Mvix Solido - Expand Your Wifi Range
Please welcome a new writer to these pages, offering a unique perspective. Perhaps it’s a transparent attempt to broaden our demographics, but we’re happy to have someone more mature and a bit less familiar with technology try things hands-on. Today’s test focuses on the Mvix Solido, a wireless-N antenna that purports to boost your 802.11 reception for your laptops or desktops that are a bit far away from your router.
With high expectations, I plugged it in to my aging Dell laptop and it didn’t work. There is a wifi source near me that I anticipated this device would allow me to access, but it did not. We’re not always too proud to read the manual- out came the instructions, which were in such small print that I couldn’t read them. So I had to tap the reservoir of technological expertise available to me, “the guy down the hall.” Many of us, if we would care to admit it, would be lost without the guy down the hall. He was able to read the instructions and asked about the disk… Indeed, there was a disk, but a small mini-CD included in the package just to complicate the situation. I found out that by holding down shift while loading the disk you can access a file containing an e-version of the manual, which was entirely legible.
Our interest in this device was piqued when we heard that it allowed you to do pick up wifi signals from coffee shops, even blocks away. In reviewing materials that were included with the device and then directly talking to manufacturer’s technical support staff, I realized that they were not claiming to pick up signals that wouldn’t otherwise be unavailable, but rather amplify signals that you were receiving making them stronger and thus faster. This is a significant difference, and meant that this one wasn’t quite as useful as others we’ve tried. On the other hand, it’s basically the same as cell phone boosters we’ve tried and liked.
As men of science, we realized the need for further fieldwork, which in this case entailed a visit to a local coffee shop. From this vantage point, we first took a look at signals available. To assess the signal strength we used the http://nitro.ucsc.edu/ site. Without the antenna being attached there were several other signals available, aside from the one provided by the coffee shop. I decided to focus on one from a different shop, approximately 6 blocks away from where we were testing.
Without using the Mvix Solido, the distant signal registered:
Connected to: nitro.ucsc.edu — Using IPv4 address
running 10s outbound test (client-to-server [C2S]) . . . . . 223.0kb/s
running 10s inbound test (server-to-client [S2C]) . . . . . . 118.94kb/s
After attaching the antenna, waiting for the blinking green light indicating that it was properly attached and working, we reran the test and got the following data:
Connected to: nitro.ucsc.edu — Using IPv4 address
running 10s outbound test (client-to-server [C2S]) . . . . . 3.04Mb/s
running 10s inbound test (server-to-client [S2C]) . . . . . . 1.63Mb/s
A marked improvement indeed! Certainly, a booster like this won’t help much if the signal is already strong, but further real world tests reveal that it helps over time as well, and means that you can worry less about positioning your laptop just right to grab that weak signal. It also picked up three or four wifi networks that our built-in adapter did not.
Does the Mvix Solido WiFi antenna allow you to retrieve wifi from other states? No. But it does allow you to improve those weak signals that you do receive. And that may be enough for quite a few people- and don’t forget bonus of having your laptop show off a funky antenna. At $35 or so online, it’s also quite inexpensive!
