Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Edimax Wi-Fi 5 802.11ac Mini AC600 Dual-Band (2.4Ghz / 5Ghz) Adapter For PC USB Adapter Dongle, Win11 Plug-n-Play, Mac OS, Linux, EW-7811UTC

Edimax Wi-Fi 5 802.11ac Mini AC600 Dual-Band (2.4Ghz / 5Ghz) Adapter...

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Edimax Wi-Fi 5 802.11ac Mini AC600 Dual-Band (2.4Ghz / 5Ghz) Adapter For PC USB Adapter Dongle, Win11 Plug-n-Play, Mac OS, Linux, EW-7811UTC

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Top positive review

Positive reviews›

Great Adapter in size and performace...whoa the performance is off the charts...great work Edimax.

Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2015

Works great...keep it handy on the keychain. Edimax is an under rated brand. I have had Edimax Routers in the past and even a few USB network adapters...and can't say I could complain on either. They served their purpose well, but I can't say my experience in micro USB adapters to be the same. So, I was actually quite surprised with the performance of this little dude. I had an Edimax AC600 and quite honestly had nothing but trouble with it and never reached anything in the area of it's supposed performance specifications...things were sluggish and there were times it just would not connect to an AC network at all...regardless of driver installation or windows version...mostly with Win10x64 was my experience. As a glutton for punishment and hearing good news about this mini adapter, AC1200, online and with friends...I decided to try one. HOLY COW! This is probably the best USB adapter I have ever used for networking. A micro usb adapter is always a plus in that you don't have something sticking out from any side of ones laptop, PC, or otherwise. I had not one issue installing this on a Win10x64, W7x64, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or WinVistax64. I used this drive across all the systems at my disposal and it installed without issue, it performed better than the internal Micro PCIe card in two of those units. It performed better than a DD-WRT Router I was using as a Client setup. It blew away the performance of nearly all other means of wireless connection...with the one out-performer being a wired connection. I truly was happily surprised with the performace of this device, Edimax AC1200 micro USB, and have just added two more to my cart for permanent placement in two of those laptops mentioned earlier...MAC and Linux Mint.

2 people found this helpful

Top critical review

Critical reviews›

802.11ac adapter lacks durability

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2014

UPDATE 2021: Kept losing internet connection for months. It wasn't until I started looking at windows log files that I figured out this device was routinely dropping connections out of the blue. When I tested the bandwidth everything seemed normal. After looking at some possible other issues, decided to replace this unit with an older Cisco wi-fi dongle. The problem disappeared immediately. Have gone weeks without losing a connection. I've lived with the intermittent dropped connections for years and now it appears this device was the cause of it. Because of the lack of durability, can't recommend this device any longer.

----------Original review-------------
Bought this to utilize my new 802.11ac router. The Windows 7 or 8 operating system doesn't recognize this device so it's not plug and play but it does come with a driver disk and I was able to easily install the driver on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Once installed the adapter worked just great. Using the 5Ghz I do notice that as I move farther away from the router I do start to lose bars. I'm guessing this is because of it's small size and a combination of using the higher frequency through walls. I have a
ASUS RT-AC66U router with three antennas and it broadcasts pretty well in my home and is truly centrally located. If you are going to purchase this item for use in the the 5Ghz range, you may want to investigate the specs with regards to distance from source. This purchase has worked great for me but my router is centrally located. I did look at the 2.4Ghz performance and I was getting 5 bars on my laptop wherever I went through my house. only in the 5Ghz range did I see a drop in performance but it didn't seem to affect my connection speeds at all.

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From the United States

Great Adapter in size and performace...whoa the performance is off the charts...great work Edimax.

Reviewed in the United States on January 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

Works great...keep it handy on the keychain. Edimax is an under rated brand. I have had Edimax Routers in the past and even a few USB network adapters...and can't say I could complain on either. They served their purpose well, but I can't say my experience in micro USB adapters to be the same. So, I was actually quite surprised with the performance of this little dude. I had an Edimax AC600 and quite honestly had nothing but trouble with it and never reached anything in the area of it's supposed performance specifications...things were sluggish and there were times it just would not connect to an AC network at all...regardless of driver installation or windows version...mostly with Win10x64 was my experience. As a glutton for punishment and hearing good news about this mini adapter, AC1200, online and with friends...I decided to try one. HOLY COW! This is probably the best USB adapter I have ever used for networking. A micro usb adapter is always a plus in that you don't have something sticking out from any side of ones laptop, PC, or otherwise. I had not one issue installing this on a Win10x64, W7x64, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or WinVistax64. I used this drive across all the systems at my disposal and it installed without issue, it performed better than the internal Micro PCIe card in two of those units. It performed better than a DD-WRT Router I was using as a Client setup. It blew away the performance of nearly all other means of wireless connection...with the one out-performer being a wired connection. I truly was happily surprised with the performace of this device, Edimax AC1200 micro USB, and have just added two more to my cart for permanent placement in two of those laptops mentioned earlier...MAC and Linux Mint.

2 people found this helpful

Edimax EW-7811UTC = Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Reviewed in the United States on February 19, 2015

Verified Purchase

This adapter is cheap, easy and fast. As with most computer products I ignored the included CD and simply downloaded the driver from the Edimax website. Installation was quick and easy on my Windows 7 system. I connected easily to my Asus RT-AC66U wireless router which is located about 20 feet away, thru 1 wall, in the next room. I am connecting only on the 5GHz band and the EW-7811UTC only supports 1 spatial stream so I am limited to 433Mbps maximum, which is fine for my needs. Unless you are routinely moving multi-gigabyte files around on your LAN, I don't really see a need for more capacity than this. I have used this wireless adapter for downloading files, streaming videos (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime), online MMO gaming, and voice over IP (VOIP). Everything worked flawlessly. You could spend more and get a higher capacity wireless adapter, but really, this is likely all you need.
UPDATE 12-15-2015: I have used the AC600 adapter for 10 months in my windows 7 computer and it has worked perfectly. I decided I wanted to upgrade the wireless in my other computer, a windows 10 media PC, from the built-in 2.4GHz wireless g to 5GHz wireless AC. I went to the Edimax website to find out if I needed to download a driver. The website said that the support is already baked in to Windows 10 so no driver was required. I turned off the pc, plugged in the adapter , and rebooted the pc. I then turned off the built in wireless g adapter and switched to the Edimax AC600 adapter in Windows 10 network settings. The adapter is working fine.. I am posting this update because so many people seem to have trouble with this adapter recently and are making sweeping statements about this device's capabilities. My experience has been that this usb AC600 adapter has worked easily and reliably with both my window 7 and windows 10 machines. I will be buying a second one as an upgrade to my media pc.

One person found this helpful

First one died after 3 weeks

Reviewed in the United States on January 8, 2014

Verified Purchase

First off this little device is quick. It connect to my Netgear R6300 V1 Router at 430Mbps. I'm surprised it's this quick especially since it's only a usb 2 device (USB 2 is capable of 480Mbps that is shared with all of your USB devices). Installation was fairly easy since they included the drivers on a cd. however, to make things easier just go to the edimax website and download the drivers straight from the website.

I was using this on a laptop that had an Intel 6230N card. The speed increase was more than noticable and it's more stable as well. ultimately though, the card died after three weeks. Since I got the card from Hometown I only had the options of returning it so I returned it and bought another one. The new one was working before I bought an Intel 7260 which connects at a whopping 866 Mbps and it doesn't take up a usb slot or stick out either.

For old laptops and for desktop this is the adapter to go with. For laptops that are up to 4 years old you could probably just upgrade your card to the Intel and get better speeds that way. Overall this adapter is nice to have around the house just in case, but I have already made a new Driver cd with the latest drivers from the website. I suggest you do the same. If my new adapter dies on me again I'll update this review again.

A Mini Life Changer

Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2014

Verified Purchase

Daniel G. Lebryk has an excellent and in-depth review about this adapter, and I can confirm his praise. I don't want to reiterate his already well-said review, but I can say the EW-7811UTC works perfectly with Windows 7 and a TP-Link Archer C7 router. Windows didn't install drivers automatically, but I just went into device manager and pointed to the supplied mini disc to install them.

I have the little EW-7811UTC plugged into an HP laptop with a dated built in single band 150Mbps wifi card. It's fine for web browsing and even gaming, but streaming DVD ISO rips from my network drive was anything but stutter free--VLC would hiccup several times while watching feature-length films. Not so with Edimax's little dynamite. I've watched Despicable Me 2, Deathly Hallows 2, and Turbo sans interruptions. Yay! I don't have to fire up my pc to watch my DVD rips anymore, so now I can watch in the comfort of my bed instead of my worn down computer chair. Double yay!! All this for under twenty dollars vs more than double for a mini PCe replacement card. Triple yay!!!

Last note, the EW-7811UTC's signal is just as strong my pc's wmp600n with triple antennas even on the 5Ghz band. It even delivers the same results using lanspeedtest as a Rosewill AC1200UBE. Honestly, I love how powerful yet portable this little guy is, doubly so since it's hooked up to a laptop. Can't vouch for XP or Win 8, but the EW-7811UTC is a Win7 win.

2 people found this helpful

802.11ac adapter lacks durability

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2014

Verified Purchase

UPDATE 2021: Kept losing internet connection for months. It wasn't until I started looking at windows log files that I figured out this device was routinely dropping connections out of the blue. When I tested the bandwidth everything seemed normal. After looking at some possible other issues, decided to replace this unit with an older Cisco wi-fi dongle. The problem disappeared immediately. Have gone weeks without losing a connection. I've lived with the intermittent dropped connections for years and now it appears this device was the cause of it. Because of the lack of durability, can't recommend this device any longer.

----------Original review-------------
Bought this to utilize my new 802.11ac router. The Windows 7 or 8 operating system doesn't recognize this device so it's not plug and play but it does come with a driver disk and I was able to easily install the driver on Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. Once installed the adapter worked just great. Using the 5Ghz I do notice that as I move farther away from the router I do start to lose bars. I'm guessing this is because of it's small size and a combination of using the higher frequency through walls. I have a
ASUS RT-AC66U router with three antennas and it broadcasts pretty well in my home and is truly centrally located. If you are going to purchase this item for use in the the 5Ghz range, you may want to investigate the specs with regards to distance from source. This purchase has worked great for me but my router is centrally located. I did look at the 2.4Ghz performance and I was getting 5 bars on my laptop wherever I went through my house. only in the 5Ghz range did I see a drop in performance but it didn't seem to affect my connection speeds at all.

AC600 USB Adapter

Reviewed in the United States on May 10, 2014

Verified Purchase

I followed the instructions and downloaded the new drivers off the Edimax website before using this with my computer. It worked brilliantly for the first couple of weeks. Speeds were really fast, no trouble connecting to my AC router.

After about 2 or 3 weeks I started having to disable and re-enable the device in the settings because it wouldn't connect. I assumed this was because of some software issues that I was causing by switching between the adapter and my internal wifi card so I didn't worry about it. However it eventually got to the point where I was getting kicked off of the 5ghz channel and put on the 2.4ghz channel all the time.

I finally figured out what was causing it. I have to push down on the adapter (while it's in the USB port) for it to see and connect to my 5ghz wifi network. As soon as I stop pushing down on it the network disappears and the adapter only sees the 2.4ghz channel.

I'm giving this 3 stars because I'm not sure if I got a faulty device or it just isn't that durable. I use my laptop on a desk at home and take the adapter out 5 days a week when I go to class which shouldn't be too hard on a USB adapter.

I will say that when it worked it was amazingly fast for a great price though, it would easily have been 5 stars if it didn't start acting up on me.

Works Great with a mac

Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2014

Verified Purchase

I have comcast high speed internet 50mb and a mac mini. I noticed that my laptop consistently received 35-40mb/s download next to my mac, which is upstairs, and my mac was only receiving about 12mb. My file transfer was also significantly slow. A 1gb file from laptop to my hard drive downstairs would take about 8min. With my mac mini it would take 50 min. I put this ac600 in my mac and downloaded the latest driver's from their website. This is where it gets interesting. I have the newer dual router that has AC aka 5.0ghz and 2.4ghz When I plugged this adapter into the mac and used the regular 2.4ghz, my internet speed was SLOWER around 4mb/s. When I switched to the 5.0 ghz frequency my internet speed went to 33mb/s and I was able to transfer a file in 9 min vs. 50 min. I'm only getting 50-60% signal strength (according to the utility that came with the adapter). But hey, it has increased my speeds two fold. So yes it does work, but will it last? Only time will tell. Their tech support was pretty good as well. She was familiar with the mac system and was able to guide me (I got stuck on some silly things. my 2.4 and 5.0 frequency had the same SSID and password and it confused things). I will updated this later if something happens.

This Edimax EW-7811UTC JUST WORKS (and the D-link DWA-171 is junk)

Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2016

Verified Purchase

Linux Installation: Depending on the age and specifications of your computer, you may be looking for a wireless adapter that is faster than what the factory gave you. I have a Lenovo G-series laptop that is not that old, but it came equipped with an internal wifi adapter that operates on the 802.11N protocol and gives me a wireless connection speed of 72 Mb/s. For $14.40 (as of 6-16-18) with Prime delivery you can buy the following adapter and boost your speed to 434 Mb/s with very little hassle.

Edimax EW-7811UTC AC600 Dual-Band USB Adapter Available at Amazon with Prime for $14.40

IMPORTANT NOTE: I have specified the Edimax EW-7811UTC AC600 Dual-Band USB Adapter in this post because I have several of them running and because they run reliably by simply installing the rtl8812au-dkms software. I have tried higher speed adapters claiming 600, 800, 1200, and 1300 Mb/s from Edimax and other manufacturers and have had nothing but problems. Sometimes they run unreliably. Frequently "nano" sized adapters overheat and die. So, this 600AC adapter delivering a reliable 434 Mb/s in a compact package is my compromise, and I am completely satisfied with it. This has been my experience, and your mileage may vary!

This adapter will not work "out of the box" because the Linux kernel doesn't support the chipset. Why? I have no idea. But it is easy to get it up and running.

The best method is to open the Synaptic package manager and type "rtl88" in the search field. The search will show you rtl8812au-dkms and allow you to install it in the normal manner. If you use the Synaptic or other software installer that came with your distribution, you will be assured that the version of rtl8812au-dkms is compatible.

When you install rtl8812au-dkms, it will incorporate the rtl8812au chipset driver into your kernel and also run depmod and everything else to get you up and running. Depending on the speed of your system, it may take a minute or two to complete. It seems like forever, but that's normal.

When it is completed, insert or re-insert your USB adapted, and it should start working immediately and also work the every time you reboot your system.

NOTE: You don't want both the internal wifi adapter and the external USB adapter working at the same time. They interact in unpredictable ways and can cause problems loading web pages. Find your way to "Edit Connections..." and change the settings of the adapters under the General tab. Activate the box marked "Automatically connect..." for the external USB adapter, and deactivate the "automatic" box for the internal adapter.

That's it, and you've gone from 72 Mb/s up to 434 Mb/s for under $15.

One person found this helpful

After adding the wonderful TRENDnet TEW-818DRU Wireless AC1900

Reviewed in the United States on July 9, 2014

Verified Purchase

Original Review:
After adding the wonderful TRENDnet TEW-818DRU Wireless AC1900, I ordered the Edimax EW-7811UTC AC600 Dual-Band USB Adapter to enable my 2-Year old HP Laptop running Windows 8.1 64-bit operating system to take advantage of the much higher speed "AC" WiFi. That was a BAD mistake, I'm unable to successfully install a driver that works for this device.

I downloaded the driver for Windows 8.1 - EW-7811UTC_Windows_driver_1.0.1.6. After several attempts to install and reinstall the driver for Windows 8.1 downloaded from www.edimax.com, the Edimax EW-7811UTC Adapter still doesn't have a working driver.

Device Manager displays the following.
Intel WiUSB
USB0IF x HCI USB Host Controller > Properties
Device status
"This device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device. (Code 31)

{Operation Failed}
The requested operation was unsuccessful.

I sent a support request to EDIMAX.
_____________________________________________________

15-July-2014 - Review Update:

Edimax AC600 Wireless LAN USB Adapter issue resolution.
_____________________________________________________
I received the following instructions from Edimax support.

The latest driver for EW-7811UTC can be downloaded here.
http://www.edimax.us/download/drivers/Win81/EW-7822UAC_1.0.1.9.zip

[ Note: Don't worry about the filename. It is a common driver for both EW-7811UTC and EW-7822UAC ]

Here's some steps for you to follow:
. uninstall driver/utility installed previously
. remove the EW-7811UTC from your computer, i.e. unplug it
. unzip the downloaded file into a temporary directory
. run the setup.exe file
. after that, if reboot is required, do so
. plug the EW-7811UTC back again
. go to Control Panel (Category view) > System and Security > System > Device Manager
. make sure you see our adapter can be found under "Network adapter" there (see below)
_____________________________________________________

After following instructions from Edimax support.

> Network adapters
> Edimax AC600 Wireless LAN USB Adapter <: is missing

> Other devices
> 8-2.11n WLAN Adapter <: is present but not working.

8-2.11n WLAN Adapter Properties

Device status:
The drivers for this device are not installed. (Code 28)
There are no compatible drivers for this device.

I clicked to update driver software and clicked on the downloads folder.

Windows installed and displayed the following.
"Update Driver Software - Edimax AC600 Wireless LAN USB Adapter".

"Windows has successfully updated your driver software".
"Windows has finished installing the driver software for this device:"
"Edimax AC600 Wireless LAN USB Adapter"

After completion of the steps above, Device Manager updated the list of devices, now the following is displayed correctly.

> Network adapters
> Edimax AC600 Wireless LAN USB Adapter <: Added!!!

> Entered WiFi Key: xxxxxxxxx

Wi-Fi 2 Status
Connection
IPv4 Connectivity: Internet
SSID:
Speed: 260 - 325 Mbps
_____________________________________________________
The issue is now resolved after completing the additional steps above.

The Edimax W-7811 UTC AC600 now allows my HP Laptop to access both 11AC (5GHz Band) in addition to the 11n (2.4GHz Band). The speeds anywhere from 30% to 60% of the stated maximum speeds depending upon the distance from the Router and received signal strength.

I can only give a *** rating due to the additional effort required to get an updated driver and also the additional troubleshooting steps required to successfully update the driver.

Vojislav Vlasic

Raspberry Pi 2 wireless adapters test

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

Bought a couple of usb wireless adapters so I could figure out which one works the best with my Raspberry Pi 2.
These are the ones I bought and tested:
- Panda 300Mbps Wireless N USB Adapter with High Gain Antenna
- TP-LINK TL-WN823N 300Mbps Wireless Mini USB Adapter
- Edimax EW-7811UTC AC600 Dual-Band USB Adapter

I wasn't testing the range but I can say that Panda would definitely have the best range of them all, signal strength was better then with the other two.
I'm using my D-link Dir-868l router which supports both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

These are the transfer rates I managed to achieve (All speeds are in MB/s):

Windows 7 laptop (I attached these wireless adapters and installed the newest drivers)
Edimax 5GHz 18-20
Edimax 2.4GHz 5,4-5,5
Tp link 2.4GHz 6,5-6,7
Panda 2.4GHz 8,1-8,3

Raspberry Pi 2 with OPENELEC 5.95.5
Edimax 5GHz 6,2-6,4
Edimax 2.4GHz 2,7-3
Tp link 2.4GHz 3,6-3,9
Panda 2.4GHz 2-2,6

Raspberry Pi 2 with OSMC 2015.08-1
Edimax 5GHz 6,1-6,3
Edimax 2.4GHz 5-5,3
Tp link 2.4GHz 3,7-4
Panda 2.4GHz 2,2-2,7

Important notes:
The vast majority of manufacturers tend to state that they support Linux.
That is technically true, that wireless adapter will work with Linux, but how will it perform?
That is a very important question, since Linux drivers tend to be pretty bad in comparison to Windows drivers.
Usually you just hope the wireless adapter will work without any freezes or other weird issues.

As you can see, the test results show how much slower the wireless adapters will work when they're not connected to a Windows machine!
The speeds achieved are sad to say the least.

OPENELEC and OSMC get updated from time to time and sometimes they include some new or updated drivers which should speed things up a little bit, but the problem is that usually no one updates the linux drivers, they come as is and that's it.
These teams usually don't have either time or knowledge/experience to fix these drivers.
And it seems that Realtek is the worst of all chipset manufactures since their drivers are the worst, unfortunately their chipsets are in vast majority of wireless adapters.

Conclusion:
If you need a wireless adapter for a Windows machine any one of these will work.
For 2.4GHz Panda was the best choice and for 5GHz will work nicely.

If you need a wireless adapter for a Raspberry Pi 2 that can achieve some decent transfer speed stay clear of all three.

I am yet to find a wireless adapter which will work as I expect it to, at this point I'm not looking for hardware part but the software counterpart (Driver) that works as it should, although I'm not holding my breath, I doubt there is one.

3 people found this helpful

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