Wifi dongle for tv with in built wifi? (Luxor 24 inch smart TV)

[Guybrush90]

Hello

My daughter has a Luxor 24 inch smart TV (cheap and cheerful) but the wifi receiver seems very poor compared to other TV's in the house - giving 1 bar regularly and causing buffering issues.

If I bought a strong wifi dongle, would the TV recognise it/ would it work at all considering there is one internally already? How would it know to prioritise the one I plug in?

If not I imagine I will have to go down the powerline route, or upgrade router, as I cant move the router?

Thanks in advance

 

[mike7]

If the wi-fi signal in your home is good enough then an Amazon Firestick should do the trick. Plug it directly into an unused HDMI socket on the TV, select it in the menu and set the Firestick up linking it to your wi-fi. There is nothing to judge whether anything is 'strong' or not. Do you have any other issues with Wi-fi in your home using other devices, like a phone or tablet? If the wi-fi reception is consistently poor then you need to install some way of boosting it.

 

[EndlessWaves]

Very few, if any, wi-fi dongles will provide drivers for a TV OS - and most TV OSs don't have an easy way of installing them.

The only way it's likely to work is if the platform is designed to take an external dongle and yours happens to be essentially the same model.

A surer bet is to go for something that can act as a wi-fi bridge instead, which bridges wi-fi and ethernet parts of the network. You connect it to the router's wi-fi access point and plug the TV into it via the ethernet port.

At the lower price range wi-fi bridges tend not to be dedicated devices but a function available on devices with a wi-fi radio and an ethernet port, like range extenders.

 

[Guybrush90]

Thank you. Looks like it will have to be a more powerful router/ range extender or go down the Fire stick route.

Thanks for the advice

 

[EndlessWaves]

Thank you. Looks like it will have to be a more powerful router/ range extender or go down the Fire stick route.

All routers transmit at the same power (other than travel routers).

Although if the buffering is lack of speed rather than drop-outs then newer models do often manage to maintain better speeds at the same signal strength.