which wifi adaptor for 200mbps connection?

[garymcq23]

hi everyone I'm just looking a bit of help purchasing a Wi-Fi adapter. I'm moving into a new home and will no longer be able to use a wired connection unfortunately

i will be gaming on it so i would like to have as little latency a possible and will be on a 200 mbps connection with virgin. Any help would be appreciated thanks?

 

[WJA96]

USB? PCIe? What capabilities does your router have? WiFi5, WiFi6?

And I’ve literally never been in a building where I couldn’t run a cable. Even a flat on the 38th floor of a tower block (pretty easy that one, actually).

 

[Turn]

Depends on your distance to the router. If you're close by then 5Ghz will be a good option. If not 2.4Ghz will be your only option and don't expect too much from it.

 

[Hulkster]

If it's just for your gaming machine, ave you considered homeplugs/powerline adaptors?

They are inexpensive and will give you a very solid connection as long as the underlying electrics are decent!

 

[garymcq23]

thanks for the reply's lads i can use ether pcie or usb which ever is better im guessing pcie? its not that i cant run a wire to the pc its more the missus would kill me if i did lol. i was thinking of get a Huawei ax3 (quad-core) which would give me Wi-Fi 6 the router will be downstairs directly under the pc which will be upstairs.

 

[garymcq23]

i didn't think about using a powerline adaptor would that be better than Wi-Fi? its a new build house to all the wiring should be perfect

 

[Hulkster]

It might be, hard to say for certain - however in my experience, it's not generally any worse, maybe some slightly higher ping times. I have never had any issues with it in games/voice chat. They used to get a bad rap years ago when it was new but these days it's generally a good option.

I am also in a new build and i'm just a bit up and over from where the wifi hub lives under the stairs. I'm on BT FTTP and have the Smart Hub 2 - the connection is very good over WiFi, but my PC doesn't have a WiFi adapter. In the past, trying USB adapters has given truly terrible performance (I've never tried PCI-e, though) so I went to powerline and it solved my issue. I've actually been using a spare WiFi mesh system since moving to go PC > Cable to mesh base > wireless beam > main mesh base > router - the reason being that my powerline adapters are only 100mbps as that's all I needed at the time. This works surprisingly well too.

When I have looked at which wifi adapter to get that would actually deliver acceptable performance, they are generally coming in pretty pricey. I have a WiFi6 access point, so I was tempted to try a pci-e wifi6 card, but not got round to that yet.

Having said that I just did some tests with my adapters and pings are generally between 15-22ms; a little higher than my Mac on WiFi which is usually 14-16ms. Speed wise it's topping out at the full 100mbps.

I actually plan to get some better (gigabit) adapters for long term, but not sure if that would result in a ping drop but also I am not too bothered if it doesn't.

One thing I would say, if you do go powerline, you tend to need to dedicate a wall socket for them - you can't use them on an extension - many units however have power passthrough, so there is a plug socket on the front of the adapter, so you don't lose the use of the socket for other things.

 

[montymint]

i didn't think about using a powerline adaptor would that be better than Wi-Fi? its a new build house to all the wiring should be perfect

Powerline was garbage for me compared to wifi, like 16Mb v 300Mb

 

[Armageus]

i didn't think about using a powerline adaptor would that be better than Wi-Fi? its a new build house to all the wiring should be perfect

In most cases it isn't. The benefit is that the connection is normally more reliable (as it's wired - although the reliability is due to a lot of background error correction etc going on), and the latency can be better than wifi. Transfer rates are normally much worse than wifi however.

the reason being that my powerline adapters are only 100mbps as that's all I needed at the time.

I actually plan to get some better (gigabit) adapters for long term, but not sure if that would result in a ping drop but also I am not too bothered if it doesn't.

Your powerline adapters aren't 100mbps only - as there wasn't a 100Mbps Homeplug standard. They do however only have a 100Mbps ethernet port on them, as after the huge overhead in Powerline transfer, 100Mbps is still more than enough.
Even the higher end AV2 1300Mbps powerline adapters best case throughput is only around 500Mbps after overheads, and that's before adding in any wiring along the way.