Introduction, Inside Inside-more Features, Performance Performance-more, Closing Start

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Introduction

A few weeks back, someone in the Forums asked whether teeny, tiny 802.11ac USB adapters were any good. Being a data driven kinda guy, I decided to see.

I gathered up the eight small 1x1 AC USB adapters shown in the opening photo and table below. Our class designation for this flavor adapter is AC580, because they produce maximum link rates of 433 Mbps in 5 GHz (with 80 MHz bandwidth mode) and 150 Mbps in 2.4 GHz (with 20 MHz bandwidth mode).

The product table shows ASUS, TP-LINK, TRENDnet and Edimax opted for the more optimistic AC600 moniker, Buffalo undersold itself with AC433, Linksys went with the most accurate AC583 and NETGEAR skipped the whole thing, not even mentioning "AC" in its official product name. No wonder consumers get confused!

One of the eight adapters, Edimax' "nano" sized EW-7711ULC is 5 GHz only. Since 802.11ac applies to 5 GHz only, Edimax figures your notebook's existing 2.4 GHz radio will work just fine. As a payoff for this tradeoff, the 7711ULC is the smallest of the adapters tested, barely larger than the USB connector itself.

These adapters were tested with our latest wireless testbed and so use a newer test process than the one used in last year's AC1200 USB adapter roundup. The new testbed has higher path loss in 5 GHz than the previous testbed due to increased distance between the device under test and chamber antennas allowed by the larger RF-tight test chamber. So it's not fair to directly compare the results between the two round-ups. You can't really compare 1x1 adapters with 2x2 anyway, since the latter supports double the maximum link rate (300 Mbps / 867 Mbps vs. 150 Mbps / 433 Mbps).

All these adapters are pretty small, as illustrated in the line-up shot below. For reference, the leftmost TRENDnet TEW-804UB measures 38 x 19 x 8 mm (1.5 x 0.75 x 0.31 in.), while the rightmost Edimax EW-7711ULC 7.1 is only 18.5 x 14.9 x 7.1 mm (0.73 x 0.59 x 0.28 in.). The unmarked adapters to the left of the EW-7711ULC are the Edimax EW-7811UTC and Buffalo WI-U2-433DM. All use USB 2.0, which is plenty fast to handle the highest throughput any of these adapters can provide.

Eight AC580 adapters lined up

Inside

While this roundup includes eight different adapters, only two chipsets are represented. Half the group uses Realtek's RTL8811AU while the other uses MediaTek's MT7610U. It's interesting to note, however, each adapter uses a different revision driver. Go figure.

The ASUS USB-AC51 board marking reveals it's an Edimax EW-7711AUC in disguise. The chip to the right of the MediaTek MT7610U is a Skyworks SKY85702-11 5 GHz front end, which includes a 5 GHz power amplifier. Note the use of bent-metal antenna vs. printed circuit.

ASUS USB-AC51 board

The Buffalo WI-U2-433DM also uses a formed-metal antenna, but has no external amplifiers to beef up the Realtek RTL8811AU's signals.

Buffalo WI-U2-433DM board