a500 poor wifi reception?

[dosma]

i'm a new owner of the a500. ln general the unit appears to have poor wifi reception as compaired to my dell laptop and others at wifi locations. i,ve read in other posts that dropouts are common with some users. as long as the reception indicator has a couple of bars i can log on. the problem is that signal strength indicated is always less than others in the area. is this a problem with all acer a500's or only with defective units. i can trade the unit in for another a500 or another brand of tablet. please comment on this problem.

don

 

[StoneKy]

@ approximately what distance from the router?

 

[Icebike]

Judge it by performance (speedtest app in the market, or actually downloading files, web page loading, etc).
The number of bars means nothing. There is no universal standard to indicate what the bars mean.

Stop looking at the bars and you will be happier.

 

[dosma]

you may be right about the bars. however i sometimes can,t connect in public places when orhers are connected. i don,t seem to have the disconnect problem with good signals that others have written about though. i'm running 3.2 by the way.

 

[ILH]

I too have noticed that the reception seems to be a bit reduced compared to my full laptop. I'm looking for an app that will better measure the signal strength. The odd thing is that I typically sit immediately over the router that is situated one floor below (wood floors). For my wife's iPad, my netbook and the windows laptop, signal strength is 100%. On the A500 it shows about 2 bars.

 

[Icebike]

I too have noticed that the reception seems to be a bit reduced compared to my full laptop. I'm looking for an app that will better measure the signal strength. The odd thing is that I typically sit immediately over the router that is situated one floor below (wood floors). For my wife's iPad, my netbook and the windows laptop, signal strength is 100%. On the A500 it shows about 2 bars.

The antenna on your router is designed to radiate horizontally. Being directly above is not the best.
Slant the antenna for better vertical results.

But again, the number of bars means nothing at all.

Get Wifi Analyzer from the market.

 

[sopranosv]

Well I can tell you I've used my Iconia at home, the office, airports (El Salvador, Panama, Atlanta, Belize), hotels (Atlanta, Panama, Belize), Mc Donald's, shopping malls and haven't ever faced an issue...

 

[sandshoe]

I've noticed that there are places in my home where the signal is a bit weak, where my wife's iPad will connect, but my A500 won't.

 

[Douvie]

As Icebike says stop looking at the signal strength indicator. I've had no bars in a Mac Donald's carpark with excellent reception and no problems. Yet at another where I had full bars the tablet would have trouble and time out.

 

[dosma]

Well I can tell you I've used my Iconia at home, the office, airports (El Salvador, Panama, Atlanta, Belize), hotels (Atlanta, Panama, Belize), Mc Donald's, shopping malls and haven't ever faced an issue...

well i,ve decided to keep my a500. i can connect most places that have a decent signal. i bought the tablet primarily for travel so the ability of a unit to pull in weak signals say in my auto outside an establishment was a high want. i was expecting the tablet to be equal to laptops in this regard which was probably not a reasonabe expectation. but considering the performance of the a500 otherwise and it,s industry leading input/output capablities i'm sold on the a500.

thanks all for your replys.

...don

 

[Douvie]

well i,ve decided to keep my a500. i can connect most places that have a decent signal. i bought the tablet primarily for travel so the ability of a unit to pull in weak signals say in my auto outside an establishment was a high want. i was expecting the tablet to be equal to laptops in this regard which was probably not a reasonabe expectation. but considering the performance of the a500 otherwise and it,s industry leading input/output capablities i'm sold on the a500.

thanks all for your replys.

...don

New system update coming through 3.2.1. Don't panic if you haven't got yet - some are saying that it improves WiFi. I haven't noticed that.

 

[ronio]

well i,ve decided to keep my a500. i can connect most places that have a decent signal. i bought the tablet primarily for travel so the ability of a unit to pull in weak signals say in my auto outside an establishment was a high want. i was expecting the tablet to be equal to laptops in this regard which was probably not a reasonabe expectation. but considering the performance of the a500 otherwise and it,s industry leading input/output capablities i'm sold on the a500.

thanks all for your replys.

...don

My son just picked up the Asus Transformer. When we walk around the house using Wifi Analyzer he consistently has 25db better signal strength than my A500. I believe this is due to the fact that Acer uses a metal back and his Asus is some type of carbon fiber. I also imagine Acer must have found some "cheaper" chips to install in the A500.

I read another poster commenting his wireless signal dropped whenever he placed his hand over the USB port. So you may want to grab Wifi Analyzer from the Market and experiment with correct hand placement.

 

[Native]

I just know I can use my A500 in areas of my house that I can't use an iPod or Kindle Fire (which I returned and got the Acer instead.)
I agree with Icebike: There is no universal standard.

 

[Douvie]

I'm using Wifi analyser and I see no problem.

 

[viksa]

Wifi signal on my A500 is crappy, too.
I`ve compared to other brand new A500 and A100 and it is same.
In other room just 5m from AP I have barely 1 bar and it`s loosing connection every 2-3 minutes.
Same place, my other wifi devices (3 laptops, iphone, nokia phone, PSP) are having almost full signal.
This is design flaw of antenna or software isue or... My A500 is running Android 3.2.
Wifi is most important thing in this kind of device.


This is my first and last ACER!


COME ON ACER DO SOMETHING!!!