Review: TP-Link 300Mbps High Gain Wireless N USB adapter

I'm a great fan of low-cost networking kit. Perhaps it's because I remember spending almost £100 on my first router, a four-port Linksys 100Mbps model that didn't even have wireless, and because in my magazine work we regularly played with stuff costing ten times that amount.

So when TP-Link offered me this budget adapter to have a look at, I couldn't resist. At £15 ex. VAT (cheapest price on Froogle is £16.31 inc. VAT at the time of writing), it's not really a rock-bottom price - you can pick up 802.11n dongles for under a tenner (like my own Tenda W311U from Ebuyer). At that price you usually get single-stream 150Mbps 11n models, although some 300Mbps models are starting to appear for under £10. The TP-Link TL-WN822N claims to offer not only full dual-stream 300Mbps performance, but superior range courtesy of its twin high gain (3dBi) external antennas.

That sounds like something crying out to be tested, so I was happy to oblige. To test network throughput, I used Passmark's Performance Test, which is a great general purpose benchmarking tool. The Advanced Networking module can measure TCP (or UDP) throughput for fixed or variable block sizes - I leave it at the default of 16,384-byte fixed blocks for TCP performance. It's not writing to the hard disk, so it gives a pretty good idea of raw network performance.

But first things first. The TL-WN822N comes smartly packaged with a 1.5m USB cable, quick installation leaflet and an 8cm mini-CD with the drivers. I tried plugging it into Windows 7 without the drivers installed to see whether Windows 7 could identify it, but no joy. Even worse, the drivers on the CD were unsigned, so I grabbed a set of newer WHQL-certified drivers from TP-Link's website. There's an optional client utility included for use with XP, but this doesn't install for Windows Vista/7.

At least the packaging doesn't look cheap

It's an extremely ugly product, with a single large green status light, a QSS button (TP-Link's WPS-compatible one-touch connect system) and two adjustable antennas that can rotate 180 degrees. The the USB cable comes out of the front, which isn't very elegant. It measures 9 x 7 x 1.5cm with the antennas folded. It supports WEP, WPA-PSK and WPA2-PSK encryption.

After installation, the adapter connected happily to my Fritz!Box 7270 router at 11n speeds of 300Mbps. Checking in device manager, I found that you can set the 2.4GHz mode to almost any combination of standards - I set it to 11n-only mode for my tests. I compared it to my cheapo Tenda 150Mbps dongle and a Fritz WLAN USB Stick N (which is a 300Mbps dual-band 2.4/5GHz model).

My test environment is a fairly typical (well, for tech writers at least..) domestic setup, with the router on my desk in the living room. There is one room (two brick cavity walls and one breeze-block partition wall) between the router and the back garden, which is where I do the range tests. Conveniently, the bottom of the garden is 25m away, and not in line of sight of the router. There are also many other Wi-Fi routers broadcasting in the neighbourhood - on a normal day up to 10 SSIDs can be seen.


Near-field performance

I tested near-field performance with the adapters one metre away from the router, then tested them all again at 25m. I used my Acer Aspire One netbook running Windows 7 for all the tests.

TP-Link at 1m

FRitz WLAN at 1m

Tenda at 1m

Aspire One internal at 1m

This was quite surprising. The Fritz adapter managed 62.5Mbps, the Tenda 60.5Mbps and the TP-Link a whopping 73Mbps. The internal Atheros 11g adapter on the Aspire One managed 20.9Mbps.  The Tenda shows the most stable performance, and also highlights the fact the 150Mbps adapters are actually very good value, and with a strong signal can give almost identical performance to a 300Mbps adapter (where they fall down is on resilience to interference, which can affect range in noisy environments). But it's an impressive start for the TP-Link.

Far-field performance

At 25m, as expected the graphs look very different. In my normal test location I have found very few products able to give decent results, and in this test the Tenda dongle could not even establish a connection.

TP-Link at 25m

Fritz WLAN at 25m

Aspire One at 25m

The Fritz (4.9Mbps) and Aspire One (3.9Mbps) adapters give similar mediocre results, whereas the TP-Link returned a very impressive 11Mbps. Checking the signal strengths using Inssider, it confirmed that the TP-Link was able to pick up much fainter signals. Also, with the USB cable and adjustable antennas, you have more freedom to position it to get a decent signal. As you can see from the graph, there were still some pretty bad dropouts, but it never lost the connection completely. The Aspire One took several attempts to complete the test.

I think the figures above pretty much speak for themselves; if you can live with its odd looks, the TP-Link TL-WN822N delivers impressive 802.11n performance, and at this price you can't really go wrong.

Contact details
Web: TP-Link TL-WN822N
Phone: +44 (0) 845 147 0017


Note: This is an original review by me. I received no financial compensation for it, and the sample product was returned to the manufacturer after testing.


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