Who has bought a laptop in the last two years, probably already has a decent Wi-Fi card already installed inside it, but if the laptop was older and if the wireless internet connection was perceived as poor or slow especially in watching videos in streaming or in video games, you can improve the situation by changing the router or, if this is relatively new, by changing the Wifi card . On laptops, instead of changing the old internal card for wireless connection, it is better to add an external USB wifi adapter .
Even if you want to replace the internal one, which is not difficult but still requires you to open your computer and risk making mistakes, a new wireless card without an antenna will still not be as efficient as an external USB adapter.
With a new Wifi card, the computer becomes more receptive to the signal even in the presence of walls or floors between us and the router and, consequently, the connection also becomes more stable and reliable in general .
READ ALSO: How to add wifi to a fixed PC
If in theory before buying a Wireless USB card for the laptop you should look at its technical specifications and relate them to the environment where it will be used, since the price is still very low and not higher than the 20 or 35 Euros, it is better to take the best immediately .
From this perspective, what is important to check is that the new USB wifi adapter supports the latest generation of wireless connection, 802.11ac .
The 802.11ac standard is much faster than older a / b / g / n receivers and also supports 5GHz connections over 2.4GHz.
We talked, in another article, about the differences between 802.11ac and 802.11n.
The Wifi card must also be connectable to a USB 3.0 port, which is faster than USB 2.0 ports (although port 3.0 may not exist on older laptops).
If the laptop is older and only has USB 2.0 ports, the theoretical maximum speed that can be reached on the network is 60 MB / s, while with the USB 3.0 port it can also exceed 640 MB / s.
If you surf from home with a slow connection that does not exceed 60 MB / s (in practice if you do not have an optical fiber) or if the router uses only 802.11n (whose maximum speed is 56MB / s), then the connection USB 3.0 is not decisive.
As mentioned, you should also check that the router and adapter are able to talk to each other using the same protocols.
Basically, in order not to feel bad in case you do not notice any improvement after buying a new Wifi adapter for the laptop, keep in mind that only by having an 802.11ac router and a USB 3.0 port fast enough in the computer, you will get benefits with an 802.11ac wireless adapter .
In the case of a cheaper router, a slower connection and USB 2.0 ports, a Wireless N adapter will be sufficient and it is not convenient to change it if it is already present.
As for the wireless frequency, we have already talked about the differences between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks where I explained that a Wifi card must support the 802.11A protocol to transmit on the 5 GHz frequency, which is faster on the short distance and does not suffer from interference.
As for the brands and models, although there are many in each shopping center, I can recommend:
- Asus USB-AC53 USB adapter, the smallest and most compact one that is sold for 27 Euros on Amazon and supports all the latest protocols, including the 802.11ac, dual band.
- TP-Link Archer T2U 10 Euro USB adapter, basic, suitable for all configurations, with internal antenna, dual band, which supports the Wireless IEEE 802.11ac / n / aa 5GHz standard and IEEE 802.11b / g / na 2.4 GHz.
