Halo Long Range Marine & RV Wi-Fi Extender System

I want to do a series of reviews on this Halo as I work it into my RV system. This is review 1Pros: Very well made, not a cheap part on the unit anywhere, all very solid, yet lite.Including the Halo and my home WiFi I was picking up 8 WiFi devices from my neighborhood. After configuring the device I put it behind theblinds in my living room and did the scan, it found 47 WiFi devices after that. So far so good.Cons: The Cat 5e cable and power cable are integrated into one cable, if you accidentally break the tab on the Cat5e cable you may be in trouble.There is no protective boot to help keep the tab from breaking, and it certainly can be easily done if you are not careful when assembling theunit. RedPort really should address that. Others have stated the dramatic drop in speed going through this device, I have found this to betrue. In the firmware of the device it shows I should be getting from 65 Mbps to 75 Mbps on my 125 Mbps home internet. But this unit dropsthe speed all the way down to 15 Mbps, thats not good.My next step will be the firmware update, if any, and then it will be tested at the RV.**Review 2*** I basically leaned the antenna against the AC unit on the roof of the camper and ran the cable through the window for this test, after scanning for wifi's and finding a free Walmart wifi, I connected to it. Internet was very slow as in 300Kbps, and signal was 40%, but the real surprise came when I found out the Walmart was 4.62 miles away from me in a straight line. So distance does not appear to be a problem with this unit. I was up on a hill that allowed me to survey quite a bit of the area around me and the altitude may have helped me.

This product never worked for me. I've been on the road for 2 years now with this mounted on top of my van and not once did it make any network usable, despite my many, may attempts. First, there is a LOT of networks this product isn't compatible with- many wifi networks this simply won't connect to. Furthermore, the rare times it does connect, it typically fails to load any authentication page (common in marinas, hotels and various public wifis). Worst of all, the few times the repeater "worked", speeds were pretty much unusable, most often below what you'd call 3g speeds and I was better off just staying closer to the source than trying to make this improve anything.The advertised range is very misleading too (and honestly just a lie), this often fails within a quarter mile with no obstacle in between, I've never seen this reach even a mile in best conditions.On top of all this, I found customer service deceitful. After sending back my product as deficient, they simply provided me with screenshots that they got my antenna to work (probably on their own network which seems to work miraculously better than every other network in the country for the following 24 months) and refused me a refund because the purchase was older than 30 days.I really don't understand where all the good reviews come from. I'm a tech guy, I know a thing or two about how wifi works and how to troubleshoot things for myself- I can't explain why anyone would see any substantial improvement from this or be remotely happy about this product. Either the company lied to me about the performance of my unit or there's a widespread placebo effect in regards to how this really works for people. Regardless, it seems clear that you're better off staying away from this product altogether.

UPDATE: wow it didn’t take long to not work. I called the company and they had me mail it back when I told them it stopped working. They sent it back to me and said it was working. I got it back and it DID NOT work. I asked if the ac cord wasn’t working and could they send me a new one. Never heard back. So I spent a lot of money for 2 months of it working. The one I purchased for the trailer was working when we put it in storage. We will see soon enough.I researched wifi extenders and this Halo had the best rating and a very good price. I purchased one for our boat (34 foot) because the marinas always say they have WIFI but it is terrible. We installed this product and went on our first trip. When I pulled up the marina WIFI I couldn't see it on my phone. When I went to the laptop where I set it up I connected right away to the marina WIFI with full bars. All of us were using it without any lag. We watched Netflix and Hulu without any buffering. It is so amazing. The only trouble we had was setting up the software. Not very user friendly. I had to hire a tech guy to finish helping me. We loved this so much that we purchased a second unit for our travel trailer. So far it has worked like a charm. Highly recommend it. I gave it 4 stars because the software setup. But the Halo itself is amazing.

I just returned from a month long RV trek to Wyoming and back. This worked wonderfully. There were many RV parks where I had no WiFi showing on my computer and with this, I had very usable WiFi. For those not familiar with routers and Wifi or who are computer illiterate, this may be a problem to understand how to use it. For me, it could not be better. If you have a problem you will find the above handle on several RV sites. I will be glad to help. The hardest part of set up is finding a way to get the wire to the roof. I cut the wire and installed a water persistent RJ 45 plug on the out side of the camper under the door awning. That way every thing inside is permanent mounted but out side can be removed easily for travel. one solution for out side is this;; https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000K2K4V8/ref=cm_cr_ryp_prd_ttl_sol_7Even though I bought the Shakespeare mount, I ended up simply attaching a retractable 3/4 inch pole to the ladder and slipping the antenna over the pole. easy up easy down. This even works for Lowes and Walmart in the parking lots. Also McDonalds.