PS5 or Xbox in the TV cabinet: what it does to the Wi-Fi

Your phone gets great Wi-Fi on the sofa. The console, one metre away inside the cabinet, is in a different world.

Published · 2 min read

In this guide
  1. Why the TV unit is a bad home for a radio
  2. How to tell it's the spot
  3. Fixes that take minutes
  4. Measure the TV corner

A common puzzle: the phone on the sofa is fast, and the console a metre away crawls. The difference isn't the console. It's the box you put it in.

Why the TV unit is a bad home for a radio

  • The TV is a wall. A large screen is a sheet of metal and electronics. If the router is on the other side of it, the console sits in its shadow.
  • The cabinet adds layers. Doors, a back panel, shelves full of boxes. Glass and wood matter less than what's packed around the console.
  • It's low. Near the floor, with a sofa and people in the way, the path to the router is the worst in the room.
  • It has neighbours. A soundbar, a set-top box, a streaming stick and a hub, all transmitting within centimetres of each other.

The same reasoning applies to routers, and it's worth reading router in a cabinet with the console in mind.

How to tell it's the spot

  • The phone test. Hold your phone where the console sits, inside the unit, and compare with the sofa. If the phone gets worse there too, it's the position.
  • Door open, door closed. Run the console's own connection test with the cabinet open, then closed.
  • Downloads fine, games not. A weak, unsteady link can still download and yet stutter online: see Wi-Fi for a game console.

Fixes that take minutes

  1. Move the console out and up: on top of the unit or on an open shelf, not behind the screen.
  2. Leave space around it. Ventilation and radio want the same thing.
  3. Pick the band on purpose. Close to the router, 5 GHz. Through several walls, 2.4 GHz may be steadier: see 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz by room.
  4. Use the Ethernet port. If there is any way to get a cable to the TV corner, this ends the discussion: see powerline adapters and Ethernet over coax for homes without one.
  5. Put a mesh node near the TV and connect the console to it by cable.

Measure the TV corner

The TV corner is usually where a home's Wi-Fi is asked to do the most: console, TV, streaming box. Measure it with WiFi Heatmap, once at sofa height and once down at the cabinet. If the two results differ a lot, you've found the cause, and it cost nothing to fix.