Good Wi-Fi is a modern necessity, especially for homes where multiple people are trying to work, learn, or be entertained. As you carve out odd spaces for home offices, you may end up in weird corners of kitchens, attics, or basements where your Wi-Fi doesn’t reach. I live in a pretty small apartment, but two thick, 1928-era walls separate my home office from my Wi-Fi router. The router itself is perfectly adequate for the space; my computer’s Wi-Fi antenna is what falls short.
The best way to improve your Wi-Fi signal is to switch from a single router to a mesh network system, but mesh systems can be expensive. Wi-Fi extenders are another option, even though they can create interference and add latency; I wasn’t thrilled when I tried one. If you just need to eke a little bit more Wi-Fi out to one laptop or desktop, a USB adapter is a much cheaper alternative.
These adapters work on a simple principle: If you improve your antenna, your signal will improve too. Earlier this year, we purchased three adapters from well-known networking brand TP-Link, one from Netgear, and two random low-cost Amazon brands. We tested those models in four locations: right next to my router; in my home office, only a few feet away but through two walls; by my building elevator, which is another 20 feet away and through another wall; and on the next floor up. Recently, we purchased the first available Wi-Fi 6 adapter and tested it against some of the best-performing models from the earlier bunch.
All of these adapters are compatible with Windows PCs and several also work with Linux. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any adapters with drivers for macOS versions later than 10.15. All of the adapter manufacturers’ drivers end at OS 10.15, which is disappointing. Netgear told me it wants to support newer versions of macOS, but all of the adapter makers are waiting for support from the chipset manufacturers. Adapters also likely won’t work with other home electronics—they need the right drivers.
The 802.11ac Wi-Fi spec is disturbingly complicated, with more than a dozen different performance levels referred to by AC and a number. The adapters we found perform at the AC1200, AC1300, and AC1900 levels. Here’s how all of those AC numbers in that range translate into potential speeds on the two main Wi-Fi frequency bands: 2.4GHz and 5GHz. If this chart makes your head hurt, just remember that higher numbers are better.
What About Wi-Fi 6?
Wi-Fi 6 promises to bring better speeds, better range, and less interference to business and home networks, but so far, that experience hasn’t materialized in real-world environments.
There is one Wi-Fi 6 USB stick on the market: D-Link’s DWA-X1850. It uses the AX1800 version of the Wi-Fi 6 spec, so it isn’t inherently faster than the best 802.11ac adapters we tested. In our full review of the X1850, we found that while it showed better signal strength than the Wi-Fi 5 adapters on a 2.4GHz network in a weak signal situation, that characteristic didn’t at all translate into actual speed or reliability improvements in other situations.
All the other adapters we tested support Wi-Fi 5, or 802.11ac. Your laptop probably supports 802.11ac—most laptops released since 2013 do—but if yours doesn’t, that’s another reason to get an adapter. 802.11ac is a massive improvement over the previous 802.11n and can give you a boost even without the benefits of the bigger antenna on an adapter.
The Best Wi-Fi Adapter
Of the adapters we’ve tested, our pick is the TP-Link Archer T9UH. For the price, this AC1900 adapter strikes the best balance between cost and signal-boosting. The Netgear Nighthawk adapter is even more powerful, but costs more. The other adapters are cheaper, but didn’t improve the connection as significantly in testing.
I tested Wi-Fi 5 performance with a 500Mbps symmetrical Verizon Fios fiber connection using a Verizon Fios G1100, an AC1750 router. When I tested the Wi-Fi 5 adapters against each other earlier this year, my whole family was working and learning from home. Top speeds were unreliable because congestion kept changing. So, I focused on the signal strength and the speed loss when moving the laptop quickly from one location to another.
When I tested the D-Link Wi-Fi 6 adapter more recently, I could do so in a more controlled environment. As such, I was able to compare speeds between that adapter, the TP-Link Archer T9UH, and the TP-Link Archer T4U Plus. Those results are in the full D-Link DWA-X1850 review.
In terms of pure signal improvement, the more expensive adapters with better specs performed better. The below chart shows how each Wi-Fi 5 adapter affected pure 5GHz signal strength on my laptop, averaged over the four locations I tested it.
Of course, what you should most care about is the data download speed you’ll get in places where you were previously having Wi-Fi trouble. In my tests, those two locations were in my office (bad speeds) and by the elevator (really bad speeds). The chart below shows how each adapter affected speeds in those two locations, relative to the speeds I got right by the router. The Y-axis is flipped, so a higher point indicates better performance and less speed lost.
Here are the detailed breakdowns of each antenna’s pros and cons:
