ASUS USB-AC68 AC1900 Dual-Band USB 3.0 WiFi Adapter, Cradle Included

I must say, I was very skeptical about this device, having had plenty of past mediocre experiences with other usb wifi adapters and seeing all the negative reviews about this one overheating, disconnecting, dying, or even being brought to its knees at one point by the Windows Creators Update. But this thing, has so far exceeded all expectations. Using the 5 Ghz band is where this adapter really shines. Being in a room in this house where some ungodly field of interference has plagued me for many years is no longer an issue with this device. The stability is just insane. Any pro gamer who plays first person shooters knows that it is not about the bandwidth of a connection that matters but the stability by which frames of data are consistently delivered. I have provided an image just to show how smooth the green curve for the download speed is (this is literally what a direct lan line connection looks like). Upload speeds are a bit choppy when increasing, but this is certainly nothing new with most modern devices. My ISP currently allows me up to 400 Mbits download speeds (upload is like 25 Mbits). I am also about 30 feet away from the router. Though this might not seem far, keep in mind that I am dealing with some crazy unknown wall of interference that hampers most wifi devices and am using a default ISP router (Sagecom) from Spectrum at the other end. My Samsung S8 on the 5ghz band can reach around 150 Mbits. This utility certainly has it considerably beat. So I am pretty happy with those results. Installation is very straight forward. All you have to do is simply plug it in and the default Windows 10 wifi driver takes over. The default driver appears to have been updated to support AC devices as I am getting up to 500-700 Mbits of data throughput with the limitations I am experiencing (this device should be able to push over 1 Gbit of throughput in most other situations from what I have witnessed). I have experimented with both the dated ASUS driver and Realtek driver to find that the default driver was the best option of the bunch. Neither the ASUS or the Realtek driver saw any real improvement in bandwidth or throughput. The Realtek driver in fact caused some problematic lag spikes upon attempting to uninstall and revert back to the original Windows driver. This was remedied by a netsh winsock reset. All in all, I am happy with this purchase. The amazing performance of the ASUS PCE-AC88 on another desktop is what led me to take a chance with this more expensive usb adapter. Was it worth it? So far yes, yes indeed. Let's just hope it doesn't run into any of the previously mentioned issues. Otherwise it will stay at 5 stars.

3/19/2020 - Product review update: I've had this product for 18 months now, still working fine, no issues at all. 1/10/2019 - Product review update: I've had this product for several months now and am still very happy with it. Absolutely no issues, still getting very decent download/upload speeds and have made my wife happy with her computer again. Averaging 22-27MB's on the downloads and 19-25MB's on the uploads (which is 2 to 3 times better than my previous product) with a 100MB ISP service. Pings are averaging around 15-19ms. Note: this testing is with a speed test service not associated with my ISP provider. I may be wrong but my ISP provider's "speed test" always seems to bring back very high results which I don't think are "real world". My computer is about 50 feet from my router with several walls in between (standard wallboard/wood frame house). Hope this helps. Initial Review: Bought this item to replace a much older product that, at the time, seemed acceptable. However, when my Internet Service Provider "upped" the down service speed from 25MB to 50MB at no additional charge I found that I couldn't take advantage of it. I already have an ASUS router (recently purchased) so I decided to stay with the ASUS product line, especially after reading the favorable reviews for this product. After receiving the product, I installed the CD drivers and immediately updated them from the ASUS website (not sure if I just simply duplicated what I already had done but did it anyway). Plugged the ASUS unit in, navigated to my Wi-Fi page and found my router. Input the password and I was up and running. The speed is definitely faster than I had before, not sure if I'm getting all of the "bang" available but it certainly does what I need it to do. I'm sure that someone who knows how to do this better than myself could "fine tune" the installation. One minor issue with it was that it seemed to take a couple of tries for it to "remember" the link after I powered down the PC. I had to "reconnect" but it did eventually "remember" the link and now works fine. Not sure if this is an "idiot in front of the screen" error or something with Windows 10. Hope this helps any other "novice" looking to install this device.

Initially I connected the ASUS USB-AC68 AC1900 Dual-Band USB 3.0 WiFi Adapter to a USB 3.0 port on my desktop using a somewhat long but very good high quality USB extender cable. The USB-AC68 worked great, except when it didn't....I kept getting periodic disconnect issues as others have reported. So, debugging ... I decided to remove the USB 3.0 Extension cable completely and plugged the WiFi unit directly into a free USB 3.0 port on my desktop. Result: I have not gotten a single disconnect issue since and it has been many, many months now. Evidently there must be a noise or signal quality issue that develops going through the USB cable from the device. If you are having disconnect trouble I recommend you find a free USB port close to the motherboard (or make one) and let the AC-68 live there for your wireless connection. As an FYI I use a Gigabyte motherboard. But, my WiFi AC-68 unit is plugged into an ANKER USB 3.0 extension board which provides me access to a few more USB 3.0 ports. Hope this helps. This is a good unit when it works. I should mention that this USB WiFi dongle connects to my "ASUS Whole Home Dual-Band AiMesh Router (AC1900) for Mesh Wifi System (Up to 1900 Mbps) - AiProtection Network Security by Trend Micro, Adaptive QoS & Parental Control (RT-AC68U)" as the household WiFi router. This is unit is located 1 floor below where I connect with this USB WiFi dongle.

Very solid, no real complaints. No dropped connections and full wifi signal. I have gigabit ethernet and ac 1900wifi with rogers ignite. Speed test 168 download speed, 30mb/s upload speed. My AC-1200 gave me almost same results (but was unstable with lots of wifi drops). Best Device Manager > Network Adaptors > Asus USB-68 settings > advanced tab Adaptivity Para 0 AMfactor ...mode 2 BeamCap HT ..TX/RX (bottom Option) EnableAdapt.. AUTO HLDiff... 7 L2H... Auto or F5 Ldpc.. & HT LD.... (bottom option) QoS Support Support QoS StbcCap & HT STBC (bottom option) USB RF select BY DEV/Host USB SF Mode Disable VHT 2.4G Enable Wireless Mode IEEE 802.11a/n/ac * this seems to work ok with power management enabled!

Aunque es un poco cara, da muy buenos resultados. Ojo con la instalación, no es tan fácil como dice en la caja. Lo volvería a comprar

There’s no current driver for Mac, so it’s useless. If anyone has access to a working driver for Mac, then please share!

Excellent product

Supero mis espectativas. Excelente conectividad.