20 Best Wifi Antenna For Pc (2023 Updated)

Even though this model is not supposed to work with Linux (the L model does), there are drivers for most Linux distros, including openSuse leap – which is what I’m using. So it was easy to have it up and running pretty fast.

On the website, they want you to prove you bought the adapter in order to download the Linux driver. A weird decision, since the Windows and Mac drivers are free to download. For the most part it is built well.

The only “issue” I have is the adapter USB slot at the base. It is a little flimsy – there is some play, but since I don’t move it, it is fine. If you connect it directly to your computer without the extension cable, it will be just as fine.

It is USB 3, which means faster data transfers. So far I have played online games with no issues, downloads are fast and without interruptions. Because of the double antennas, it’s profile is bigger, but it gives you the option to sort of “hide” it, locate it behind the monitor without losing signal.

My desktop was connected to the internet using a mains link. Because of mains noise (Devon!), the connection dropped many times each day. I experimented with a cheap USB WiFi adaptor to see if this would work through a floor and a wall – it did function, but sometimes didn’t start successfully and still occasionally dropped the connection.

I bought this devise as a more viable long term solution. It was straightforward to install and set up, and it has worked reliably thereafter. I understand the Realtek chipset is industry standard, so I updated the Realtek firmware successfully.

I now have a reliable, fast and secure internet connection to my desktop, at a reasonable price. Excellent.

Not reliable. 1. Can’t get the AC 5GHz to work on linux, so had to keep dropping to 2.4GHz mode. 2. Keeps dropping connections. No go.

This product was just what was needed to connect to the router in the basement from the 2nd floor. First we tried the TP-Link Ethernet Powerline adapter but that was only able to muster about 25 Mbit/s throughput.

Then we tried this, not expecting too much signal strength from the basement through two floors. But the signal strength received was all bars and the connection link itself was around 700 Mbit/s. The antenna requires some adjustment for best performance and for reception from the basement it requires a 45 degree angle.

Very satisfied with the purchase and the quality of the product. Very easy to install. Highly recommend this product to anyone who needs to get connectivity to the router from another room.

I needed wifi for a cheap PC I was building just to show my son how to do it. I bought this unit based on price (very inexpensive), good ratings, and my own personal satisfactory experience with the TP-Link brand.

I read reports saying that I’d need internet access to download drivers to install. I can only tell you that on the Windows 10 build — using Windows installation media downloaded in early January 2021 — the adapter was recognized and proper drivers installed during the Windows installation.

YMMV, I suppose, perhaps based on the age of the installation media you’re using. The adapter itself is unremarkable. The antenna barely pokes above the top of our mid-tower case, but obviously placement will vary depending on available USB slots.

Tucked away in a corner of our basement, it has a strong signal to our wifi mesh, connects at 5 GHz, and matches the download speeds of all the other devices in our house connecting via wi-fi. This was about as painless and satisfactory an experience as I can imagine with a wi-fi adaptor.

Like I said, this was for a cheap build, but I wouldn’t hesitate to buy this again if I needed wi-fi for a “real” build.

I have a 2012 MacBook Pro with 802-11n, but I have a 802-11ac router. So my Wi-Fi signal has been limited to n speeds. I had lots of trouble with Zoom calls and other high bandwidth resource hogs. This adapter allowed me to add ac speed to my laptop.

I now am enjoying 10 times the average speed compared to my built in Wi-Fi. My one knock on this product is that their website is not kept up to date and originally I went to their website to download the driver.

I couldn’t find the exact model listed so tired a driver for a similar model. That didn’t work. I searched for one that matched, but could never find one. Eventually, I tried the CD that came with the product and found a driver on it.

After installing, it’s worked flawlessly since. If I didn’t have a CD drive, however, I would have had to return it. The other issue, which may or may not be related, is that I am having trouble with my Bluetooth connection for mouse & keyboard and it may be related to interference from this adapter.

My previous Panda network adapter that I bought around 2016 or so (not sure what the model number was) had very good signal strength, and when I would use it on UTK’s campus I would usually pick up about two dozen networks! I would always have excellent reception in my bedroom which is about 70 feet from my router.

However, with this one I only have zero or one bars out of three signal strength in my bedroom. It has never failed to connect, which is good, but some websites load very slowly, and a few won’t load at all.

I have to move into my living room for the few that won’t load in my bedroom. The signal strength with this adapter is comparable or sometimes even worse than the adapter that is built into my laptop.

Nonetheless, I do use this adapter every time I get on the internet because the built-in one fails to connect sometimes for some unknown reason.

Awesome product. I have been looking at replacing the AWUS Usb devices for my wireless reconnaissance work that I do daily, as I am a Penetration Tester and this Panda PAU09 N600 is absolutely brilliant and an awesome upgrade.

It works well on all platforms such as Linux, Unix, Apple and Windows without any issues. It performs out the box and I have had 100% results from it so far after a few weeks of use. Thank you! A great product.

I bought 2 of these to replace a wireless card and a bridge repeater, cooked from a lightning strike. LM 19 recognized them, no muss, no fuss. One unit is in a building, 50 ft from the access point, and still gets about 50% signal strength.

They work for me. How long they last is the test.

“Edit: Product bought: ASUS Dual-Band Wireless-AC1900 PCI-E Adapter (PCE-AC68)” Setup: Win 10, Netgear R7000P-100NAS router. PC is 1 room over from router, separated by a drywall wall w/ no door. Results: Signal -58 dbm, Avg Speed: 877.

5 Mbps “EDIT: I just realized all the reviews on this page are a mix of different models” Not sure what everyone is talking about with the driver issues. I run Windows 10 64-bit and found it to be completely straight forward.

Contrary to several comments, Windows did not already have a driver for the card. However I simply popped in the provided CD and installed the ASUS WLAN Control Center/drivers. Windows immediately picked up the card and started looking for open networks.

The control center had a very user friendly GUI that allows you to view available SSID’s and also monitors your current connection in real-time. (It does eat up a small chunk of RAM while doing this, but there’s no need to leave it running once setup).

My only complaint, which in the grand scheme of things is minor I know, but it really annoying for a product of this price/quality, is that it didn’t come with a retention screw for the card! I guess they figure most people have one holding in the empty slot cover, but my case uses snap-in slot covers, so I did not.

None of my loose screws in the toolbox fit either, so my card is currently being held in place by a bread bag twisty! Funny. till it comes loose from a tug on external antenna cables and the card pops out and lands on my GPU.

Having found that my HP Elite PC could not obtain WIFI connection unless hard-cabled to the router, this ‘dongle’ provided a reasonable alternative. Perhaps buried in my HP instructions was some downloadable driver update that could have prevented this extreme step, but internet help for my pc was useless.

This WiFi adapter fix worked at a low price. I would caution others though- this antennae adapter works best when using a USB port at the front of the machine. When I used a USB port on the back, (where most of my other USB were serviced from), I experienced a choppy & inadequate WIFI signal.

I bought this wifi adapter for school as my laptop couldn’t connect to the wifi. It worked perfectly for the first couple times, but after about 2 weeks it broke. My computer wouldn’t recognize anything being plugged in, even though the adapter was in.

The usb port isn’t broken as other devices work properly when I plug them in. Every time i was done with it, i safely ejected. I used it everyday, except weekends. I don’t recommend buying it, unless you’re only planning to use it a few times.

My realtek wifi stopped working on my laptop, so I did some research and came up with this option. It did not help me on my laptop, so I tried it in my old PC. It worked perfect. It was super easy to install, and works great! No problems.

My laptop needs more help. Hopefully I can get the broke wifi deleted, and use this. Well worth the money.

It works well but my signal strength is just a little less than my old one. My system is old, so I guess that plays into the whole equation. The instructions were confusing though. Dire warnings about not plugging in until the driver was installed from the mini cd that came with it.

Turns out it’s plug and play. I tried to use the cd and it fell inside my vertical DVD drive. Some issue with my machine, but it wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t insert the CD unnecessarily. The only real issue therefore is the instructions and that’s minor.

W ent from 35 mbps to 135mbps. Installation varied from instructions a little. Even tho program never indicated installed, I went ahead and plugged adapter to my computer and worked great. Caution installation disk is a mini disc.

Awesome! Got the job done. Had to follow directions, plug up, then unplug Desktop from modem, etc. Great item. It worked!!! It works. I would recommend. I appreciate it. Good price! Run the disc. It worked.

Small mini disc.

I live and work at a remote wilderness lodge. Our only access to the world is our satellite internet service. We have wifi routers in the lodge itself but i live in a trailer several hundred yards from them.

I could occasionally get a bar of signal and maybe get my email or the news. The CCrane WIFI antenna 3 has quadrupled my signal at the same distance. The power boost option (second usb plug) really does help as well.

This frees me up to move my camper further back into the trees so as not to visually impact the lodge grounds. Nobody wants to see a 1962 camper outside their window when they are paying to stay here, and I don’t blame them.

Along with a small solar/battery setup this CCrane antenna will allow me to have a bit of convenience in my time off from work and benefit the lodge. This antenna does work exactly as advertised. One tip I wrapped my antenna, including the connectors, inside a plastic bag and secured the bag with a rubber band.

It is hung unde.

I’ve been using this antenna for less than a year and it has already started to fail. I have the antenna permanently mounted on the roof of my RV sheltered from the wind and rain, but it has developed a bad connection inside the antenna.

I can go up on the roof and tap it back into operation but when I move the RV it will disconnect again. The poor connection is not in the cable itself but inside the antennae, perhaps where the cable leads terminate and attach to a circuit board.

I suspect vibration from driving was enough to damage it. I suspect this antenna would be fine indoors or in a sheltered outdoor location where it doesn’t move, but for a vehicle or boat that gets used frequently I think I need a different product.

I did not order this adapter online but I did purchase in-store at my local Walmart and I must say I am beyond happy with my decision to go with the AC1200 over other models and brands of wifi adapters.

If you have trouble getting a steady connection or are on the go a lot with your laptop, this wifi adapter is your savior. I brought it to work with me one day just to see how many connections I could pick up being right in the middle of a busy area and I was connecting to wifi almost 1/2 mile from where I was sitting with just around 80% connection steady.

I could not believe it. Even at home, I was picking up connections all up and down my street that ive never seen before. It comes with a disk to set up the drivers which thankfully is pretty user-friendly and even novice computer users would have no trouble getting it set up.

(I can’t speak for Mac OS users only windows in my case). I bought this adapter with full intentions of using it for Kali Linux because it has monitor mode and packet injection capabilities. Setting up on Kali was a whole other story as far as user-friendliness goes.

I had to search the web thoroughly to find out how to install the driver and get kali to accept the adapter. I was finally able to get it working after about 2 days but I am definitely a novice user when it comes to linux.

It now works fine every time with ease when I start up kali and is compatible with every situation I’ve come across so far. All in all, this adapter might be a little more expensive then some of the other options out there but I would absolutely say its worth it to spend a little more knowing you’re getting a high quality piece of gear.

This is an awesome long range WiFi antenna. It increased my internet speed on my laptop by an insane amount. Before I got this antenna, I had upload and download speeds of about 20 Mbps. I now have a download speed of around 50 Mbps and an upload speed of around 30 Mbps.

It was definitely a good investment. I had an older version of this Alfa Wifi antenna and I can tell you they always make a good product. I was happy to buy this new model.

I was able to get a hot spot WIFI service, where I can’t get it with a regular wifi card on my 3 defferent Laptops. A little bulky, but worse every penny. I highly recommend this product. Specialy for 5.

0 WiFi it is also good for 2,4 WiFi. Many of the wifi now are brosdcasting in 5. 0mhz , so do not buy the privieus version of this device (like I did before to save money) The greedy ones pay thoce. Reghards.

When close to the router I have no problems getting 100/20 Mbps. Currently using this connected to my desktop PC in a office detached from my house ~10M from the router and through 3 walls getting ~50-60/15 Mbps.

Cons: – Sometimes seems to connect to the 2. 4 Ghz band of my WiFi when first turning the PC on and will top out at ~12 Mbps download. This will almost always disconnect and reconnect to the 5 Ghz band getting better speeds but would be nice to be able to control this.

– Even when getting 100/20 Mbps in some games there is an occasional mico-stutter. Noticed this in CS and Warzone. Does not make it unplayable but not great if playing competitively. Overall a great product and would still buy again knowing the above minor issues.

This works great. Windows (even 7) can run this with it’s own drivers. A driver disk is included for more functionality. It runs plug-n-play on Linux Mint and Kali Linux with no setup. It’s got good speed and connectivity.

I can carry this with me to anyone’s computer (I don’t know about Macs) and have WiFi internet with my phone’s hotspot. It’s a great device to have in my toolbox.

For some unknown reason, if I leave the dongle plugged in and boot up my PC, it will instantly crash to blue screen as soon as Windows loads. Leaving it unplugged until Windows loads is fine. Also, the dongle likes to randomly disconnect from the router once every few days.

It might have something to do with shoddy 3rd party software but I’m not 100% sure.

This is a slightly more technical review for you folks, and if you’re just using this to connect to WiFi, you can safely ignore it. After purchasing this, I found it does not properly work with some Linux setups that were usually guaranteed to work (Kali).

After some reaserch, I found that the adapter has two versions – one with an Atheros Chipset, and one with a RealTek Chipset. So far, the only reliable way to tell that I’ve ascertained is to look at the bottom of the device itself for the FCC number, which is a small sequence of numbers directly above the barcode on the back.

If yours reads “TE7WN722NV2”, you have the RealTek version 2, which is unusable for some projects. Otherwise, you likely have the superior Atheros version. Another way to tell is, sometimes, next to the S/N on the back, it’ll say “v2.

1″ or something similar. So far I haven’t worked out if the FCC number or version is on the box, as I threw that away before realizing this. I’m rating this product two stars for not making it clear that this was something that I needed to worry about.

There should be, at least in the description, something saying that this is Version 2 using the RealTek Chipset instead of Atheros. I don’t know if they sell the Version 1 at all, but some people I’ve asked said they received that version, meaning the seller may be just randomly picking between versions 1 and 2 to ship out.