My personal use cases for this involve mobile units I want a medium range network link to, e.g. drones, robots, etc. - would like to be able to experiment with higher power WiFi in order to get longer range than a few hundred yards.

When I say higher power I mean something between 250 and max 1000 mW ERP, i.e. max 30 dbm TX power, as defined in the FCC regulations for the ISM bands. I don't know about other countries.

After doing reams of research, I've realized there are no WiFi devices that do anything more than about 100 mW (in the real world, not on paper), unless you are talking about point to point links that have highly directional antennas, such as the TP-Link CPE series or the Ubiquiti M units.

There are innumberable Chinese outfits who claim higher power levels - 100% guaranteed to be lies. I'm looking for reputable companies.

You could theoretically build one yourself if you were interested in putting in the work, by using one of these:

Now, there is ONE company that claims to build these. Whether their products hold up to their claims or not, I do not know. It's called RadioLabs: https://www.radiolabs.com/ - but their products are rather expensive. I would rather not pay $150 for a WiFi adapter.

One would think this would be something every manufacturer of WiFi equipment would want to capitalize on, but nooooo. It's relegated to obscurity.

I do wish I had more hard data on exactly how much power various WiFi adapters actually put out, vs. the manufacturer claims. Hard to find this type of data on the internet.