5. Kensington WiFi Finder Plus

The Kensington WiFi Finder Plus is a bona fide keychain - it even has a hook for attaching your keys. It also includes a neat little amber flashlight.

Oh, and it’s a Wi-Fi signal detector too!

Unlike the StarTech device, though, the Kensington WiFi Finder Plus is a very simple affair that just has a series of five LEDs that indicate signal strength.

You push the button, the lights cycle - oooh, aah, flashing lights... - and then however many lights stay lit is what your signal strength is.

There is no SSID or encryption identification on this device. As was the case with the StarTech unit, the Kensington WiFi Finder locates only 802.11 b/g signals. It is also supposed to indicate if there is a Bluetooth signal present. In limited testing with a Motorola Bluetooth access point, however, the Kensington WiFi Finder did not positively identify the active signal.

In terms of identifying 802.11 b/g, signals the Kensington WiFi Finder provided results that were intermittently inconsistent. The Kensington WiFi Finder would usually identify the signal and provide the same signal strength that was indicated by the StarTech Wi-Fi Detector. The problem was that when we clicked the WiFi Finder the second or third time, the signal strength would change or sometimes not even register - even though the wireless router was in the same relative position, and no changes had been made. This same issue recurred consistently during our testing period.

For the most part, though, the WiFi Finder did correctly positively identify the wireless signals in the majority of attempts.

Without knowing how many access points are in an area, however, and whether or not they are open or closed (encrypted) the WiFi Finder is a somewhat limited device. If you just want to know if there is Wireless access in an area (for whatever reason) this device may be all that you need. If you’re looking for more information about the signals that are actually out there, you should probably be looking at a different device.