Sonnet Aria Extreme N review

Sonnet's Aria Extreme N is a Draft-N upgrade for your laptop's internal wireless adaptor. It is primarily designed for use with Mac laptops (fitting instructions and tools are included), but any laptop with a Mini PCI-E slot can be upgraded.

There's no easy way to tell if your laptop is compatible without taking it apart first, so this is an upgrade for experienced users only. How easy it is to take apart depends on the model. Generally speaking, smaller manufacturers such as Rock buy a chassis with easily removable access panels. Big manufacturers such as HP and Dell assemble products in a factory, so the whole laptop has to be taken apart. This can be a difficult process, and you may damage your computer.

The Aria Extreme N is easy to fit once you have gained access to the Mini PCI-E slot. It has three antenna connections, although you need to use only those numbered 1 and 2 if you haven't got three antennae wires in your laptop. Make a note of where the existing cables are plugged into your laptop's original adaptor, so you can plug the cables into the right connectors on the Extreme N.

Sadly, there aren't any drivers in the box, and Sonnet's website was no help. In the end, we had to download the Atheros AR5008 drivers from www.atheros.cz. Once installed, we were very impressed with the performance when testing with a Buffalo Wireless-N Nfiniti Router. At 1m, we saw an incredible 72.02Mbit/s at close range and 25.26Mbit/s at 25m. This is faster than Intel's onboard Draft-N adaptors and Buffalo's own Nfiniti CardBus adaptor. Results vary between routers, however. With Linksys's WAG325N router, we saw only 28.5Mbit/s at 1m. Still, this is better than any 802.11g connection.

The Aria Extreme N is a fast, neat upgrade to a laptop that doesn't have Draft N, but it's expensive and difficult to install. Unless you're desperate to have an internal wireless adaptor, a Draft-N CardBus adaptor from the same manufacturer as your router is cheaper and easier.