winegard unit is that it uses a 120 volt to 24 volt converter. If not connected to shore power the unit requires the inverter. Seems really inefficient to me to run the inverter just to get wifi. I contacted Winegard and asked about running it directly off DC power and was told that is not an option at this time. Why a company that markets itself to the RV community would make a unit that can but doesn't run on DC power is beyond me. The strange thing is that Winegard makes a unit for truckers that is run on DC?? So I just cut the converter brick off and ran 12 volt power through a 12 to 24 volt step up converter and the unit seems to work fine. However, I probably voided my warranty... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
RichNjohn Report post Posted December 17, 2017 Sorry, forget to say that I really do like the administration software the Winegard uses. It's very slick, intuitive and works great with my Apple devices. Not all wifi boosters have Apple figured out. The last one I had could not be set up at all using iOS and even on my Mac I had to download Chrome to get it to work. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
eric@babin.com Report post Posted August 30, 2018 OK.... bringing this thread back to life.... no comments since December 2017.... wondering if there are any other opinions. What we would like to use it for is cel-phone reception booster, as well as wi-fi extender..... Looks like an upgraded version came out in Feb 2018! any experience with using this with Verizon? Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
