NETGEAR Certified Refurbished AC1200 Wi-Fi USB Adapter High Gain Dual Band USB 3.0 (A6210-10000R)

I purchased a ASUS RT-AC68U Wireless-AC1900 Router a couple of years back to replace a D-Link model that had finally died after some years of use. At the time I bought the router AC1200 adapters weren't widely available & were quite expensive as well. I made due with wired connects mostly + a wireless N adapter at 1st, then eventually to the Edimax EW-7811UAC AC600 USB Adapter, which typically tested at about 30Mps down/5-8Mbps up on the 5Ghz band. I noticed that my tablet(s) and phone in the same room as the Edimax-equipped PC were a LOT faster to my router with speeds of 100+Mbps down/10-12 Mbps up (I'm only guaranteed 10Mbps up by my provider).So I shopped around and noticed that pretty much all of the available wifi adapters (and routers as well) have their share of success and failures. The Netgear A6210-100PAS was no different but I chose it over the competing Asus model due to slightly better positive reviews. FWIW I have owned/own many Asus products so that didn't make choosing any easier.Setup was fairly straightforward, just the usual driver install prior to plugging in the adapter to a open USB 3.0 port. I obtained the drivers from the Netgear website and didn't bother with the included disk. The driver installed fine on Windows 10 64bit and works great as of this review.I do appreciate that Netgear provides both a "driver-only" and a "driver+software" option - there's already way too much unnecessary bloat that comes with so many devices these days so it's nice to have a bare-bones alternative.The speed of the Netgear adapter is roughly 3X that of the Edimax but that's not exactly fair given the fact that both adapters use different standards and different USB interfaces - USB 2.0 for the Edimax & USB 3.0 for the Netgear.Pros:Amazing speed without any settings changes/tweaks (see attached screenshot)Adjustable antennaReasonable priceDid I mention how fast it is?Cons:Fairly large compared to other adapters I compared it to (Not really an issue for me as it sits on a desktop)No activity light - just an illuminated WPS buttonUSB cable could be longerNone of my "cons" were bad enough to take away any stars - the performance more than makes up for any negatives.Side note: I didn't purchase the A6210-100PAS through Amazon (whose price was 10% cheaper) as I had a gift card from a big box store.

Netgear AC1200 Wi-Fi USB Adapter High Gain Dual Band USB 3.0 (A6210-100PAS)I have three laptops. One is old and just plain was born slow. One is new but I didn't know until just recently when I decided to do home networking that it's network card wasn't working correctly which was the reason I was constantly dropping my internet.Now in comes the fully functional laptop to save the day. When talking to a support tech to find out my problem losing my internet connection he informed me of the wireless USB WiFi Adapter. He said my internet bundle should get me speeds of 100-120mbps down and with this USB device I could easily reach that speed, even wirelessly. The Adapter he suggested was another brand but I decided that since I have a Netgear Nighthawk R7000 router and a Netgear CM600 cable modem I should just stick with Netgear devices so chose this one.Before connecting my speed tests were very slow, I mean down to 25-60mbps wireless down, depending on which laptop was used. When using a direct connection I topped out at 117mbps. The installation was very simple and the instructions were easy to follow. I am running Win 10 and have anywhere from 16 to 24 devices connected to my router with an average of 14 running simultaneously.From the moment I clicked on the speed test button I knew I had made the right choice. I topped out at 130mbps with a finishing speed of 121mbps. The poor old slow laptop was hitting 115-117mbps and the one with the bad network card even reached 117mbps also.Don't believe those that say this Adapter won't work with Windows 10 or when connected to the 3.0 USB connection because that is what I am using. I am hooked up with a Toshiba Satellite S70 Series originally running windows 8.1 and upgraded to windows 10. It has two external 17" monitors and two portable external 1Tb hard drives attached.Doing the speed test the router was supplying a wireless signal to: a Security System, three wireless security cameras, three laptops, two tablets, two cell phones, one FireStick box and one FireStick Stick, one 55inch LG SmartTV and a BluRay player used mostly for Netflix (15 connected devices) I say............You can't go wrong with this item. Be sure to have it join your home network so all devices get the signal.