You’ve seen it get featured on Gizmodo before, we were lucky to have been sent one of these a few weeks ago, so far, we’ve been testing it for well over a week and we thought it was time to share a few comments.

Before you read on, here’s the official description of what Wi-Fire actually does (via hField):

The Wi-Fire is a compact range-extending USB device that enables you to access a wireless Internet connection from up to 1,000 feet away–three times the range of your internal wireless adapter.

The Wi-Fire uses a powerful directional antenna, highly sensitive receiver and proprietary software to find and enhance normal Wi-Fi signals. With it you can connect wirelessly to the internet faster and with a stronger signal than an internal wireless adapter can achieve.

Plagued by dropped signals and spotty connections? The Wi-Fire allows you to surf the web, tap remote applications, download large files, stream audio and video–without squinting at a tiny screen and thumb typing on a credit card-sized keyboard. And just try performing essential online tasks on a painfully slow cell phone connection at 11kbs.

The Wi-Fire draws very little power from your laptop battery. It comes complete with everything you need to connect wirelessly to the Internet. Just install the driver software, plug in the Wi-Fire to a USB port and you’re ready to start. It can rest flat on any surface or clip securely to a laptop display or flat screen monitor.

The Wi-Fire Connection Manager reveals all available networks in the area–more than you’ve ever seen without the Wi-Fire. Simply select the strongest publicly accessible network, rotate the Wi-Fire’s 360-degree directional antenna to focus the signal and connect.

So here’s what we thought of the Wi-Fire. Firstly, it wasn’t the most convenient of all gadgets to carry around with you, unless you already use a proper laptop case / carrying bag, if you’re planning on putting it into a purse / handbag, you’d worry you might break it. Secondly, if it’s the first time, you must use the cd included to install drivers and softwares for the Wi-Fire, this applies to both PC and Mac OS users.

Despite this, if you put all that aside, what the Wi-Fire is able to offer is surprisingly impressive. It really does what it says on the tin, as soon as you get everything working, software opened up, it quickly detects and gathers (in our case) a large number of nearby WiFi networks. Though we cannot guarantee this will happen exactly the same for you if you live in the country side! We were able to discover at least an additional 15+ networks which we had never seen using our standard WiFi adapter, that made us really excited!

What was good about the software, was that it was comprehensive and showed which networks were not secured (which meant we could easily connect to), which ones had poor or good signal quality, and also the speed of that particular network you’re interested in.

After testing it for over a week with the team, we were surprised how many unsecured WiFi networks are out there. There weren’t any issues with connection instability or speeds. More importantly, with Wi-Fire, it’s possible you don’t need to sign up for your own ISP if you lived in a dense neighbourhood, because you could possibly surf the net relying on the large amount of unsecured networks Wi-Fire finds you (not recommended if you want a secure internet experience!). So with Wi-Fire, it’s a possible to save yourself some money temporaily using other people’s unsecured networks for free, especially if your own ISP has bandwidth limitations, though we wouldn’t recommend you do this permanently!

So in a short summary here are what we thought were the good points and the bad points:

Pros:

• Amazing range as claimed
• Stable connection once connected
• Reasonable speeds once connected (this also depends on the properties of the network you connect to)
• No issues with driver or software once installed and running
• Offers you the possibility of saving money (and bandwidth if applicable) on your broadband bill (though risk internet insecurity)
• Great adapter for wireless connectivity for desktops without WiFi

Cons:

• Small but bulky design
• The plastic material it’s made of feels fragile
• USB cable retractor was a pain, though it had already warned not to pull on just one side, it was easy to forget and got tangled!
• Not straight forward before use, requires installation, a tiny bit more fuss in configuration for Mac users
• Sometimes require a bit of re-orientation to find more networks

If you’re interested, we highly recommend you check out Wi-Fire’s product page at hField here…