TP-Link WiFi 6 USB Adapter for Desktop PC – (Archer TX20U Plus) AX1800 Wireless Network Adapter with 2.4GHz, 5GHz, High Gain Dual Band 5dBi Antenna, WPA3, Supports Windows 11/10

This tplink actually uses a data transmission usb rather than just a plug in. I’ve had a couple different ones but this one works great. Low latency and higher speeds. It’s not a match for an actually wifi card but it is extremely solid and close to one. I HIGHLY recommend going with tplink ad they have always been a pretty solid brand.

ofrece un buen alcance, lo compare con un típico adaptador USB nano y la diferencia fue mucha un par de veces se me ha desconectado de internet pero con solo conectarlo y desconectarlo fue suficiente. Fuera de eso es un buen producto los materiales son de calidad aceptable.

My comment is not meant to demean this product:
I purchased this as a stopgap method of accessing the internet while between cable vendors.
I’d forgotten how slow this old method of accessing the internet is. Installed easily, works fine, but painfully slow and error-prone as compared to cable. Its likely the issue is more related to the wireless signals available to my location.

Bought this adapter since moving to my new house. My previous house was wired pretty heavily so I didn’t have to rely on wifi. I got this adapter in hopes that I wouldn’t have to cable much, since wifi works for all other devices in the house.

At first everything seemed fine. I’ve used this adapter for my PC for ~4 months now, but over the last week, the disconnects started happening.

When first connecting the device to my PC, it connects as a USB drive, and the install app for the driver is on the unit. This is actually pretty brilliant, since having to download a driver on a PC that doesn’t have a network card can be challenging, if not impossible, unless you have another PC handy. The install goes really quick and installs v2.0.2.0 of the driver.

The PC that I installed this on is ~8 feet from the wifi router. Signal is good between the unit and the router…when it’s connected. The challenge I’ve had is that recently, the unit frequently just disappears from my devices. Occasionally, just unplugging and replugging the device gets it to show up and reconnect, but more often, I have to completely uninstall the driver, reboot my PC, reinstall the driver, then reconnect the adapter to my wifi.

I’ve tried changing some adapter settings related to power management and that doesn’t seem to make any difference. I tried different driver versions from the TP-Link support site, and I get the same behavior. I was having an even odder issue where when i tried to do any kind of high-bandwidth usage, like transferring files, or using a remote desktop tool (TightVNC), that would cause the adapter to just disappear again. That seems to have stopped after multiple reinstalls, but the disconnects continue.

I’ve read a number of posts in forums about having to change a number of different settings on my wifi router, but to be honest, I shouldn’t have to do that. I’ve got ~40 devices connected in my house, from smarthubs, to Amazon FireTV devices, to laptops and PCs, and a couple of Raspberry Pi units, and NONE of them required any changes on the router side.

I’ve also seen some people compliment the “speed” of this device, but I’m not impressed. I have gigabit fiber internet, so I am not limited by bandwidth. Using other wireless devices in the house, I average ~400+Mbps download and ~330Mbps upload. The attached screenshot shows what I get when I run this with the TP-Link adapter. I ran the test several times just to make sure it wasn’t an issue with any single test and the results average right around this 231Mbps mark download. The upload speed is on par with the other devices, but the download speed is just horrible, by comparison. This is really secondary to the disconnect issue though. 230Mbps isn’t bad, in general, for most tasks, including streaming, so it’s just by comparison to other devices that the lack of throughput shows.

Lesson learned and money wasted. Still haven’t decided whether to purchase another wireless adapter or to go ahead and just run the cable, but I wanted to make sure to warn others about the frequent disconnects. That has been a major pain in the butt. It’s quite possible that I just got a flaky unit, but just know that this is an issue.

Works great; plug and play as expected. But noisy; there is a “hard drive-like” buzzing/clicking sound when working hard that is a bit annoying. Short cord – I bought a longer 6.5’ cord so I could play with placement and to move it farther away from my ears.