Alfa Long-Range Dual-Band AC1200 Wireless USB 3.0 Wi-Fi Adapter w/2x 5dBi External Antennas - 2.4GHz 300Mbps / 5Ghz 867Mbps - 802.11ac & A, B, G, N

I'm running Windows 10. I received this product, unboxed it, assembled the antennae, and plugged it into the back of my computer. Like most folks, there's a ton of stuff plugged into my computer, but this product had no problem sliding in. Windows 10 found the driver, and I immediately had a list of wifi networks available. Impressive! In fact, my network was noticeably faster than the WD Powerline kit (200 Mbps) than I had been using. I wanted to measure how much faster, so I went to the website to download the utility. First problem: The utility isn't available as a download from the support page on their website; only the driver. I didn't need the driver, because it was working fine. So, pop the included DVD into the optical drive, and start the install. The installer walks me through a bunch of options, but the one option I'm looking for (choose to install the utility only) isn't there; I have to install the driver from the DVD to get the utility. Unfortunately, there's no mention of Windows 10 in the installer, only Windows 8. I cross my fingers and hope I don't screw up a working wifi adapter. Install and reboot. I have the utility, but the wifi is down. Great. Fortunately, I have some experience troubleshooting driver issues, so after 20 mins of fiddling with it, I am able to get back to Windows 10 driver I was using, and I still have the utility installed. I'm connecting to a dual band AC gigabit router. According to the utility, my signal strength is in the low 70%, but my link quality hovers in the 90%. That's great. My actual bandwidth is generally at 585 Mbps, with occasional fluctuations -- awesome. I've seen it drop to 325 Mbps, but that's rare. So, there's really just two issues with this adapter, neither of which are a show stopper. First is that you can't install the device utility alone, you have to install the driver, too. It's understandable that they wouldn't have a Windows 10 install yet, as Windows 10 is so new. The utility isn't needed for the adapter to work, but it's nice to see the performance. Second issue is that the base that comes with it is only USB 2, while the adapter is USB 3. Now, the max theoretical bandwidth of USB 2 is 480 Mbps. That's still pretty decent in 2015. But it would definitely be throttling down your wifi bandwidth, and I suspect that most people who buy this adapter are looking for performance. You will need to buy a third party male-to-female USB 3 cable, if you need to mount this wifi adapter somewhere other than the back of your computer. There you have it. If you can live without the base, and the CD install problems don't bother you, this is a really good wifi adapter.

I've had a good experience with this device. First of all, I bought it because it has Wireless AC technology and removable antennas. I put a homemade 15 element Yagi-Uda antenna on this and I was able to get internet connections 2,000 feet across open water with great speeds (15 ms ping times and 35 MB/s downloads). I'm using it on a boat and it has been working even with some rain and heavy winds (I wrapped the device in duck tape so it wouldn't get wet). I also added a longer USB cord; a longer USB cord is better than a longer coaxial/antenna cable. It might be hard to believe, as it was for me, that 2.4GHz wifi can reach out across 2,000 feet. This little device with a Yagi is amazing. Before I tried the homemade Yagi, I tried some 10 dBi omnidirectional antennas. Those were pretty terrible as they picked up too many hotspots and a lot of noise along with it. All in all, I'm really satisfied with this device. The small size, good price, good power, remove-able antennas and the ability to do both 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz were all a big plus. Now for the only downside, which was the drivers. I tried to install the drivers on both Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11 and Ubuntu mate 16.04. I had to dig around the Alpha website for a while to find drivers. Installing the drivers on Ubuntu failed and I gave up. The Drivers for Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11 work, however, I wish they were a little better integrated with the operating system. For instance, the driver program runs as a menu bar item which has to be started with admin privileges. If your main account user doesn't have admin privileges you have to either start-up the computer to an admin account before using your non-admin account or do a little hacking with visudo. It would also be nice if the Mac OS X driver program showed better wifi signal strength information.

I am unfortunately in a situation where I am not able to use a proper wired network at the moment. I had used several USB adapters, but ultimately decided on a wireless bridge (D-Link DAP1650) to keep as many machines wired together as possible. Inexplicably, bandwidth dropped so badly while using the bridge that I needed to find a replacement. I have been using ALFA wireless adapters for a long time for security research, and I liked the idea of a USB 3.0 AC-wireless adapter with large antennae that would get me the best possible bandwidth. I have deducted one star for a simple reason - the extension cable and desktop mount is not USB 3.0. This seems like a crazy oversight, but it does make a substantial difference. I purchased a separate 4-port USB 3.0 hub and double-stick taped it to the base of one of my monitors. Works like a charm, and I also have a convenient place to attach external HDDs, USB sticks, etc. As far as performance goes, I am very happy. I consistently get 180-200Mbps downstream and 18-25Mbps upstream via Ookla speed test, and my internet tier is 200/20. Speed test are hardly an indicator of real performance, however, so I am happy to report that I am consistently getting 25MB/s (200Mbps) when downloading large games like GTA V, The Division, etc. on Steam. So I'm very pleased with the WAN performance via this adapter. On LAN I am getting very acceptable speeds as well. I have no issues streaming 4K video from my NAS, file copies are sufficiently fast to/from the NAS, and I am not getting dropped connections at all. I'm not sure what issues some other people are having with dropped connections, but it's never happened to me without some other source being the issue (e.g. my router rebooting itself after I made a settings change). Very very happy. Could easily be 5-star item but just make the extension cable USB 3.0!

I bought it about a month ago and have had no problems with it. It works well, and hasn't been giving me any problems lately. That's the short version. Below is a long version for anyone who really wants more information. (By the way, I would definitely recommend this product.) Anyway, on to the long version. At first I was a little worried about buying it given some of the negative reviews and all of the driver problems. I'm running a Win 8.1 machine. But bought it anyways just to try it. The shipping was great, I received it in 2-3 days and the device was completely intact and new. I tried just plugging the adapter and letting Windows auto install the driver for it because people have said that the driver on the CD didn't work. Windows did download a driver for it, but the driver didn't seem to work. It could see Wi-Fi networks around my house, but I couldn't connect to them, so I used the CD to install the driver and the Realtek USB service (after uninstalling the old driver that Windows downloaded). In the event that you do plug it in and the driver installs and you want to uninstall it, unplug it, go into device manager, and uninstall the driver. You can also try keeping it on there, but I didn't want to risk messing something up. In retrospect, the reason that I couldn't connect to any Wi-Fi was probably because the Realtek USB service is required. Edit: After a bit of use it seems that it is not required, but I like the service. So, just for reference, every single step I took once I put the disc in is as follows (which means a very long list. In reality it isn't as bad as it seems, just a lot of clicking. You can also skip it and just get to the overall review.): 1. Opened "File Explorer" and clicked on "This PC" in the Navigation Menu (Also known as My Computer on older systems). 2. Right clicked on my DVD drive and clicked on the "Open" option. 3. Double clicked on ALFAINSTALL.exe (by the way, I remember reading a review that said a user's manual was not included on the CD. I found one in the "doc" folder on the CD.) You could also let it auto run. 4. When it opened, there were three buttons. One was "Browse Disc" and the other two were for selecting the product you had. I clicked on the one that said "AWUS036AC", which is this product. The other option was a slightly different adapter. 5. When I clicked on it, it asked me which driver I wanted to install or if I wanted to view the user's manual. (The three drivers it listed were Windows, Linux, and Mac. Not sure how well the Mac works, but I will look at the Linux and edit this review later.) 6. Clicked on the "Windows Driver" button and it came up with another list of buttons that asked if I was using XP, 7, or 8/8.1.) 7. Clicked on the "8/8.1" button and then hit "Yes" when UAC popped up. 8. Next it had me install the Realtek USB Wireless LAN Driver and Utility. (Which is a fairly nice piece of software by the way.) 9. Hit "Next" on the screen that popped up. 10. It came up with a bar that said it was installing and then Windows asked me if I wanted to install the device software. Checked the box asking if I wanted to always trust software from Realtek Semiconductor Corp and then hit install. 11. It installed and then asked if I wanted to restart my computer now or not. I hit "Yes, I want to restart my computer now." and then hit "Next". 12. After my computer restarted I hit the "Show Hidden Icons" button on the right hand side of the taskbar, clicked on the "Realtek USB Wireless LAN" (hover over it to see the name) which opened an application window. 13. I then plugged in the wireless adapter and the application automatically found it. 14. I clicked on the "Available Network" tab and it showed a list of networks I could connect to. 15. I clicked on the network I wanted, typed in the Network Key (password), hit "Okay", and it worked perfectly. I tried it on 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz and both of them work fine. If you have any questions, please ask in the comments. So far, the signal has been fairly consistent. It is usually around 95%, but goes between 90 and 100. For some reason it also occasionally freaks out and drops to 75% or 80%. But maybe that's because I am using USB 2.0 instead of 3.0 so it's not getting the same power it would on 3.0 (I have no clue so I am making a slightly educated guess)? I don't have good internet, so I can't speak for the speed. Also, I regularly use the 2.4 GHz band because 2.4 GHz is an inherently stronger/farther reaching signal. At average of 95% I am around 30 feet away from my router, with a few walls in between. I have noticed that the percentage doesn't really change much between 20 and 40 feet. It stays in that same range I mentioned earlier, and it still does the same freaking out thing. Just so everyone knows, I am using a Wireless-N network on the 2.4 and AC on the 5. I am also using a USB 2.0 because of the orientation of the USB ports on my laptop. It's light enough that you can also stick it strait into your computer without harming it or the USB port. Pros: Works on Windows 7 and 8.1 Good signal reception and transmission Doesn't cut out The Realtek USB Wireless LAN program is pretty good It supports USB 3.0 It supports AC wireless It operates at 300 Mbps instead of 150 Mbps It comes with a USB dock that has a 4' USB cable No problems with shipping. It came in 2-3 days. It is as it was advertised You can use different antennas if you want, maybe a lower or a higher dbi antenna Cons: Sometimes the installer disc ships with old drivers Can use without the two antennas, but not very good wireless The dock is 2.0 Occasionally freaks out and drops about 15% in signal strength 10" tall when in dock and about 8-1/2" tall when in computer Requires the Realtek Software to operate well At some point here I will test it on Linux and edit this review to include info about how it works.

I was a bit hesitant to buy this after reading all the mixed reviews on whether this works on a Mac or not. I decided to bite the bullet and just try it out anyway. I'm very happy to report that it works just fine on the Mac. I'm running Mac OS X 10.10.5 (Yosemite) on a mid-2009 Macbook Pro. I bought this to upgrade the wireless performance on my Mac to take advantage of the new 802.11ac Airport Extreme that I just bought. I downloaded the Yosemite driver using the Sourceforge link posted in the Q&A section of this page (above) and installed it first before plugging into the wireless USB adapter. After a quick reboot following the installation of the driver, I plugged in the wireless USB adapter. Once I plugged it in, it automatically launched its own wireless utility (installed as a part of the driver) and I simply selected my Wifi network, entered the password and I was online. Here are some tests I ran to see if there are any performance improvement with this product and I think the data speaks for itself. The bandwidth performance on my local network improved from 54Mbps to 179Mbps. I ran the test using a command line utility called iperf3 : Baseline (original 802.11n) [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 64.9 MBytes 54.4 Mbits/sec sender [ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 64.8 MBytes 54.3 Mbits/sec receiver New (802.11ac) [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 214 MBytes 179 Mbits/sec sender [ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 214 MBytes 179 Mbits/sec receiver My Macbook Pro does not support USB 3.0. I would assume the performance would be better on systems that supported USB 3.0. I'm not sure whether it makes a difference or not but I also switched off the built in wireless (Airport) on Macbook Pro once I had this up and running.

I would like to state that I tried another cheaper card that had an Antenae and it had less signal strength than my preloaded stock wireless desktop card. I recieved my package on-time, everything worked as described, nothing was broken, it was brand new and as advertised. The directions for installation are very simple, the cord is long enough to go over half of a desk, with a desktop at the floor on the sides. NOTE: Alfa's website: http://www.alfa.com.tw/download.php HAS Windows 10 Drivers for this Wireless Card AND is compatible, having run this on a Laptop AND Desktop both running windows 10. The drivers are most definitely needed as I tried the windows 8 ones, and they were slightly unstable until I got the Windows 10 ones. I would like to point out some key features that I like about this Wireless Adapter Card. 1. Range and Compatibility: The range easily surpasses more than a half mile, with the card I'm picking up signals my stock wireless card didn't even see. 2. Compatibility Issues not an Issue: I run windows 10 to which this card is used for, but I had no idea when I had purchased it, I looked on Alfa's website and even though the disk that was included with the card does not have drivers for Windows 10, the website does. 3. Very Study: The design of the Adapter has no flimsy parts, plastic is rugged and feels solid, the wireless stand is heavy and even though it falls over easy is very sleek. The USB cord is as thick as my mouse cord with normal covering surrounding it. 4. Stable: Even though I have my own Wireless Network I use, the card can full bar Unsecured Wireless Networks while connected, I used my Comcast login info to test a XfinityWifi hotspot that is more than a half a mile away (I checked the distance using the app) I used it all night, and the connection stayed strong throughout the night. 5. Dual Band Attenae: The Attenae are what makes the Adapter strong, I point it toward my Modem and the Connection is increasingly stronger than when pointed away, doing a speed test I gained a small amount of download and upload speed doing this. I added 2 screenshots of my "Before" and "After" of the wireless networks available to me with my stock card, and the Alfa one. I would like to point out that, there is many more networks below it as it creates a scroll bar of new networks! Overall I am fairly impressed with the quality of the purchase, so much that I am thinking about buying one for all of my standstill devices (Smart TV etc) I would like to point out that I tried using it for my Xbox One and it did not recognize it. Sorry! All and All I commend Alfa for this monster of a Wireless Adapter, and if I ever need another one, I know which company to stick to from now on.

I debated giving this product 4 stars or 2 stars. I compromised to give it 3 for the following reason: This wireless USB adapter works great (4 stars). Until it drops the connection (2 stars). Which happens every 2-3 hours. 95% of the time simply rebooting it by unplugging/replugging the USB resolves the problem being disconnected from the network. The other 5% requires a total laptop restart. It's not as if I'm on the fringe. By itself my (Lenovo Thinkpad) laptop connects to the network fine. I just thought a higher gain WiFi adapter would give me an even stronger signal. No 5 stars possible because of the admin software. If the device is running and you start the admin software to add/change a profile it hangs the device. Will I toss it? No. Sure rebooting it on a somewhat regular basis is a hassle but when it works it works great. I just wish it were more stable.

My other USB 3.0 wireless adapter broke when I tried to move my desktop and I forgot that it was placed behind my gaming PC and it got pinned. I was looking for a replacement and found this. I was skeptical at first. I set it up and it only took me less less than 10 minutes. I am using Windows 7 and I used the disc that came with it. Never had problems installing the drivers. I added both SSIDs (2.4GHZ and 5GHZ) to my profile so I can switch anytime. After logging in, I was amazed how fast the response is. Check out my speedstest results on the pics. Also I didn't use the USB adapter that came with it because I read on one of the reviews that it's a USB 2.0, so I used my USB 3.0 from the old adapter (see other picture). The antennas are on 'V' position, sitting on top of my pc and that's where I get a ~180 Mbps DL speed. I don't know why the other user has a higher upload speed of ~40mbps, but I am happy with my numbers. Maybe it depends on the server where you do you speedtest. My test server is in Palo Alto, CA. But if you have some tips to have a faster upload speed, let me know :) I might experience some drops, or might not, but I hope this adapter won't give me a hard time reconnecting. As for the shipping, it is fast! I ordered ~10am and by the time I got home the package was already at my doorstep! WOW!