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!