Edimax Wireless Hi-Gain USB Adapter review

Increase your wireless network's range and throughput with Edimax's high-power USB adapter.

Wi-Fi is great when it works, but you can bet that even the most reliable wireless router has trouble pumping out its wireless signal to at least one room in your house. Edimax's Wireless Hi-Gain USB Adapter aims to solve that problem for a single PC or laptop.

Most Wi-Fi kits use a relatively low power antenna, which is fine for most situations, but there can be signal problems in large buildings or houses with thick walls. The Edimax Wi-Fi adaptor uses a much more sensitive antenna that's capable of locking onto weak signals from a router and in theory, could give a usable Wi-Fi connection where there otherwise may be none. The antenna is removable and uses a standard connector, so you could even use a more powerful external antenna with the Wi-Fi adapter if you wanted to. The antenna makes the adaptor rather awkward to use though, so you might want to connect it to your PC using a desktop USB stand or an extension cable.

The adapter is controlled via the supplied Ralink wireless LAN utility and this very basic-looking application is a little tricky to use. For example, it scans for wireless networks and lets you join one, prompting you for any encryption passwords you might need, but doesn't remember the connection for you. Instead, you have to create a profile for your network and set it as the default. Fortunately, you don't have to use Ralink - just right-click its System Tray icon and select to use the more familiar Windows XP Wireless Zero Configuration utility instead. This is far easier to use and integrates much better with Windows.

We didn't see a huge increase in performance when using the adapter and it only improved upon our laptop's built-in Wi-Fi by a small amount. We got average data transfer speeds of 17Mbit/s at close range and 16.5Mbit/s 15m away from the router with the Edimax, compared to 15Mbit/s and 14.4Mbit/s with the built-in Wi-Fi. It's also worth noting that having a USB device with a large antenna poking from one side of your laptop is ungainly and you'd be better off with a high-power PC Card Wi-Fi adapter if you need to connect to a weak signal. Desktop PC users are better served by the device though, since you can just plug it into a rear USB port where its out of harm's way.