Transformer Prime Wifi...Good or bad?

**apuckett83** · 01-16-2012, 06:01 PM

First let me start by saying that I have very little knowledge about Tablets/Wifi. I received my Prime today and the Wifi has gone from half to full. When looking at the Mbps it ranges from 36mbps to 46mbps when sitting in my living room. My router is about 30 feet away in another room. Should I be worried about this and return the tablet?

Thanks

**bbalz** · 01-17-2012, 11:35 AM

I haven't had solid wifi performance in the 3 primes that I've tried. I've exchanged it to see if I just had a bad few... there were some other issues with them too but the wifi seems to be poor.

Asus customer support allows you to RMA it back to get it fixed apparently.

**stikfigure16** · 01-17-2012, 03:28 PM

my prime almost always has 2/4 bars. But I can almost always play onlive(you have to have a good connection to play on live). so as long as my family doesn't have too many other devices connect to wifi then the wifi works fine.

**dr12487** · 01-17-2012, 04:16 PM

I got my Prime last week, and I've had zero wifi issues. I've lost connection a few times, and I thought it was the Prime. Turns out it was my router.

Since then, things have been great. I have no complaints.

**bbalz** · 01-17-2012, 05:01 PM

Man, I must have the worst luck ever... tried 3 of them and all had probably 1/4 of the performance for speeds on my network of any other device.

Glad for those that got good devices.

**apuckett83** · 01-17-2012, 11:19 PM

Originally Posted by bbalz

I haven't had solid wifi performance in the 3 primes that I've tried. I've exchanged it to see if I just had a bad few... there were some other issues with them too but the wifi seems to be poor.

Asus customer support allows you to RMA it back to get it fixed apparently.

I called ASUS and they told me to do the hard reset which I did but Im still having the wifi issues. My PRIME now goes from 54 to 16 to 48. ASUS told me that I would need to send it back if the hard reset didnt work. I hate to do that though...ug

**apuckett83** · 01-17-2012, 11:20 PM

Originally Posted by bbalz

I haven't had solid wifi performance in the 3 primes that I've tried. I've exchanged it to see if I just had a bad few... there were some other issues with them too but the wifi seems to be poor.

Asus customer support allows you to RMA it back to get it fixed apparently.

What other issues did you have? I want to make sure to check everything before my return period is up.

**bbalz** · 01-17-2012, 11:29 PM

Originally Posted by apuckett83

What other issues did you have? I want to make sure to check everything before my return period is up.

Bad wifi in all of the 3... comparing to the 3 other device on my wifi.

Black lines randomly popping up on the screen when using it (this occurred with 1)

When I boot up or have a dark screen, I could see 2-3 points of back light bleeding through on 2 of the 3 tablets. One was on the top, the other was on the right side. (Lots of people just deal with this, it's not a game breaker but for me it's not something I want to deal with after spending $500)

One of them would freeze up in applications and reboot constantly.

**Xroid** · 01-18-2012, 08:15 AM

I found that after I turn off my gps radio my download speed increases considerably.
I get under 2mbs downloads with gps radio on, and over 10mbs downloads with it off.
I was having issues streaming Netflix, now it plays great with no stops to buffer.
Now if the signal strength was stronger I would really be satisfied with my Prime.
Hope this helps some of you that are experiancing slow download speeds.

**ilostmypistons** · 01-18-2012, 08:33 AM

Changing the band and channel on the router has made a huge difference in performace for me. Mine likes G band on channel 1(low frequency) and it also works great for my SGII

**kev83202** · 01-18-2012, 09:53 AM

Got mine yesterday, Wifi works fine I have the same download speed in my basement as upstairs next to the router. My router is set to N channel 9

**whitenack** · 01-19-2012, 08:31 AM

I have no problems with wifi speed or strength. EDIT: Although, I am comparing it to my HTC Aria, so it may be that they are both weak and I don't know any better.

My problem is that the wifi connection seems drop after a few hours of idle time. Even when I don't lose my wifi connection, I lose my internet connection. I randomly check my prime during the day and see that it is not connected. Turning off/on the wifi fixes it.

**rew001** · 01-19-2012, 08:36 AM

No real problems on mine. I've had it a couple weeks. Wifi is weaker than my old Droid X was, but it still has a solid connection. There was an OTA yesterday. I've heard it's mostly for a GPS issue (that I haven't seen personally). But some are saying it boosts wifi performance. No official fix list on it as of yet, though.

**scottysize** · 01-19-2012, 08:32 PM

Put me down as a NOT having problems.

I've got both the Prime and older Transformer. I've been running Wifi Analyzer on both and the signal's the same no matter where I am in the house, so mine is not having Wifi issues. Or if I am having issues, I'm having it with both Transformers.

**Cobravision** · 01-20-2012, 12:43 PM

I haven't problems with wifi, although it seems to have gotten stronger with each update.

**Schafudd** · 01-25-2012, 11:30 AM

Got my Prime on Monday from Best Buy.

Out of the box before any updates 2.1mps Down, After all firmware and ICS update 18-21mps Down.

Roadrunner Turbo, Wireless N from a Linksys E3000 router.

Same numbers as my wife's Ipad2 sitting next to it. I have no worries about it.

**jfarinella** · 01-25-2012, 11:54 AM

I spent a week reading every blog, forum and review I could find on tablets so I could make the most informed decision possible. I got my Prime a few days ago and with a little trepadation I opened it up and hooked it up to my wifi. I choose not to look for specifics about the performance but I wanted to see how it performed during every day use. I don't see what the complaints are all about. My internet connection works just fine for everything I need it for - surfing, email, video conf., downloading movies and uploading files to my cloud storage. I wonder how much of the wifi problems that people are complaining about have to do with a number and not the fact that it just works. To me a wifi problem is one where the Prime would take twice as long to download a file as a notebook sitting next to it.

Maybe I got lucky. All I know is I don't care what download or upload speed I am actually getting - as long as it works and I'm not tearing my hair out I say "who cares".

Also, I thought that if you have a 2M/7M cable connection to the internet, 18M wifi connection speeds don't matter. The wireless signal isn't the bottleneck it's the connection to the internet anyway.

Just my 2 cents.

signed A Happy Transformer Prime owner

**Floridadomer** · 01-25-2012, 01:24 PM

Originally Posted by ilostmypistons

Changing the band and channel on the router has made a huge difference in performace for me. Mine likes G band on channel 1(low frequency) and it also works great for my SGII

I read where someone else said this. I have a wireless router and know how to get into the console but don't understand how to do what you are saying. I am sure I can Google it but do you have any suggestions on where to find basic instructions that might not go over my head? If I change it to G then won't that effect my laptop that is using N?

**Kmcferrin** · 01-25-2012, 03:02 PM

Originally Posted by jfarinella

Maybe I got lucky. All I know is I don't care what download or upload speed I am actually getting - as long as it works and I'm not tearing my hair out I say "who cares".

Also, I thought that if you have a 2M/7M cable connection to the internet, 18M wifi connection speeds don't matter. The wireless signal isn't the bottleneck it's the connection to the internet anyway.

While I appreciate your viewpoint, it could very easily conceal other issues with the device. Sure, I may only have a 7Mbps Internet connection at home, but my physical network is 1Gbps all the way and my wifi is 54Mbps. If I am accessing resources on my internal network (streaming music, movies, reading docs, etc), then I want to be able to leverage that speed.

Also, the issue that was generally reported wasn't so much that the wifi connections were slower than they should be, but that the signal strength is poor (which leads to slower connections). The other half of that issue is that poor signal strength results in reduced range, i.e., "it works when I'm in the same room with my wifi access point but if I go downstairs I can't connect" types of issues.

One other very important thought about wifi connection speeds: wifi is shared media, much like ethernet hubs that we used back in the day. Because of that, you only get to use a slice of the wifi capacity in your area, so if you have many wifi devices or are in a building/area with many wifi devices you will get worse wifi performance, even if everyone is using their own access point/wifi router. If you're having issues with wifi speeds at home I would recommend that you use a tool like WiFi Manager (Android) or NetStumbler (Windows) to find a channel with less interference and set your AP/router to use it instead. Channels 1, 6, and 11 don't overlap with each other, so I would pick the one of those that has the least competition. Your WiFi devices will use scan all channels and use whatever the AP/router is using, but you have to tell your AP/router which channel to use (most default to 6). That won't help you much in public areas, but it might help at home.

All that said, it sounds like some of the later patches seem to be improving issues. I'm guessing that they are adding something in software to compensate for the signal quality/strength, much like Google/Samsung had to do with the LTE Galaxy Nexus after it was released. I'm actually picking my TP up on the way home from work this evening, so I'll be sure to give it a thorough once-over to check signal strength all over my house both before and after all updates.

**jrz5024** · 01-25-2012, 03:20 PM

Just picked up my Prime. Speeds on my work's wifi are around 5Mbps up / 5 down, but my work has very slow wifi. Seems like it picks up a good signal though, and I'm nowhere near the router. Consistently 3 bars and seems strong. Will run some more tests tonight when I get home.

**DeadlyDa** · 01-25-2012, 05:02 PM

Had my Prime for 2+ weeks, and have used WiFi in quite a few places here in NYC. Works great for me...so does GPS.

Mind you, I'm not saying others are misstating things when they say they have issues, clearly some do. However my T-Prime has as good or better Wifi capabilities than either my work notebook (Dell), my Asus G53W gaming notebook, or my HTC HD2 (running CM7).

Maybe I'm just lucky? I've got the latest OTA update (9.4.2.11), if that matters.

**RoscoeDpG** · 01-25-2012, 05:11 PM

cant complain speeds are great even at a short distance and only prob i have had is when idle sometimes the wifi drops out but not always, will go days fine and one day will just disconnect but i got toggle on screen and back on with no prob so not huge deal for me

**eubanksja** · 01-25-2012, 05:28 PM

I tested the wifi strength of my TP and my Bionic. Both are very close in signal strength. I love my prime, no issues to date.

**Relddem** · 01-25-2012, 05:41 PM

I've had mine since Christmas, pretty sure it was before any major OTAs. The first day or two I had some internet connection drops similar to what Whitenack describes above--I wouldn't lose wifi but the internet connection would drop and the fix was just switching wifi on and off. That seemed to get fixed with the first OTA (pre-ICS).

I also Kmcferrin makes a good point--there's a difference between signal strength and speed. The signal strength indicator on my prime also did tend to seem a bit low at first, but I've never had a problem with it stuttering too much on pageloads or losing the signal altogether. In my room, where I use it most frequently, is the furthest point in my house from a wireless source (we have a repeater in the middle of the house upstairs, so I get great signal throughout the upstairs even though the router is downstairs in the front of the house). I would generally get 1-2 bars on the signal strength indicator before ICS and since the more recent OTAs I'm usually at 2-3 bars, but I haven't noticed any significant difference in performance. For reference, my computer's signal strength indicator is always strong, but my Xbox (which is a few feet away from my computer, further from the router, and stuffed in a corner behind my TV) tends to lose the signal occasionally (to the point where if I was an online gamer I would be forced to move it, but its fine for getting updates and DLCs and even streaming video).

**WallaceD** · 01-25-2012, 06:00 PM

I will second what eubanksja just said. I compared my Wi-Fi signal (using Open Signal Maps) on both my Prime and my Bionic. They are what I would term "very similar" in strength.

Although the signal strength meter on my Prime rarely reads anything other than two bars, I have no Wi-Fi issues.

Note that I have NOT upgraded to ICS. I'm running the stock Honeycomb 2.6.36.3 kernel. (I did install one firmware update prior to ICS, but that's it.)