Tenda A18 pro — AC1200 Dual-band Range Extender/AP

Buying it, and when not to

The A18 Pro is an AC1200 dual-band range extender and access point in a wall-plug body. There is no mounting, no cable and no bracket - it goes into a socket where the existing signal is still decent and rebroadcasts from there.

It is the fastest fix in this catalogue. A customer rings about one dead room, you plug an A18 Pro into a corridor socket between the router and that room, and the problem is gone in ten minutes without touching the existing network. It also has an access point mode, so if there happens to be an Ethernet point in the dead area you can run it properly off the cable instead of repeating wirelessly, which is always the better result.

Understand what a repeater takes from you: it shares airtime with the signal it is extending, so throughput in the extended area is lower, and it cannot help where the parent signal is already weak - plugged in too far away, it rebroadcasts a bad signal. If the customer has several dead areas, or wants one seamless network as they walk around, stop repeating and sell a Nova or ME mesh pack. If there is cable in the building, a ceiling access point such as the i24 or i26 gives a far better result for similar money. At forty to a carton, keep stock: this is an impulse purchase.