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South Africa, Pretoria
1 Level
685 Review
39 Karma

Review on TRENDnet TEW-649UB Mini USB 2.0 Adapter - Ultra-Fast Wireless N 150 Mbps by Junee Mauck

Revainrating 1 out of 5

Terrible connection speed with this adapter

I have a Linksys EA6500 Dual Band Wireless AC Router. I wanted to increase the connection speed compared to the built in DELL Wireless Mini Card in a DELL 1400 Vostro with XP SP3. The built-in Mini-Card has reached a maximum transfer rate of 54Mbps. The TEW-649UB is advertised with up to 300 Mbit/s. Lots of things can affect the wireless connection, but I had two cards (one built in) and TRENDnet. I've used them in the same places under the same conditions and got terrible results with TRENDnet. The WLAN router is downstairs in the home office. I use my laptops in two different rooms upstairs. One room is directly above the router, the other across the house. In both rooms, the built-in WLAN card ensures a "very good" (5 bars) signal strength and a constant transmission rate of 54 Mbit/s. In both of the upstairs rooms, I never exceeded a "medium" to "low" signal strength and transfer rate BELOW 54 Mbps with the TRENDnet adapter. Most of the time I got between 17 and 32 Mps. That's about half of what I get from an old Dell built-in mini card I was looking to replace. The only time I was able to get "excellent" (95%) signal strength and a transfer rate of 300Mbps was when I went downstairs with my laptop and sat in a chair about a meter from the Lynksys router . I have a signal strength of 45% and a transfer rate of 73-80Mbps about halfway up the stairs. I have three other laptops, all of which offer excellent signal strength and data transfer rates in excess of 130Mbps to and from my router when used in the upstairs rooms. TRENDnet's performance was so poor it's being brought back.

Pros
  • Certified
Cons
  • I have nothing wrong with it, everything is fine