Just came here to say thanks for the tip! @LoreNG I also had the same issue, and connecting 5V directly to the pins solved the issue. I ordered a bunch of those ESP32 devices and inside the hose they worked “fine” as in, they work mostly work autonomous and only occasionally they connect to the wifi and send some data to Home Assistant. Reception was not great, but it did not matter.
Now i started a project where i upgraded my outside weather center and an ESP8266 couldn’t cut it anymore Moved the code to an ESP32 and… What??? No WiFi reception in the garden? In the AP i’ve raised the maximum transmit power, disabled roaming, only enabled 2.4Ghz, and what not. In the end everybody and his mother has WiFi reception in the garden. I can almost FEEL the WiFi in the garden… but somehow this ESP32 in a small plasitc waterproof box couldn’t connect.
Indeed, connecting 5V to the VIN and GND pins solved the issue, with loads of dBa to spare. Restoring old config of outside AP now 