Looking for a decent USB Wireless

[NeoKronos]

Hello all

I'm looking to purchase a USB wireless adapter to work in conjunction with my laptop's built in wifi. Preferably one with an external boosted antenna.

Ie. I'll use the internal wifi where signals are strong, and plug in the USB one if I get a weak signal/drop signal.

Laptop is the Lenovo y510p. I know I could replace the wifi card after flashing the bios, but I have a feeling the antennae in the shell are badly placed, especially within a metal chassis.

Any ideas?

[droid0121]

The bad thing about the usb ones is the stick out kind of far. I do own a Linksys AE3000 dual band usb that works kind of well. Bad thing it is wide. If you have two usb ports next to each other it will block the other one. The other thing I would say is before you plug in the usb wireless disable the intel in device manager. Don't uninstall just disable. The enable it when your going to use it again.

[zenvendof]

Get something with 3 antennas so you can do up to 450mbps, something with external antenna that you can direct towards your AP. Some USB Wifi has a short cable allowing you to position it a little. Best bet is going to 802.11ac, you get higher bandwidth and directional beam tech.

[Gorby]

Check out this site. They have decent collection of nice adapters with sma connectors.

[bigfndeal]

I am using the dlink ac usb adapter as the primary wireless for my y510p until I get rid of the whitelist. Its been a godsend for me. Very easy to use and very quick.

[nnatski]

The issue with the y510 is that the antenna is only rated for 2.4GHz operations. The antenna must match be tuned and calibrated for operations in 5GHz mode, if you try to use it in 5GHz the performance would be pretty poor. If you wish to proceed with the internal pcie card, you don't have to buy those cards with 5GHz support (11ac included).