I’ve been wanting to extend our Wi-Fi coverage outside of our house to reach our yard beyond the garage, so today I thought I’d do a setup and review of Amazon’s #1 best seller in the repeater category – this Netgear EX3700 Wi-Fi range extender to see if it can help boost our Wi-Fi signal enough and reach our yard. Check out the video below.
We have a bit of a weird layout in our yard with a detached garage in between our house and fenced in yard area. Typically it’s hard to get Wi-Fi signal out that far, so I thought It’d be a good test of the EX3700, which is listed at $47 but usually sells for around $25 on Amazon.
Amazon has a few Netgear range extenders all stacked up on the same page, and this one is the second cheapest – offering up to 1000 square feet of coverage, support for 15 devices and speeds of 750mbps.
Netgear EX3700 Video
Setup
In the quick start guide, Netgear demonstrates two different ways to connect the extender to the main router using WPS (Wi-Fi protected Setup) or connect with Web Browser Setup. Using WPS is the fastest and easiest, and is the way that I chose to set it up.
To get setup with WPS, plug in the extender into an outlet close to your main router. Once the power LED is green, press the WPS button on the extender, then within two minutes, press the WPS button on the main router. The WPS LED light on the extender should light up once connected then the router button turns green.
I plugged it into an outlet in the same room as my router, but had to move it even closer to get WPS to connect.
Performance
Once setup, I wanted to find the best place to get a signal out to the yard. I tried a few different locations, but needed to find something with a good enough connection to my router and also as close as possible to the yard.
I ended up placing it in the window of my garage with some double sided tape… doesn’t look great, but it was the only place I could find to get a usable connection to the main router, and a provide a connection that reaches out to where I wanted.
I don’t have the fastest internet – I get about 37mbps down, and with the EX3700 placed here, I can connect from the far side of my garage and get around 5-8mbps down… so not great. BUT, it’s better than what I had before – which was no connection, for $25. Netgear says the EX3700 should provide about 1,000 square feet of coverage so I am pushing the limits of that pretty heavily to get to the far side of my garage.
So, for $25, the best seller EX3700 is easy to setup and definitely extends an existing network. It has its limits – which I feel like I’m reaching, but I also won’t be doing any heavy work while outside. There are lots of options for more powerful extenders, like the other Netgear extenders listed on the same page, but I thought this would be a good test for the EX3700.
Buy the Netgear EX3700 on Amazon
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