(Credit: Sascha Segan)
Good Wi-Fi is a modern necessity, especially for homes where multiple people are trying to work or learn. But even if you have a router that's perfectly adequate for your square footage, sometimes your Wi-Fi antenna simply isn't powerful enough to reach whatever odd space you carve out for yourself.
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. If you just need to eke a little bit more Wi-Fi out to one laptop or desktop, a USB adapter is a viable alternative. Below are our favorites, along with everything you need to know about the category.
Recommended by Our Editors
TP-Link Archer T9UH
The Archer T9UH, an AC1900 dongle, had the best overall speed performance of any of the adapters I tested, making my home office wall seem nearly transparent to signal. The T9UH is 0.5 inch thick and 3.5 inches long when closed; it flips open to a height of about 6 inches. You can plug it directly into your laptop or use an included USB 3.0 cradle. The dongle has a small blue LED to show it's working.
And work it does. Over my 5GHz 802.11ac network, I saw an average signal improvement of 11dB at my four locations, as well as the lowest overall speed loss. At one point, I was getting a higher speed in my office than right next to the router, which was probably because of how other people in the house were using the internet. Still, this performance shows that the T9UH can really reach through the wall. The dongle didn't do well with my router's 2.4GHz network and refused to connect to that network from farther than a few feet away, but you shouldn't be using a 2.4GHz network with an adapter like this. It's really for boosting 5GHz signal and does that very impressively. the T9UH is our Editors' Choice winner out of the adapters we tested.
D-Link DWA-X1850 Wi-Fi 6 USB Adapter
The first Wi-Fi 6 USB adapter extends 2.4GHz range, but doesn't deliver breakthrough peak speeds. When we tested the D-Link AX1850 with a Wi-Fi 6 router and measured its signal strength, it offers some theoretical advantages over the Wi-Fi 5 sticks. But perhaps because this is an AX1800 device—slightly slower than the competing AC1900 units—those advantages didn't translate into faster speed at a distance.
Netgear Nighthawk AC1900 Wi-Fi USB Adapter
Netgear's big, solid AC1900 adapter performs well, but it costs too much for the performance you get. This is a chunky monkey. Folded shut, it's 0.75 inch thick, 4 inches long, and unfurls to 7.5 inches. It’s too thick to plug directly into some thin-and-light laptops. Fortunately, it has a sturdy USB dock that's magnetic, so you can just stick it on a nearby surface (not on many laptops, however).
Like the Archer T9UH, the Nighthawk performed very well on my 5GHz 802.11ac network. However, it didn't function well in its 2.4GHz 802.11n mode; the adapter simply wouldn't find my router's 2.4GHz network variant when it was on the other side of a wall from the router. It had the biggest average 5GHz boost of all—13dB—but the T9UH performed a bit better on speed loss.
Ultimately, I don't see a reason to get this instead of the T9UH. It's nearly twice as expensive and, although it offers good performance, the T9UH is still very competitive.
TP-Link Archer T3U Plus
TP-Link's most basic adapter is a small USB dongle with a 7-inch rotatable antenna sticking out of it. Plug it in and macOS or Windows will automatically detect it. It is the purest, simplest example of "stick a big antenna on something and see what happens."
This is an AC1300 adapter and allows for two data streams on either 2.4GHz or 5GHz. It offered a small but noticeable signal boost in my home office, but not much of a noticeable change in terms of signal loss out by the elevator. It didn’t do any harm but didn't improve much either.
TP-Link Archer T4U Plus
The Archer T4U Plus sits at the sweet spot of price and performance. This adapter doesn't plug directly into your PC; it's a trapezoidal dongle with two six-inch antennas. Plug it in with the included USB cable and you're good to go. The T4U Plus uses the AC1300 standard.
The T4U Plus reliably connected to both my 5GHz and 2.4GHz networks, giving me a decent average signal improvement of 6.5dB on the 5GHz network. That translated into considerably better Wi-Fi performance in my office and out by the elevator than the laptop alone achieved. The improvement was noticeable—at the elevator, speed loss declined from 95% with just the laptop to 69% with the T4U. In terms of squeezing out more Wi-Fi speed for relatively little money, the T4U Plus does the trick.
BrosTrend 1200Mbps Long Range USB WiFi Adapter
This off-brand adapter is shoddily made and generic. It's an AC1200 adapter with two rotatable antennas. You can plug it directly into your PC or use the included dock. However, the USB dongle doesn't plug all the way into its dock, leaving some of the connector exposed. The cable is supposed to route out of a notch in the bottom of the dock, but it tends to pop out of the notch and make the dock wobble.
Performance-wise, the BrosTrend adapter did worse than I expected from something with two large antennas. On average, it got a 5.75dB better signal at 5GHz than the laptop alone, which was better than the Archer T3U but worse than the other TP-Link and Netgear adapters. It also lost more connection speed than any of the TP-Link or Netgear adapters, though it still performed better than the laptop alone. If you buy this adapter, you might think it's good, but that's just because you haven't tried anything better.
What's the Best USB Wi-Fi Adapter?
These adapters work on a simple principle: If you improve your antenna, your signal will improve too. In 2021, we purchased three adapters from 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. None of them have official drivers for macOS versions later than 10.15 (and some don't even have that), because the chipset vendors don't bother to support macOS. An enterprising independent programmer has developed macOS 11 and macOS 12 drivers(Opens in a new window) for many of the adapters we've reviewed, but you should yse these at your own risk. Adapters also likely won't work with other home electronics, as they require 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.
Wi-Fi 6 USB Adapters
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.
Since the first one launched last summer, a few other Wi-Fi 6 USB sticks are now available, including the Asus USB-AX56, the D-Link DWA-X1850, and several shifty-looking Amazon brands. We reviewed the first model to hit the market, D-Link's DWA-X1850. All of the current adapters use the AX1800 version of the Wi-Fi 6 spec, so they aren'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.
No, there are no Wi-Fi 6E USB adapters yet.
Testing Wi-Fi Adapters
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 in 2021, 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.
More Ways to Improve Your Wireless Connectivity
If you suspect your Wi-Fi issues go deeper, here are 12 ways to troubleshoot your home internet connection. And if you're also having trouble with your cell signal at home, we tested the best cell phone signal boosters, too.
