USB Wifi For Desktop Computer?

Pauly,

Router first
Your N300 wifi router is theoretically capable of 300Mbps [2.4GHz, 5GHz].
- If you are currently happy with the speed of your wifi connections then stick with it.
- If you are not currently happy with the speed of your wifi connections then assume, for the purposes of the current decision that you will eventually upgrade to a dual-band [2.4GHz & 5GHz] ac router with a speed of 1200Mbps. You might well not bother upgrading to anything less than what is the current "best" at any time in order to extend the period before any further upgrades later on.

WiFi adapter
- If you are sticking with the same router then note that that "is it rubbish?" adapter is N150 so could only achieve half the speed of the router's potential. That might be good enough for what you want to do with the old desktop but it might be so painfully slow if your tasks involve large or frequent data transfers that you end up buying another to replace it.
- but the two others would exceed & be limited by the router's capabilities thereby wasting some of the money they cost. Additionally, they would not make the best use of any replacement router you were ever likely to get because they are only 600Mbps - they could not exceed that speed even if you got a faster router later on.
- If there is a cheap N300 wifi adapter [either 2.4GHz or 5GHz] then that would match your current router's capabilities.
- If you have any ideas about replacing the router at any time in the next couple of years then I'd suggest getting a WiFi adapter for the old desktop that is also dual-band [2.4GHz, 5Ghz] ac1200 speed as long as the old desktop is fast enough to cope with this speed {which would vary with whether you were looking at an internal WiFi card or a USB-connected one - these depend on your system specs}.
- When it comes to selecting any individual WiFi adapter, I'd suggest being guided by comments about brand names & individual products anybody else chips in with here & by the opinions of other Amazon customers**.

** It is up to you but I only look at Amazon items
- that have an average 4 star rating
- that have at least 10 user reviews
- that have no more than 10% of reviews at 1 star + 2 star level [combined]
If they meet those criteria then I bother to check them out in detail, including
- functional specs
- physical specs [such as, just for example, internal / USB-connection]
- user QnA - these can reveal a lot about problems people have discovered & seller responses to them
- user reviews - these can reveal even more about problems people have discovered & seller responses to them but studying them takes a lot longer
- Amazon-supplied or at least "Fulfilled by Amazon" for anything expensive or in any way critical to your life/business [I have seen several examples of Amazon Marketplace suppliers using the product page of a branded & well-regarded product to sell unbranded or otherwise inferior products so I am never entirely comfortable with Amazon Marketplace for anything that matters].
- third party reviews [such as PCMag or here in TenForums] for anything expensive or in any way critical to your life/business. This can take so long that you would only want to proceed to this stage for your final shortlist.

All the best,
Denis

Hi there

@paulyjustin

An overlooked solution is often the idea of using a cheap switch to run LAN cable from computer-->switch and then from switch to an ethernet port on a wi-fi extender. The extender will connect to your router via wifi and you can also use 5Ghz for this

You can often significantly improve the wifi speed as the switch and the extender will work in full duplex, buffer where required and the LAN connection is always better by far than a cheap wifi USB device. With a switch as well you can use other devices -- a 4 / 5 port one usually only costs around 20 EUR if that.

I've tested this config with an HP laptop with a decent internal INTEL dual band wifi card . Using Ethernet/switch and wifi extender as described above I got 3X the speed compared with using the wifi alone - either to the wifi extender or direct to router --even at 5GHZ. With cheaper wifi cards etc the improvement is significant.

These cheap switches work at often speeds of 10Gb/s and certainly at 1Gb/s - standard wifi-->usb stuff doesn't even come close. In fact it's even worth it using a USB-->LAN adapter and plug the LAN into the switch !!!!!!

I think for users in UK as little as 15 GBP (13.50 EUR approx and that includes 20% VAT)

Great piece of kit. I use one for connecting a server (only LAN ports) via the switch from a shed in garden to wifi extender and it's brilliant.



Cheers

jimbo

The way I would look at this is ... as this is a temporary situation and you are best served by using a wireless dongle then you need to think of what happens at the end of the initial use.

If you have a use for a WiFi dongle in future either as a backup or full time use, then purchase a reasonable device to suit it's future usage, I would always recommend that you use a branded device of at least the Transfer capability of your current router, and possibly, dependent on its age, the best transfer rate you can find. When looking at a dongle consider the final usage - does it have USB3? if so consider a USB3 device as these should work on a USB2 older system


If you have no use for a WiFi dongle after this temporary task then purchase the minimum unit that will perform the task you intend to use it for - this may mean that you go for a non branded device with less than the maximum transfer speeds of your router but keep costs down.

I would also suggest that you go for if possible a dongle that includes an antenna as this can help with BeamForming of signals

Well, I've got a range extender with 4 gigabit ports built in and all the computers run at the full speed of the WiFI connection. So, I guess technically my WiFi extending and bridging devices all have switches in them..