I've just moved to London today and had my 100Mbps connection installed. I was very happy with the service from Hyperoptic was nice. They phoned me the night before and showed up on time. They drilled through the wall, put a cap, calked it and ran a cable terminating with a plate. The plate is in the living room though and my computer is in the bedroom. The hub is not that great ZTE H298N which seems to offer wireless N 300 I need a way to connect with my desktop and it seems that a USB adapter would be the most convenient. Wireless N and AC don't seem that different in price so I'm thinking that a wireless AC 600 would be a balance between modern/future proof and cost effective. Does anyone have any recommendations or advice? Do USB and PCIe models work equally well? TP-LINK Archer T2U AC600 USB for £14.99 on amazon TP-LINK Archer T2UH AC600 for £12.95 Gold Pro ESYNiC 600Mbps for £19.99 those are three popular ones I saw on amazon. i've seen even smaller ones as well. TP-LINK Archer T1U AC450 I could even go AC 1200 but that is overkill. I would like an option around £15 that is reliable
I recently purchased this netgear usb adapter and have to say it has been very good, with my desktop about 15m from the router through 2 doorways this connects at 60mb (the router emits around 80-90mb/s) and only drops out occasionally when several people walk past the door or the PC goes to sleep and is booting back up, when it drops out it seems to only be for a fraction of a second and then reconnects itself so isn't even an issue! PCI-E adapters are generally better than USB but I needed the space on my motherboard for another graphics card so USB was my only option, having said that this is very good for a usb adapter. Hope that helps!
The Edimax N150 is cheap and cheerful if 'working' is sufficient, the bigger/faster/more expensive AC600 is probably closer to what you're after. I Typically avoid netgear and belkin but that's because I'm usually after *nix support...
Your router is 2.4ghz only, so you get only marginal benefit from wireless AC, which runs in the 5Ghz band. If possible, always go for a PCIe card with a proper antenna - the USB ones are rubbish. All that being said, you're always better off running a wire, so do that if you can.
I want AC in case I upgrade the router, I know that it's only 300N. I also don't like buying outdated tech. I'm thinking about running a cat6.
