JCG Wi-Fi Repeater Review!

If you are anything like me then you probably had a Wi-Fi dead spot in your house. Mine is due to solid walls with a cement layer in between. So my friends over at JCG sent me their Wi-Fi repeater Model number JWA-N8002.

Now my walls are kind of thick but I still get a some signal through the walls. I will talk more about that in a few.

When you get the JCB Wi-Fi Repeater home it resembles a small wall socket or power plug in. You can see what it looks like in the next few pictures and you will also see the packaging.

On the back you can see it complies with Triple E standards. It also shows you that it can be used for a repeater or a Wi-Fi router. Both options are nice to have.
You have on the device an Ethernet port so you can plug it strait into your modem. You can see this port in the next picture.

You can also see in the picture above what seem to be 3 lines and  dot. These light up when you plug them it showing there a Wi-Fi single. Now you can also see at the bottom of that picture is a button.  This button is a WPS button so you can flash connect to your router or modem. What you don’t see in the above picture is the reset button. I will post a picture of that button next.

The JWA-N8002 is a little bit larger then you would think so you may want to make sure you have space in the wall plug your plugging it into.

As you can see in the above picture I tested it out in the living room to see how much room it takes up. Unfortunately it takes up both plugs no matter which way you plug it in.

I am lucky because this is not where I’m leaving it. I moved it to the back hallway about 75 feet away.

Now my signal through Wi-Fi was rather bad before. It took so long to load pages before that it would drive my wife crazy. In the next picture I will show you the before signal strength.

In the picture you can tell my Braga1 Signal is rather week only one dot and a bar showing. Before I get in to showing you the signal after the repeater I want to walk you threw the install and software.

You will need to plug it in and grab the signal from the device. The device name is the model number JWA-N8002. Once you find it you connect the device by inputting the passphrase for 12345678. Now this password will be change once you connect to the device. Once this is done you will need to open a web browser and in put http://192.168.10.1 . Once that is done a box will pop up like in the next picture.

You will  need to insert the preset password and user name which is admin. This two can be changed once you enter the software page.

Now that you have that entered you will see the software page. Like in the next few pictures.

Like I said it can be used as a router or a repeater. You have a few places to look through and change stuff.  Now since I used this as a repeater and not a router I will show you the next few pages.

I clicked on repeater which brings you to this page above. Now you will need to click the site survey button to get the Wi-Fi signals that are in the house. Now did black out one box due to privacy ( haha). No the box is where your password will go coming up. In the next picture you will see the choices of signals in the house.

Like before I will be using braga1 so that is where I would click the circle and mark it and press save.  Once that is done this is where it makes you input your new password. Once that is done you will get a page like this next picture.

Now you will need to let that finish. Once that is done you will go back down and search your Wifi signals.

You can see the difference between braga1 and braga1-ext which is the repeater and the repeater is much farther away from the modem.

Now I did go in and change my channels on my modem so I was on a different band then the other signals in the house . I do suggest you try that also.

Once thing I tested before and after was my speeds . In the next few pictures you can see the before speeds and after.

Before!

As you can tell I cant even test it without the repeater the signal is so slow.

After!

Once it is connected I was able to test and get 20 Mbps download speeds. The JWA-N8002 definitely helped get my signal to my room. Now it is not as strong as  it would be with a Ethernet cord but hey you can’t complain if your getting the signal now.

Like I said before change the channel of your signal. Because I keep having my signal drop from the repeater before hand. Once I changed to a different channel signal I had no issues. Now I would suggest channel 1,6, or 11. Since most people in complexes had it on auto channel preset from the cable company. Now I’m sure you guys may have some other suggestion and we would love to hear them so please leave yours in the comments below.

When all is said and done the JCG JWA-N8002 Wi-Fi repeater works rather well in my situation. I wont say it is for every one but it worked for me. I will be honest though I would rather be hooking Ethernet cord up to that PC but if you in a bind and cant run one to that computer this works rather well.

I give the JWA-N8002 a 4 star rating. Now I only marked it down like this since the since and placement takes up the hole plug.

Disclaimer: JCG sent me the JWA-N8002 Repeater to do a honest review on. all opinions are mine and mine alone