With San Francisco's world-famous Lombard Street – the so-called curviest street in the world – a block away and Alcatraz resplendent in the glow of a late afternoon sun, it was only natural that one of the nearest available Wi-Fi networks was named "Rice-a-Roni."
Until recently, intrepid wireless internet hunters would never have known the name of any of the myriad 802.11 signals pouring from these tony apartment buildings without opening their laptops. That's because none of the handheld devices on the market that indicate the presence and strength of available Wi-Fi signals could detect network names.
But with the release of Digital Hotspotter from Canary Wireless, all that has changed. Wardrivers can now palm a detector that not only spots Wi-Fi networks and details their signal strength, but reveals the name of each available network. Even better, the Digital Hotspotter is the first detector to reveal the most important piece of information of all: whether a network is encrypted.
Because of that feature, which saves you from turning on a computer only to find that all nearby signals are inaccessible without a password, the $50 Digital Hotspotter has jumped instantly to the head of the line of the roster of Wi-Fi detectors on the market.
The device also differentiates, names and indicates the channel number of each available signal. But it has some drawbacks.
First and foremost, the Digital Hotspotter costs twice as much as any in the rest of the pack. And, while some of its competitors are designed to fit on a keychain, the inch-thick Digital Hotspotter measures roughly 2 by 2.5 inches and is too big to be carried haphazardly in a pants pocket.
Those willing to spend only around $25 on a Wi-Fi detector have several choices. Wired News tested three of them, all of which (like the Digital Hotspotter) filter out non-Wi-Fi 2.4-GHz signals like those from microwave ovens and cordless phones: Chrysalis' WiFi Seeker, Hawking Technology's WiFi Locator and Kensington's WiFi Finder Plus.
In Wired News' tests of these detectors, the WiFi Seeker performed with the most consistency. It seemed to most often report a signal – an LED scale of four lights – that corresponded to that received by a laptop, and did so at what seemed like the farthest distance. Furthermore, it has the advantage of being the smallest and lightest detector on the market and one that, at 2.25 by 1.25 by 0.5 inches, could easily fit on a keychain. Holding down the detection button and moving the device around causes it to instantly update its report of the signal strength depending on the direction and distance of the signal.
Kensington's WiFi Finder Plus is the company's second foray into the detector market. By all accounts, though Kensington was a pioneer in the market, its original WiFi Finder didn't perform very well. The WiFi Finder Plus has some nice features, such as a built-in LED flashlight and a thin, compact form factor – 2.5 by 1.75 by 0.5 inches – that fits fairly easily onto a keychain. It also is the only detector on the market that can detect the presence of a nearby Bluetooth device.
But the WiFi Finder Plus suffered in Wired News' tests by frequently being at odds with the results reported by its competitors. Sometimes, it needed to be much closer to an access point than any of the other detectors, and occasionally it didn't pick up a signal when others did. However, that may have been useful – the other detectors sometimes reported signals to which neither a PC nor a Mac laptop could connect.
More frustrating was Hawking Technology's WiFi Locator. Designed with the clamshell look and feel of a mobile phone, the WiFi Locator seemed almost schizophrenic. When a user held down its Locate button and stayed still, it often offered up a constantly changing report of signal strength and tended to report signals of a higher strength that could not be connected to by a laptop. Combined with its large form factor – 2.5 by 3.5 inches and an inch thick – the largest of the $25 group, the WiFi Locator comes in last in Wired News' test.
Regardless of which detector you choose, you'll always be able to tell when a Wi-Fi signal is close at hand. And with the push provided by the Digital Hotspot's reporting of networks' encryption status, it seems evident the next generation of its competitors will incorporate such a feature as well. For now though, the choice boils down to both a cost issue and one of size.
