MBP Early 2008 - the king of wifi reception?

[chaosbunny]

As I've posted occasionally I mainly use my 13" Mid 2010 MacBook to watch stuff with my daughter. However, since her room is at the edge of our flat it has not the best wifi reception. The old MacBook, my 2019 MacBook Pro, my iPhone and my wifes iPad both get only 1 bar most of the time, sometimes the connection drops. Yesterday I replaced the battery in my MacBook and let it charge, so I took my 15" Early 2008 MacBook Pro that's normally our entertainment center in the living room to my daughters room for the first time. To my surprise it had solid 3 bars watching 45 minutes of My Little Pony.

Now I'm curious if this was just a coincidence or if some of you have experienced similar behaviour with your machines.

 

[B S Magnet]

As I've posted occasionally I mainly use my 13" Mid 2010 MacBook to watch stuff with my daughter. However, since her room is at the edge of our flat it has not the best wifi reception. The old MacBook, my 2019 MacBook Pro, my iPhone and my wifes iPad both get only 1 bar most of the time, sometimes the connection drops. Yesterday I replaced the battery in my MacBook and let it charge, so I took my 15" Early 2008 MacBook Pro that's normally our entertainment center in the living room to my daughters room for the first time. To my surprise it had solid 3 bars watching 45 minutes of My Little Pony.

Now I'm curious if this was just a coincidence or if some of you have experienced similar behaviour with your machines.

I find my early 2008 MBP (the 17-inch) has more of a propensity than my other Macs to drop to the 2.4GHz band from 5GHz more often when on the edge of proximal range. The other Macs (namely, my A1278 and A1418) will stick with 5GHz (the former) and 802.11ac (the latter) even when the reception is borderline.

Formally, though, I‘ve never run reception tests on these to definitively determine whether this is a function of the antennae, the wifi card, or some other factor, but with the 2008, I find I have to briefly power off Airport whenever I see it dropping to the 2.4GHz band for reception. When it re-connects, it nearly always switches back to the 5GHz band and stays there.

 

[rampancy]

Something I've noticed with my A1226, A1211 and A1151 MacBook Pros is that they'll vary between 3-4 bars of reception, while my A1181 and A1278 plastic MacBooks usually stay at a constant 4 bars. I've also noticed that my A1226 doesn't seem to pick up 5 Ghz networks when at far distances (as @B S Magnet notes) compared to my A1278 MacBook, but I've chalked that up more to the limitations of my own WiFi setup than anything else.

Edit: I'd also add that due to the notorious issues around the GeForce 8600m GT, WiFi reception is the least of my worries with Late-2007/Early-2008 MacBook Pros.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

My office is farthest away from our router which is positioned centrally in the house. My A1278 has good connectivity on both my 2.4 legacy network as well as my 5g network. Any hiccups I experience I apply to my provider, network and router, not so much the macs themselves. The Intel macs are pretty solid out of the box. Now my PPC macs - aside from my PMG5, most of those macs require a PCI wireless card to achieve good connectivity as the standard AP cards they have don't cut the mustard at this distance.

 

[MacFoxG4]

My 2006 MBP is really good with staying connected to the Wi-Fi. My 2012 MBP is the same way as long as I use a supported OS. My M2 Mini, on the other hand, is a bit more finicky when it comes to the Wi-Fi and my PS4 and Smart TV is even more finicky than that.

 

[theMarble]

Something I've noticed with my A1226, A1211 and A1151 MacBook Pros is that they'll vary between 3-4 bars of reception, while my A1181 and A1278 plastic MacBooks usually stay at a constant 4 bars. I've also noticed that my A1226 doesn't seem to pick up 5 Ghz networks when at far distances (as @B S Magnet notes) compared to my A1278 MacBook, but I've chalked that up more to the limitations of my own WiFi setup than anything else.

I've had that experience as well. Typically, my A1278 and A1342 have been able to get a stable 4-5 bars depending on how close they are to the router, however my A1212 and A1176 ('07 Mini) on average get only 4 bars, sometimes 3.

Strangely, my iMac G4 with its older AirPort Extreme card can always maintain a stable 5 bars. It can't connect to 5GHz networks though, as the card doesn't support 802.11a.