Why is my Wi-Fi slow? A guided way to find out
One verdict word, one sentence, and every check that could not run named.
Pingo answers this with Guided diagnose. You pick a symptom from a fixed list of seven, and it runs only the checks that fit that symptom, walking the network out from the phone. It then leads with one verdict word and one plain sentence, and puts the measurements behind them one tap away.
The important part is the fifth possible answer. If any check produced no evidence, the run reports Partly checked rather than a pass, even when everything that did run came back clean. The app measures; it does not repair anything, and it will not fill an unmeasured gap with a green result.
Steps in Pingo
- Open the Tools tab, then the Diagnose group, then Guided diagnose. The What’s wrong? card on Home opens the same screen.
- Under WHAT’S WRONG? pick Internet is slow or keeps dropping. The list of seven symptoms is the whole of the input; there is nothing to type.
- Tap RUN DIAGNOSE.
- The header chip reads ANALYSING while it reasons and RUNNING with the step count while it steps, beside a live ELAPSED clock. The button reads CANCEL while the run is in flight.
- When it finishes, the header is replaced by the answer: one verdict word on a chip, one sentence in the largest type on the screen, and at most two NEXT STEPS.
- Tap DETAILS, which starts closed on every run, for WHAT WE FOUND, WHAT WE COULDN’T CHECK, WHAT WE MEASURED, CHECKS RUN and COMPARE WITH THE LAST RUN.
The five words a run can answer with
- PROBLEM FOUND, in red. A check failed.
- WORTH A LOOK, in amber. Something came back worth noting.
- PARTLY CHECKED, hatched and given no colour at all, because nothing has been established either way.
- ALL CLEAR, in mint. Nothing failed, nothing warned, nothing went unchecked, and at least one real health check passed.
- WHAT WE SAW, in neutral steel, for a run that only counted things. Counting is not a check that could pass or fail, so such a run is never an all clear.
What Partly checked means
It means part of the run produced no evidence. A step that was skipped, was unavailable, errored or was cancelled will do it, and so will a question the check itself declares it does not test. The coverage card names each one: the check title in quotes, the reason in brackets, then the refusal that a check which could not run is neither a pass nor a fail, and that those are skipped, not cleared.
Two of the seven symptoms always answer this way, by design. Wi-Fi is weak or won’t stay connected declares that it cannot test whether the Wi-Fi drops over time, because a run of a second or two reports the link as it is at that moment. Check for obvious security risks declares that it tested one security question only, so nothing in it is a statement about any other kind of risk. A run of either in which every check passes still answers Partly checked.
Stopping a run yourself produces no verdict at all. The screen says you stopped it before it finished, so it is not a result for this network, and that what is below is only the checks that had already answered.
What Pingo can and cannot tell you here
What it can tell you
- Run only the checks that fit the symptom you picked, and name every one of them.
- Lead with one verdict word and one sentence, with a confidence band where a rule fired.
- Show the figures it measured, each under a plain-English label, grouped by the check that produced it.
- Compare this run against the last run of the same check on the same network, when there is one to compare with.
What it cannot
- Repair, speed up or change anything. It measures and reports.
- Claim certainty. The confidence bar has a fourth segment that never fills.
- Watch long enough to catch an intermittent drop-out. It says so rather than passing the question.
- See past a VPN tunnel. It can tell you a tunnel is up, not what goes through it, and it says so on the reading.
Related tools
Speed test, Bufferbloat test, Ping and traceroute, DNS timing and the rest of the diagnose group are on the tools page.