[SOLVED] Which WI-FI receiver should I choose?

[Zeox]

Hey guys,

After some time trying to find the best USB WI-FI receiver for my gaming PC I've came up with 2 options:

• The NETGEAR Nighthawk AC1900 (92$ CAD Amazon)
• The TRENDnet TEW-809UB AC1900 High Power Dual Band Wireless USB Adapter (79$ CAD Amazon)

I would like to know your opinion on which one should I get for the best connection possible.

Thanks a lot!

(I'm moving to a new apartment and the router isn't on my floor so I don't have access to it. Each tenant has his on account to log into the WI-FI. The WI-FI speed is around 40 mb/s download and 20 mb/s upload.)

 

[Julia Heil]

I can suggest 2 options: NET-DYN USB Wireless WiFi Adapter. Used it a lot when was out of the city but still had to work. Works quite fast and costs 45$. A really good one is also Linksys Dual-Band AC1200 Wireless USB 3.0 Adapter. One of my friends often plays games and says that it's ideal for streaming and gaming.

 

[bill001g]

They both use exactly the same chipset RTL8814AU. There antenna configuration is different but it is hard to sa if that makes any difference.

These maybe overkill if the router also does not have features like 4x4 mimo and especially the non standard encoding that use 200 on 2.4 rather than the more common 150. These feature also have trouble delivering the higher speeds as the distance increases.

I would first see if you can get the details of the routers the apartment building uses. Do they even have 802.11ac. It would not be uncommon for them to only support 2x2 mimo. They may even restrict the channel width to 20mhz to decrease interference between their AP.

If you have a option to pay for your internet in your own apartment I would do that. Shared wifi access between apartments is nice for people that can't afford internet but it tends to be a low quality experience. What happens if the teen in another apartment runs his torrent client 24x7. Even other people just running large downloads will have a large impact on you.