Edimax EW-7822UAC Wireless AC1200 Dual-band USB 3.0 Adapter, Complies to Draft 802.11ac Standard, Delivers More Than Two Times Faster Wi-Fi Speed Than 802.11n, With Adjustable Foldaway Antenna for Optimum High Performance

Pros: At first it was fine...

Cons: Keeps dropping the internet connection.

Does not get the speed they say it does.

Other Thoughts: For the money, I'd upgrade to another one. Don't buy this one

Manufacturer Response:

Dear customer,

We are sorry for the difficulty you had experienced.

Are you using USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 port for the EW-7822UAC AC adapter?

Can we get more information from you? We need to know the brand and model of your Wi-Fi router.

Please contact our tech support at (408)988-6092 or write an email to " support@edimax.us ". Our tech support team will assist you with the issue.

Best regards,
Edimax Customer Service Team

Pros: Literally tripled my internet speed
Antennae
USB 3.0!
Easy out of box, no hassle, instillation!

Cons: Drivers HAD to be installed via. disc, over the internet or on my desktop the drivers couldn't be installed.

Other Thoughts: Packaging seemed a little odd?
Regardless, the product is Beautiful.
I ran a speed test prior to installing the adapter with my old adapter, the d.l. speed was a mere 2.7?
After I got the new adapter all setup, installed which was actually out of box easy, It kicked my Download speed All the way up to 9 and some change.
Satisfied!

Pros: Well built, doesn't feel cheap, probably the fastest USB 802.11ac adapter on the market.

Cons: Does not achieve advertised speeds, questionable drivers.

Other Thoughts: Edimax support emailed me and stated that the max this adapter will get is 433Mbps. This is pretty much in line with what I am seeing and since this adapter is pretty amazing anyway, I will bump it up to 4/5 stars. If Edimax sets an example for the rest of the industry by being more clear about this and not throwing out numbers that are "theoretically" possible but not remotely achievable, I would be happy to give it 5/5. I still have issues with the 5GHz connection on my second floor that I plan to resolve with the ASUS directional antenna. I cannot say the Edimax is at fault for this and they offered to help me troubleshoot this issue but I am going to take the shotgun approach first. I'd buy another one of these if I needed it.

Pros: Well built, doesn't feel cheap, probably the fastest USB 802.11ac adapter on the market.

Cons: Does not achieve advertised speeds, questionable drivers.

Other Thoughts: I seem to be the first person reviewing this adapter and while I am giving it 3/5 eggs, it is probably the fastest USB adapter on the market right now. The reason I am not giving it better than 3/5 is because it is not as fast as advertised. I have emailed Edimax support and if they can fix the issue, I will gladly up this to 5/5 stars.

My test environment is this product connected to a Samsung Series 7 Gamer (NP700G7C-S01US) laptop running Windows 8 Pro with the latest drivers from the manufacturer. Windows 8 detects the adapter as a USB 3.0 connected device. The router this is connecting to is an ASUS RT-AC66U and tests were performed with a straight line to the router with no obstructions in the same room. For optimum test results I used netperf from the laptop to a Linux server sitting on the router using a wired gigabit connection. This cuts out the storage from the equation and the test was strictly network bandwidth.

The laptop showed the wireless connection as 867Mpbs as expected. A 1 minute netperf run had the following results:

netperf -H 192.168.1.69 -l 60 -t TCP_STREAM
TCP STREAM TEST from 0.0.0.0 () port 0 AF_INET to 192.168.1.69 () port 0 AF_INET
: histogram : interval : demo
Recv Send Send
Socket Socket Message Elapsed
Size Size Size Time Throughput
bytes bytes bytes secs. 10^6bits/sec

87380 65536 65536 60.03 407.11

The key number here is the 407.11Mbps which is less than half of the advertised 867Mbps. The connection was very stable and never dipped erratically. The Netgear A6200 couldn't touch this when I tested it in the same environment maxing out around 300Mbps with an incredibly erratic stream.

The Edimax adapter seems to be very sensitive to obstructions when I moved up to the second floor of my house and forcing the signal to pass through several walls. The speed was still a respectable 300Mbps but while doing some online gaming the adapter would completely drop the stream for about 10 seconds before returning back to normal, this was fairly frequent making gaming unreasonable on the 5GHz SSID. I had to switch the 2.4GHz SSID for a reliable gaming connection.

The Netgear A6200 faired better with obstructions but was barely able to hang on to 200MBps. Surprisingly, the stream was even more erratic with the Netgear but was able to sustain gaming with less of an impact on the 5GHz SSID.

I think the Edimax is lacking mature drivers and is likely the cause of the issues with obstructions. The Netgear has been out longer and seems to be able to handle this better.

While my background is in networking I don't claim to be an expert on everything and if someone see's a flaw with my method, please don't hesitate to let me know. I hope Edimax get's back to me with a solution to the lack of advertised speed so I can give this adapter a better score.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Customer,

We appreciate your feedback of experiencing Edimax EW-7822UAC 11AC wireless USB adapter. If you need any further information or support from us, please feel free to contact us at support@edimax.us . We will be happy to provide you the necessary supports.

Regarding your question of the maximum wireless data rate, according to the standard of draft IEEE802.11ac, the maximum wireless data rate is up to 867Mbps theoretically. The actual rate will be affected by various factors such network environment, configuration, link overhead, and wi-fi congestion…etc, to reduce its efficiency to certain percentage. For 11ac USB 2.0 adapter, the real data throughput is up to 250Mbps in common network environment. Our USB 3.0 EW-7822UAC should able to achieve up to 433Mbps. From your test result, our adapter reached 407.11Mbps which is closed to 433Mbps. The performance is 160% more than 11ac USB 2.0 adapter.

Regarding the driver for EW-7822UAC, we always keep fine tuning for different applications and environment. Any new updated driver will be uploaded to our official website for users to download. From your experiment feedback, we would muck like to investigate further regarding the issue you mentioned “ doing some online gaming, the adapter would completely drop the stream for about 10 seconds before returning back to normal “. We need more information from you such as which online game was used and how many walls between your router and EW-7822UAC at 2nd floor in order to diagnose the issue and to provide possible solutions for the problem.
Please contact our tech support at (408)-988-6092 or write an email to " support@edimax.us ". We look forward to the opportunity to serve you.


Best regards,
Edimax Tech Support Team