Poor WiFi performance

[marcusgreenhill]

Hi all,

i've had a Sony S table (16Gb, WiFi only) for a few weeks now, and i must say i'm fairly pleased with it, apart from the shocking WiFi performance. I just want to check what everyone elses experience was before i send it back !!

Basically, i've got 3x laptops, HTC phone, Blackberry all with very good WiFi performance (sat on my home WiFi network) - all of these get a decent signal through the whole house & into the back garden - no problems at all. However, the S-Tablet is pretty poor, and i need to be within about 4-5 metres of the router before it's out of range. Also, when streaming audio via Bluetooth, the signal drops every couple minutes, and i get a noticable "judder / pause" in the music playback (this is with various media players).

I've tried different channels on the WiFi router, and still get the same issue. I've recently upgraded to ICS, but the WiFi performance has alwasy been poor. WiFi is set up as 802.11b/g 54Mbps, currently on channel 8 with WEP encryption.

As for the Bluetooth connection, if i plug in wired headphones, the problem magically goes away.

I'd like to just check what everyone else's experience was.....

Many thanks,

Marcus

 

[marcusgreenhill]

just for clarity:

"As for the Bluetooth connection, if i plug in wired headphones, the problem magically goes away"
- the Bluetooth judder/pause goes away.... WiFi performance is still poor.

 

[samroid]

Hi
Please do make sure that you don't cover up the antenna for Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS.
That is shown in the user manual here look for, "Notes on Holding Your Tablet Device".
I am not sure that this will solve your problem, you might already know the location of the antenna, but this might resolve your issue, if you are using some kind of "casing" or something for protecting your device and that may be causing problems.

 

[marcusgreenhill]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply. I didn't notice the bit in the maual about covering the antennas, but thanks for the heads up.

I don't have a case or anything for it.... the problem is still there even when the tablet is in the Sony cradle....

many thanks,

Marcus

 

[jakemonO]

FWIW I echo these sentiments. A surprisingly good device with weak WiFi in some of the extremities of my house.

 

[viochemist]

While I have come to accept that bluetooth problems (it was never really designed for heavy data xfer like high quality audio) and susceptibility to wireless interference, I'm becoming annoyed with the tablet dropping WiFi when all my other devices work without issue. This has particularly started happening in the past week while streaming YouTube or MLB.TV with the bluetooth connected to my stereo. The weird thing is that when it drops the connection, it seems to think that it's still connected. Then, when you look at available signals, it sees my router perfectly clearly but refuses to connect until I turn the WiFi off and on. I don't know if this is quite the same issue that you have or not.

 

[buckyswider]

+1, unfortunately. Sitting next to my kid who is happily streaming youtube on his ipad1, and MLB At-bat keeps dropping because it loses the wifi signal. About 30 feet away from the access point. This is pretty disappointing. I hope this is some kind of firmware issue that can/will get fixed and not just a poor wifi radio.

 

[cirsory]

I have poor wifi too. I dont drop connections though. I'm about 25 feet and 2 walls from the access point.

 

[buckyswider]

Huh. does anyone have good (i.e. "normal when compared to other devices") wifi performance? I wonder if it's just an overall problem with the tablet or there are specific quality issues. I'm going to try to get Sony to replace mine to see what happens. It could be a battle, as they specifically omit "reception problems" from their warranty. But this is ridiculous. If this is how it is, I'll just return it and get something else.

 

[castillo]

I have all of the problems mentioned in this thread, and in fact joined this forum as a way of venting my frustrations on this very topic. It angers me greatly that this tablet is a 2 out of 10 for Wifi, but around an 8 our of 10 for everything else.

 

[nightowl4]

I have the same problems with Wifi also. I tried to get support from Sony and they had me send it to their Texas repair department where tgey installed another main board. wifi worked for some months then just quit. it sees the router but just saves the password and tgen says the router is out of range even when it is a few feet away. I sent the tablet back and a couple weeks later wifi quit connecting again. I'm on my third main board and it quit too just after the April 18 operating system update. I feel like I'm doing something to kill the wifi radio. My Blackberry, iPhone, notebook, netbook, Uniden tablet, blueray player, wifes Samsung Galaxy tablet and other wifi devices all have connected perfectly through all the troubles I have had with the Sony. Since all other devices connect to my routers, I get the impression the Sony wifi radio is garbage or there is some software issue with it. I'm using the Sony to type this since wifi just connected mysteriously. All else seems to work. Why does a $60 Uniden tablet wifi always connect anywhere but Sony'
s