Buy Cheap, Buy Twice - Wavlink 300Mbps Outdoor WAP 

Love the festive spin on the manscaping ad

The metal gutter may be detuning the antennas. Try mounting it on a piece of wood.

When I run WiFi to someone's barn, if the barn has power, I just run a point to point link. Get a cheap second router that will run in client mode. Get 2x cheap/free parabolic reflectors (satellite tv dishes aren't tuned for 2.4GHz, but they do usually work.) Attach one dish on each building, pointing at each other. replace one of the router antennae with a pigtail that goes up to the dish focal point. I've easily gotten +500ft (+180m) point-to-point links this way. And it can be almost free depending on where you source your hardware.

my oldest ubiquity 2.4ghz AP i installed in the shed in my back yard gives me like 150' range easily. worth the money spent. I have newer 5ghz unifi access points around the house and also well worth every bit of the money.

My company tried to see if these were useable... We were sadly disappointed. Don't try factory resetting it btw, you'll end up with it in ap mode but still broadcasting dhcp. Also, I love how if you go to adjust the signal strength, full signal is the image of a pregnant woman.

This manscaping add is GOLD! I hope they have a you bonus for that creativity!

Best manscaped ad I've ever seen.

Wait...did you strap it directly to a huge hunk of metal right next to the antennas and not expect WIFI degradation? Hmm...I wonder if it does a search for wifi signal so it doesn't crosstalk with other channels Optimum install would be on the top of an old TV pushup pole ABOVE the roofline...the higher the signal and more line of site = better signal propagation

You always have the best script for Manscape :)

i would like to see this test repeated without the antennas being so close to the metal gutter, and the two antennas at 90 degrees to eachother. the reason for the 90 deg angle is so that the two antennas dont overrwhelm and desensitise eachother. diversity reception/transmission should work a lot better, to be thorough, an analysis of the antennas on some cheap VNA like the nanoVNA would be also a useful indicattion if they are actually any good,

Good info, I was having issues connecting my detached garage 3 years ago. I ran an outdoor cat6 to a TP-link in and outdoor rated poly box with an extension cord; what an S-show. Then I switched to an ASUS gaming router mesh network, and I am good. I would like to upgrade my antennas and get a bit more coverage.

Easily the best landscape commercial I think I've seen in a very very long time lol

best intro EVER!!! manscape!!

I just want to say that is the best manscapped add I have ever seen, and I dont have cable, so I have seen a lot

Love the sponsor add. Very well done.

I've deployed 8 tp-link N300 LR's across 5 different locations, and they been friggin stellar - surviving torrential downpours, 112 degree heat, all while never encountering a single issue with them, I cant see myself ever using something else (as long as theres no high bandwidth requirement). Used to get them for 37 bucks, probably a little more these days, but worth it - I've got two of these as point to point at my parents place just under a half mile apart, and get about 120Mbps between the two. I couldnt believe it tbh... but we now have 4 video feeds streaming from the barn to the house a half mile away, and I cant argue with that!

Those xmas decor look smooth

That festive ad-spot was hilarious!

I like the TP-Link access points for outdoor. Love the Ubiquiti NanoStations as well.

What a legend! - I love tech and beer too! Great review of the product.

I helped my father-in-law set one of these up to give additional coverage for his backyard shed and motorhome parking pad. It works OK for those uses for him.

Hey Craftman, Greetings from Kuala Lumpur Malaysia. Wishing you happy holidays and happy new year! Your video have been helpful for me in getting around with tech and better understanding on my machine. Keep up the good work, I like your videos very much. I always try to pop up my beer bottle cap at the beginning of your video and most of the attempt was successful in getting it popped in sync! Stay blessed and cheers!

The manscaped ad again perfectly on point .

I'm normally an ad skipper, but I do not skip Craft's Manscaped ads, as a personal rule.

I need for my big and little barn for lambing and calving...better to keep an eye on critters. Have looked at a few videos for different ones, stopped in to watch this, thanks for doing the review!

I'm running Ubiquiti UAP-MeshACs in outdoor scenarios and they're great. 80-100€ usually. TP-Link also offers some equipment in multiple product lines. The Omada ones are a good alternative. If a directional antenna is fine TP-Links CPEs and Ubiquitis Nanostations are awesome for around 50€.

I run the wac link 600 unit with openwrt on it, it’s ok for the money and the fact that it’s outdoor/weather resistant. It’s not in the league of the more expensive stuff but you get what you pay for

The ad at the beginning... You nailed it buddy. I think that's the only entertaining product placement I've seen on a channel that isn't Rich Rebuilds.

I was setting up WiFi at my uncles and considered one of these. I then switched and bought Unifi Flex HD... So much better! Thank god for that

A plug will definitely fit through the "gasket" at the bottom. If you just pop the gasket out, you will see that the hole in it has a slit over to the side so that you can just slide the gasket/foam over your cord, even if it has an existing plug already on the end of it. (9:00)

I had one but it was the AC1200 one and it did a little better. But it died in a month so it was kinda pointless. I switch to TpLink Omada out door access point and they perform amazing!

I have been buying old Apple Airport devices from cash converters and CEX in the UK for about £10 each , and they're fantastic value . Mac loves em and they work great , cheap enough to put in outhouses , garage and the loft . WiFi heaven everywhere baby .

The p2p unifi works great for long range p2p and local wifi accesspoint.. they are not 30$ though.. a pair is about 350$. Not cheap but I have had them struck by lightning and after changing out the cat5/6 cable function fine. (Milage may vary) .. this was on a 4.5 mile connection across a farm in NC. We even hooked up neighbors to the link up. Very cool devices

last time my cat got outside it was raining... he was an outdoor WAP. hapve a happy merry and a merry happy!

Try grounding the AP's earth\Grnd terminal to the gutter drain. It's absorbing some of the RF from the AP. Mount it to wood instead.

I use compact TP-Link CPE710 (5GHz 867Mbps) directional parabolic antenna to transfer network to a distant location. Working great over a year with full available speed 250 Mbps.

Used this same wavlink at my parents property for them. Works ok, but had some issues, like the injector overheating and melting lol.

that ad was worth it

Can we please get a booting over the network video?

The placement is bad. Metal gutter, metal overhang, and low. I used to run a wisp (gwisp) and we did testing and could get connections up to 35 miles. Not feet... Here is a few things to note. Pre 2007 hardware has higher power, the .gov limited the power by 90% due to the uptake and the wave noise... (Too many users , too few bands (3)). One of my faves was the Cisco AP's you attach a antenna cable and outdoors antenna. I still have some, the antenna cable has a 4cm dia. And a 8mm2 core. This was then attached to the ap and power dialed in. I also made antennas. (They're easy to make) and ran tests and found that it worked. However the goal back then was a 11mb trans rate. With a backhaul of 150mb (unhread of speeds back then) Antenna, are beasts to deal with, they can cancel themselves, be untunned and cause more problems than they resolve. A cheap, quick and easy WiFi would be to use the ESP32, and get some firmware. At £6 a ap. You can go out there and make a mesh, however the quality is not uniform in the WiFi power. Apparently they have resolved the issue on the new esp. but as they are tiny,a solar powered one works and they fit under light data. I think the price and look is great, however with problems like power signals, then it's not all good. It's a to good to be true. Try again moving the antenna. And bunny those antenna. And move of off of the metal and from the over hang. Don't forget the signal reflects and this cancels or confuses adding to drops and bad packets as well as ping times. And of hand, I think anywhere between the antenna poles is going to be very bad. As a side note I had a ap that was really bad when you were close to it and fantastic far away Try WiFi analysis app. That will show you where signals are best and there are other apps that you can use to plot a site. Obviously check the thing works first lol.

I ordered two Wavlink outdoor APs and after experience with one they were returned, with the other still unopened. The one I opened could only be configured over wifi and not on the ethernet port. The ethernet port was the only one with some kind of security, physical access required, but couldn’t be used to configure the device. That was enough for me to declare it not fit for purpose.

Lol that was a great ad 😂

The better signal further away is not a surprise. Many cheaper outdoor access points can overload the receiver at short ranges which leads to packet corruption.

I just set up 3 of these for a client. They were cheap and didn't preform well. For the cost they wanted to spend it kinda works. However, I feel ill he back to replace them with something that works

ive got two older (EOL) Ubiquiti Aps set up to run as a mesh with eth backhauls to both. tried tplink and a few other brands but NONE have been as good as these 2nd hand, ebay special Ubiquiti units. slowly swapping out all my switches for Ubiquiti gear as well from a hodge podge of cisco and tplink

Metal guttet piper can also block or scadder Wireless signals if a wireless device is attached to it. Another this if your wireless is in back of the house outside and you are in front of the house is can lower the speed of the wireless device being it needs to go through and around the house to get to it. I know this much from wireless testing my-self.

That last throwaway line made me wonder if you were about to go into a show and tell about your sponsor!

Just wanted to comment on this i am also a technical geek and when i got my wavlink ac600 i being so smart i dident need instructions well come to find out after testing and testing i discovered i had the 2.4 antenna on the 5g hookup and 5g on 2.4 side felt so stupid worked great after switching it around. Went from a few feet signal to 200 to 400 feet easy. Also there is a power setting once logged in to the device to turn it up or down i think there is a three power setting just food for thought. Happy testing

As a professional installer I need to point out that the antennas should be in a Y configuration. They are distorting each other right now :-).

Go up to the AC600 version and you can re flash with openwrt. Much more flexibility and security.

3:25 My ISP started storing their batteries and media converters in a box on the pole outside. The first year we lived here after our house got set up the internet went out one day. I walked out and opened their box and it was absolutely inundated with ants; a can of bug killer and canned air to clean it all out and it was all good. Every spring I go spray a liberal coat of spectricide all over the pole and wires around the box to keep insects out and we haven't had any issues since I started doing that.

This is interesting video I was thinking mount it higher on a chimney or something like that the higher the better is good

Wifi is only half-duplex. The 150mbps loss isn't due to overhead. It's due to the radios only being able to send or receive at one time. I'm a Senior Network Engineer that maintains campus networks.

Awesome job on this test, but now I'm wondering if the Poe wattage could be at choke for that AP

you could use power line if they share the same power meter the 2 buildings that is

I still had that Wavlink on my shopping list!

I would love to see you use like 2nd hand enterprise AP's (Ruckus/HPE-Aruba/Cisco/Engenius etc) I use 4 x Ruckus R510's (Unleashed firmware) and i'm amazed by how great they work, the setup/expanding network etc is a breeze. Then there's the build-in tools.... HPE-Aruba also amazing stuff and if you look around you can get them quite cheap, sure they are older but overall they are better compared to newer/more recent consumer stuff. And to give an idea about the power they got, when i drive in my street my phone/tablet/laptop picks up my wifi right away. This at a range of at least 80 meters/ 262 feet. The AP's are by no means positioned to give a good signal outside. If i do need good wifi outside i got a Engenius ENH500 (which i used to setup bridged wifi locations with largest distance being 450 meters/1476 feet.

Similar results for myself, I also tried extending a cable at the 70-ft mark and the power over ethernet would not drive the access point.

on the wave link do have to change the ip address or leave the default if to hook it up to your network using the lan setting

So I used those access points for nearly 2 years to go about 500 yards it was a different use case I use them to connect to each other when I was living off grid I'm not going to say it was a perfect experience but it did work when other wireless routers wouldn't but shot equality was definitely a problem

The height make all the difference, the best speed coverage is on top of the house or a big pole.

I have a feeling, something went wrong here, and i'm not willing to entirely blame these devices, i think you should try a few more mounting positions for it, like maybe higher up, maybe different antenna orientation, maybe away from ductwork. I'm getting better performance out of a garbage TP-Link pocket router that looks like a wall wart and is a wall wart that sits indoors in a steel reinforced concrete building while 400 other APs are also shouting along and work as jammers, that's city life for you. I have my home WiFi while waiting for a bus on the opposite side of an adjoining street separated by gardens.

It began with some manscaping and ended with "one thick head." My kind of video! LOL! :)

I wonder if trying good quality antennas might shed some light on why the range and quality of the signals were poor? The load of cheap antennas can reflect a high percentage of the signal back into the transmitter and spoil the results. PS - The deal breaker for me is the lack of a WPA-Enterprise option fed by a RADIUS system.

I expect that radio interference from all the other wireless equipment in your neighbourhood is stifling the data transmission of this device. A remote farm that is situated distant from neighbouring property would alleviate that problem. Back in the early days of wifi I was using 802.11a and 802.11b at distances of 300m from my home, admittedly at not particularly fast speeds, but there was no interference from neighbours (i.e. No one had smart phones with wifi back then). EDIT: Turn off your Ubiquiti kit and try again. Heh.

Yeah there is a reason I only buy Ubiquiti when I'm running wireless outside. But I have also bought some cheap APs that worked "okay" for personal use, But I would never install them for my commercial customers. Although Ubiquiti has made some annoying business decisions as of late, such as removing the ability to configure their Nano stations as PTMP for client devices.

What I don't understand is there's so many wifi devices out there that claim something like 300Mbps and then only have a 10/100Mbps RJ45 like this one -_- When trying to get internet to my shop on a half acre, I ultimately just got a couple SMA passive outdoor antenna's connected to a linksys wrt1900ac as the transmitter and a wrt1200ac as the receiver. It works good enough to stream YT in HD inside the shop. Back then I didn't know of Mikrotik, so later I will get their point to point antennas if need be.

Another classic Manscape ad! I think I'll buy $35 in Crux Stout instead of that WAP.

Thank you for saving my money and time. Amazon seller is using half of your video but they conveniently cut off the performance test.

Try the tp link omada outdoor access point they have two versions the more powerful version is provides wireless ac

Like the other guys have pointed out you probably have a reflection issue. Lots of expensive access points can do beam forming. Cheap ones usually don't and have a big reflector so close is probably degrading it. Lift it up so the antenna's are not shrouded in anythinf

I've had 3 different outdoor APs. I've actually had the best luck with a TPLink deco P9, Yea, its garbage as a mesh access point system, but it has an ace up its hole of being able to use EthernetOverPower, also know as PowerLine. Wifi only gets like ~12Mbps, but add in powerline, and combined it gets as much as 70Mbps(normally 30). Because this is an off building that crosses the breaker pannel, the Powerline itself isnt fast or reliable, but neither is the WiFi, so chances are that as one drops, the other will still be working. Using both together has been extremely reliable. I just wish there was a version like this with directional antennas, or external antenna ports Edit, this solution comes with alot of caveats, if you dont have good wifi signal, or dont have the off building on the same transformer, then it wont work well. The first 2 outdoor APs i tried were both POE(powered by my switches) but both sets used directional antennas on both ends, the first was a no-name chinese brand that had issues with external external antennes, the second was a name brand, IIRC TPlink or Dlink, they werent outdoor's per-se but they were meant for long ranges because they were a tube style AP with a parabolic antenna that closed around the tube. These were faster than the original setup(just a regular old AP in bridge mode) but even with purpose built directional antennas it wasnt reliable.

thanks for your review. Almost bought one of these.

Not saying this device isn’t terrible but it’s also important to consider other outside interference. No channel selection or planning was done and it’s very reasonable that the AP selected an overlapping channel (since it’s 2.4GHz only). It’s also possible that it choose a non overlapping channel, and when you got further from it, your SnR went into the gutter due to interference from the neighbor where your phone saw a better margin from your home SSID and channel.

I got different results. At 30ft 87.9 mbps in download and 75.0 mbps in upload, with a ping of 2ms. I need to be in direct line of sight though. But it's perfect for my need in my situation.

I was looking at their 600 it looks like a better unit from what I have found

Have a like not for the video but for the very original into ad! :D

Do you have any suggestions for bridging an access point wirelessly? Something that can be hung outside with an ideally with a unidirectional antenna to aim at the access point for internet access, and 1 omnidirectional to function as the access point?

I have one of thease wavlinks never had any major issues with mine. if they stop working or loose conection switch them off for more then 20 seconds then back on. the higher you place them the further the signal will go. mine is at 27 feet off the floor and i can get about 80 yards in distance. plus mine is a older model better ui on mine the wizards are crap do a manual setup if you are able everytime. as there are country settings. had mine up for over 3 year south facing in sheffield northern england.. they dont look well after a ccouple of years they turn yellow. and that mounting bracket them plastic clips break after a few times of removal and reinstallation. they are cheap though .

Buddy uses one of these to get wifi on his camper trailer (from the park provided wifi) as it works well as an external antenna. Runs to an old router to give him wifi around his camper.

MikroTik for the win. In my side of the world down here in the Southern Hemisphere l, good luck with lightning and copper cable…

More importantly why is somebody looking over your shoulder while you're setting this thing up? I mean they would've saw you type in your password anyway. I like that they give you one last chance to make sure you memorized it or wrote it down securely although there definitely should be a double confirmation comparison box and they could've added a visibility check box. I saw these things somewhere last week and I was wondering how well they worked.

My only gripe is that you mounted it to a metal reflector this might have issues with reflection of the signal ...

Metal gutter might be affecting the signal, also maybe the antennas aren't as good as they seem? Did you try any others?

Got a 7Links branded wich is exactly similar bad aswell the poe injector..

This man clearly does yard work 😂

What can I say, a good WAP is not cheap!

Would checking the 2.4GHz spectrum up first, be a better approach, while using it at an urban area?

@Craft Computing can you use iperf to test the max throughput.

I’d like to see how easy it would be to go solar for power.

Besides the metal rain gutter causing an issue as others have mentioned, your cell phone only has a tiny antenna. Sure the phone can hear the AP's transmissions, but can the AP hear the phone's ACK reply transmissions? Phones and laptops will end up having to transmit at 100% power to "be heard" by the AP. Consumer devices don't like 100% duty cycle. They will be destined to fail, sooner rather than later. Wouldn't this normally be done with a 1-to-1 directional link that exposes an AP on the extension's side? Using something like a Ubiquiti airMAX LiteBeam for the link? If not Ubiquiti, at least the same radio link concept. Those really are omnidirectional antennas trying to do a directional antenna's job.

Have you considered channel contention? Is there too much interference from your existing network?

Can you swap the antennas out and try again?

I would still go with the ubiquity gear even if it’s expensive… it’s reliable

i have the same exact wavlink and that thing broke 2 weeks into using. trash range too

2x loco ac(5ghz) does fine as a bridge for 382.96ft~..... don't know if it's able to do ap; loco m2's did and also covered the same distance

Would it be better if you wanted it for extended range to get to a workshop about 30 meters away give or take a few

I seem to be having issues with this Wavlink with mobiles auto connecting to it any tips or help on why? Thanks for your video share!

I don't mind the $100 for the unify, but I was told they would not work with a few more hundred dollars of associated infrastructure.

In Germany it is allowed to send with higher rates indoors vs outdoors. So to compare an indoor AP with outdoor is may be not fair? Have you looked into advanced settings if theres an option to change this setting?