our picks
This USB adapter may look like a gaming accessory, but it provides a stable, full-fledged Wi-Fi 6 connection to your network.
The MSI AX1800 WiFi USB Adapter (GUAX18) is recommended for anyone looking to quickly add Wi-Fi 6 connectivity to their laptop or desktop PC. It’s relatively inexpensive and provided excellent throughput performance throughout the house we tested it, including places where other adapters lost signal to the router. It’s ruggedly built, connects in multiple configurations, and is fast enough for most internet connections in the United States.
budget selection
In our testing, this slim adapter offered about half the performance of our top picks over short and long distances, yet still provided a stable connection for the price. This is a great model to buy for under $25.
The TP-Link Archer T2U Plus is a bit bulkier than the MSI AX1800 due to its 6-inch external antenna, and it didn’t perform as well in our tests. But it remained fast enough to stream 4K video and surf the web away from the router, and it was the only sub-$25 adapter to complete all of our tests. It comes with an excellent two-year warranty, but it lacks some of the features that more expensive adapters boast, such as Wi-Fi 6 support.
Upgrade selection
This Netgear adapter is considerably more expensive than our other picks, but it’s great for fast file transfers and large downloads. It’s also the only USB adapter we’ve tested that can connect to a dedicated channel on a Wi-Fi 6E router.
The bulky Netgear Nighthawk A8000 (AXE3000) USB adapter is compatible with both Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E. It typically costs almost twice as much as the top-of-the-line product, but if you need to connect to a Wi-Fi 6E network and your broadband connection is faster than 500 Mbps, it’s worth the investment. In our tests, it had the highest speed scores across our test homes, significantly outperforming other Wi-Fi adapters.
