BearExtenderOutdoor RV & Marine High Power USB Wi-Fi Extender Antenna for Microsoft Windows PCs

I needed to replace the old WiFi antenna on my metal shop and decided to try this unit. When I opened the box it looked like the unit had been repacked and had been opened before I got it. Some parts were missing like all the screws for mounting this to your outside wall or other structure. The mounting that came with this unit is just painted steel and not the chrome or stainless steel shown in the pictures. It came with a USB dongle that needs to be installed on the computers USB port? I thought it was just for loading the drivers but it seems to have other uses. I have tried using the antenna without the dongle and the reception seems to really drop off. The instructions included have zero information on what the dongle is used for. Also no mounting or other instructions included in the package.The antenna works okay but its not as good as the old unit I had before. If I had the time to return this I would but I need this to get WiFi to inside my metal shop. I hope it will last for a few years!

Mounted this little antenna on the side of my shop facing the house. My DSL router is deep at the back of my garage150 yards away. I currently have CenturyLink 50gig service and without a hitch I get all of that at the house. I was skeptical about what signal strength I would get at this distance through the trees and the house walls.Directions were super easy to follow to install and load software. However, I don’t have a CD drive so I had to download the installation pack to a stick drive from the company’s internet site. That was the longest part of the setup. Once downloaded, I installed it on my shop computer and plugged in the antenna. It immediately identified several neighborhood wifi connection in addition to mine. I connected to mine without any problems. I started a Chrome browser and just like that… internet. I did a couple speed test to see what I could get at this distance and was surprised to see speeds of up to 40gig. I am completely satisfied for the price and ease of use.Two things I will point out that I found could use improvement in.The first is the 16 foot cable. It sounds like a lot but it really needs to be 20+ feet for optimum placement outside your structure. I had an older differed model that aged out and it came with a 25 foot cable (perfect).The second thing is the installation software. I mean who uses CDs these days? Nobody. I mean really Put it on an appropriately priced/sized USB stick. They are cheap…

As much as I wanted to like the idea, having years of experience in networking I came to find out the antenna used in this booster is very low bandwidth compared to even a basic consumer router that features the same directional antenna technology. It was neat having native Linux drivers, which allow for quite a bit of fun projects but for anyone looking to do serious work, (these days you should be able to pull 50Mb/s down and up no problem with a network booster) just go get a $20 router that is supported by OpenWRT, build a waterproof cage for it and over-clock the wireless antennas on an optimized channel. Be aware of any FCC regulations in your area when doing this, however.

I bought a Bear Extender PC in 2014; it just died. Because of that long life, I purchased this product because the company no longer makes what I had---and I needed the 16' cable. Very disappointed with the high price and because I now only have three bars 115' from router---where the other extender gave me four bars. And the connection gets cut multiple times a day. So annoying. Brand loyalty burned me.

It does what it says, in a way, but it's extremely finicky.The USB plug is so loose in the port that I can't move my laptop or even slightly touch the cable or it will disconnect, instantly dropping me off the internet. Sometimes I will have to go back into the wifi settings and manually reconnect when it drops out. I tested it with multiple laptops, same problem with all of them.If your computer is set up perfectly flat on a desk and you can avoid touching the BearExtender at all while using it, it should be fine, especially if you're doing something that can handle a quick outage. And when it is working, it can be the difference between a wifi network being usable or not.Personally, I live on a boat and often need to be on video calls for work, so this didn't really work for me. I still use it as a backup option, but if I were purchasing again, I would probably spend the extra money for something more reliable.