TP-Link AX1800 Wi-Fi 6 Dual Antennas High Gain Bluetooth 5.2
TP-Link AX1800 Wi-Fi 6 Dual Antennas High Gain Bluetooth 5.2 PCIe Adapter, Dual-Band, Low-Profile Bracket, MU-MIMO, Low- Latency Gaming, Supports Windows 10/11, Highly Secure WPA3 (Archer TX20E),Black
Cutting-Edge Security
WPA3, the latest network security standard, provides more secure and individualized encryption in personal password safety, protects your network from wireless hacking and ensure your wireless connection is completely secure while surfing the web and shopping online.
High-Gain Antennas for Broader Coverage
Two powerful signal-boosting high-gain antennas greatly extend existing Wi-Fi coverage, offering a fast, smooth online experience from farther away.
Bluetooth 5.2 Compatible
The latest Bluetooth 5.2 Technology, achieves speeds 2× faster and coverage 4× broader than Bluetooth 4.2, to perfectly coordinate with your game controllers, headphones, and other Bluetooth devices.
| Weight: | 230 g |
| Dimensions: | 12.7 x 12 x 10.8 cm; 230 Grams |
| Brand: | TP-Link |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | TP-Link |
| Dimensions: | 12.7 x 12 x 10.8 cm; 230 Grams |
Was looking for a decent adaptor with heat sink as the original one was cutting out due to getting to warm and this has solved that issue, has great heat disapatio
It gives me 500mbps on my network, which is perfect for gaming. Looks alright, but its so far in the computer it doesnt matter. Was very easy to fit, just have to know where it goes and voila, definitely recommend
You can get really strong signal and fast speed
I got up to 500mbps download with this!
Very easy to install and I havent found any problems with it even after a long time of use!
It is very important to install the correct drivers from the TP-link website, the ones windows downloads automatically are very bad for performance. As with any wireless card, the performance will be based on the WIFI speeds in your house, but I have no issues with disconnecting and a ping of around 30ms
After 3 hours of searching downloading and opening my pc i finally found out how to install
when you install this card do not install it into the smaller pcie port
instead you want to install it into the larger one ( the ones more commonly used for graphics cards )
I had mine installed in the smaller one and it wouldn’t work whatever i tried, soon as i moved it to the larger port it worked first time, don’t worry about it not fitting the whole thing just line it up and it should work
Previous card was an old cheap and cheerful Intel-based card and that just worked, no downloading drivers, inserting disks etc. This card comes with a CD (hidden under the tray in the box) and won’t just plug-and-play.
Who in this day and age has a CD drive?!
More importantly why can’t it just plug-and-play?
Tried searching on the TP-Link site for a driver as mentioned in other reviews, found one but it didn’t seem to believe the card was installed (Device Manager found it though). Ended up locating an old SATA Blue Ray drive to read the setup disk. Once got the drivers installed worked fine.
Pretty good PCIe Wi-Fi card for the price. Was a very straight forward installation and it gave quite good results at around 33% slower speeds than ethernet. Only thing was I couldn’t find the drivers online for a bit but eventually I did find them. It never gave the specific link on the manual.
I bought this to replace my wifi as I upgraded motherboard to one without inbuilt wifi. Its pretty good, I get the same speed however it seems a-bit weaker in terms of ping for games but still reliable. It does not seem to be affected by the heat from my graphics card.
Had this a few months, so can give a fair review. Works great and pick the signal from the router easily. If your super fast boardband your’ll easy get the fall speed. Make sure the aerial are screwed in tight and do not have your pc too close to a wall if it made of brick.
However, if your broadband speed is faster than 100mbps then it is worth switching the band to 5GHz. To do this, download and install the latest drivers from TP Link on their website. Then, if the band does not change automatically, find the WiFi card in device manager and go to Advanced properties. Change the wireless connection from Auto to setting 802.22 ac.
Great product but downloaded drivers are a bit iffy. If you do not have a optical drive on your target PC you will we need to download drivers from the website. However i found this process did not work smoothly (drivers appeared to be wrong or incompatible from the manufactures website) If possible to save yourself time i would suggest if you have access to a machine with an optical drive, use that and copy the install files from the CD to a USB then install from there on the target machine
My desktop has internal wi-fi that is clearly not very efficient, it’s about 9 years old.
I added a TP Link extender from a local shop and that wasn’t very effective as there were a myriad of technical issues surrounding that regarding issues with subnet masks and dynamically allocated IP addresses and all sorts of complications.
Should have just gotten this first, I don’t even need the extender, at all, now.
I have 632mbps connection at the router, but previously I was only getting about 33 upstairs even with the extender.
Now I’m getting about 150mbps upstairs in the back room, just from slotting in this cheap wi-fi card.
Now I don’t have to drill a hole through the ceiling for a Lan cable.
So, yeah, adding this cheap card to a 9 year old Medion Akoya AMD desktop worked a treat.
Didn’t even have to install drivers, it just worked; plug and play – pulled out the spacer, slapped this in, connected the antenna(s), turned it on, instant significant improvement in download and upload speeds.
So, I’m glad I didn’t buy a more expensive card, this was good enough.
I did a little bit of research and the usb ones aren’t supposed to be very good… Best to go this route if you know how crack open the PC and slot the card in.
There are two vital points to bear in mind before you start:
1. Go to TP-Link’s website and download the appropriate driver file. In my case for W10, the driver file was:
Archer T6E_V2_200508_Win10.zip.
You will need to download this file on another computer if the current one has no internet access. Then copy this file to a USB drive and copy it to the current computer. I recommend creating a folder called “TPL” on the Desktop and putting the file in there. Then right click on the file and click on “Extract All”.
2. The second point to bear in mind is that BOTH your antivirus and firewall must be temporarily disconnected otherwise the driver installation will fail!
If you use Kaspersky or similar, you need to disable it first and then go to Windows Defender and also disable that. This is because as soon as you disable Kasperky (or Norton or McAfee etc), Windows Defender will automatically replace the main security system.
I recommend searching for “TP-Link How to Manually Install Adapters on Windows 10” and follow the instructions.
Also search for “Turn off Defender antivirus protection in Windows Security”.
I installed the AC1300 and screwed on the 2 antennae and switched on the PC.
As per the above instructions, I browsed to:
“Archer T6E(EU)_V1&V2_200508_Win10” and clicked on “Update driver software”.
I rebooted the PC and then reactivated Kaspersky’s antivirus and firewall.
Finally, I entered the wifi code for my network and my internet was restored.
*****You may find that, contrary to the generally accepted wisdom of using the 2.4MHz frequency when you have thick walls and floors, that you actually achieve a higher speed using the 5MHz band.
Accepted wisdom:
“2.4 GHz networks cover a substantially larger range than 5 GHz wireless networks. 5 GHz networks do not penetrate solid objects such as walls and floors nearly as well as do 2.4 GHz signals”.
I switched from 2.4MHz to 5MHz and my second (wifi) PC, which is 2 floors below, went from 11Mbps to 46 Mbps, matching the speed of my first PC which is connected via ethernet cable! It’s worth a try.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
EDIT
No 5GHz signal on Linux? Then change a router setting.
I recently bought this dual-channel TP-Link AC1300 Wireless Dual Band PCI Express Wi-Fi Adapter for a desktop PC that sits two floors below my router.
The PC was originally using Windows 10 and the 5GHz signal was much stronger then the 2.4MHz one.
I then decided to replace W10 with Linux Mint 21.1 MATE. The Broadcom BCM4360 was recognised by Mint and the appropriate driver installed.
So far, so good.
I then found that only the much weaker 2.4MHz signal was available.
I used the excellent Wifi Analyzer (open-source) app on my mobile phone and this registered nothing for the 5GHz band. In contrast the 2.4GHz showed a strong signal.
I tried connecting to a “Hidden network” and creating a new network, all to no avail.
Finally after much research, I discovered that the Broadcom BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03) does not see 5GHz networks with a high channel number.
See confirmed bug #1574196 at Launchpad.
To rectify this, it is necessary to login to the router and change the channel for the 5GHz to a lower one.
In my ASUS router I went to Advanced Settings > Wireless > Wireless General > select 5GHz band.
Then clicked on Control Channel and reduced the figure from 140 maximum to say 36.
Clicked on Apply and logged out.
The Wifi Analyzer immediately picked up a very strong signal from the 5GHz.
All is now well using Linux.
This adapter installs similar to any other PCIe card. Attach the aerials after it is installed. The adapter will be detected by Win10 and it will install a driver, however, it is better to use the latest correct driver in order to get the full wifi speeds. If the connection seems slow, check you are not connected on the 2.4 GHz and if so, disconnect, reconnect and check again that you are on the 5 GHz channel. Note the 5 GHz range is less than the 2.4 GHz.
The adapter itself appears to be well made and fit for purpose.
This product was weird to set up but after I did it once I was able to do it the second time easily (I had bought two as my brother needed one). Sometimes it will dissconect me from the internet when I am downloading things but that’s just a slight annoyance. It is better than the other wireless dongles I’ve used so it gets a pass. I went from gettin 2/mbs to 4-5/mbs which is just because of my internet provider being bad. So I feel like this would be good enough for those who can’t get an ethernet connection such as myself.
The adapter card, along with, Bluetooth to internal USB 2.0 connection cable, twin antennas, optical disk for the Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Drivers, a leaflet with instructions and warranty leaflet, arrives in a cellophane, security wrapped manufacturer’s box. The box looks aesthetically pleasing. Also included, is a, “Low profile bracket,”
( For certain types of PC cases ).
The card is easy to fit. It took me about twenty minutes to install my card. That included unscrewing and removing the rear blanking plate on my PC case, inserting the card into one of the, “PCIEX1_1,” slots on my motherboard. Also connecting the, Bluetooth lead to the card and the other end connector to the USB 2.0 port on my motherboard and securing the card with the original blanking plate screw. After refitting my PC side panel and then reconnecting all the necessary cables at the rear of my computer, I started my PC.
When the desktop appeared, I ran the optical disk and installed, ( One at a time ), the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Drivers. The Wi-Fi / Bluetooth drivers install very easily and quickly. Clicking on the Wi-Fi icon on the Taskbar, entering my security details in the connection box, my computer connected wirelessly to the net successfully. The Wi-Fi speeds for this card are very fast.
The card works on the, “5 GHz and on the 2.4 GHz,” bands. Bluetooth 4.2 transfer speeds are excellent.
This is a fantastic internal Wi-Fi / Bluetooth card from,”TP- Link,” a world wide brand and a trusted company manufacturing reliable products. I recommend this card and I award it a Five Stars rating.
Les A. G. Durno. My review on, Thursday 09th September 2021. At: 20.18.hrs. GMT.
Bought the Tp-Link AC1300 to replace an 11 year old TP-Link TL-WN881ND wifi card. The card was still working but due to congestion on the 2.4Ghz , would drop speeds constantly and as it is not 5Ghz compatible – couldn’t switch over.
The TP-Link AC1300 covers 2.4 and 5 so suited my needs better.
Have installed and using for a few days and brilliant so far. Speeds went up dramatically and seems more stable.
Only issue I encountered was installing the “Archer T6E_V2_200603_Win10” drivers downloaded from TP Link site.
I am using Win 10 Pro and when I initially tried to install the Drivers, crashed out at 27%.
The 2nd time it detected old drivers and looked to uninstall which I agreed to – but failed again.
After checking on the TP Link site – it advises that problems can be encountered with Anti Virus and Firewalls.
So I turned off the Windows Defender “Firewall & Network Protection -Domain Network” and “Virus & Threat Protection Settings” – tried for a 3rd time and it worked.
Uninstalled old drivers and installed the correct AC1300 drivers.
Turned Firewall and Anti-virus back on – all done.
Would highly recommend this card for the speeds and stability it provides – very good.
So, what do I think of the TP-LINK 300mbps unit? They’re pretty bare bones packages of course, at this price point. I use them quite frequently in my cheaper builds as they provide pretty basic wifi for most essential needs.
Wireless N operates on “300mbps” theoretical bandwidth, however in the real world its usually around half that, at about 150mbps, this is equal to a download rate of around 17/MBs, not too shabby for a 12 device.
However, the major concerns with this device are of course its not dual band, you won’t be able to use any 5g bands, so short range wifi speed will not be optimal.
Secondly the 3 photos with the slower speeds are when the antennas are not correctly pointed to the router, as you can see once they’re changed the speeds max out the connection I was currently getting (i only had 36mb/s of bandwidth available)
Even though the access point was only below the desk where the PC was sat, this minor oversight was detrimental to the performance and something to keep in mind.
However, these are not reasons to absoulyey stay away from this product, as I said I use them quite frequently and I’ve never got a complaint from my users, if you have a network speed of upto 150mbps and the access point is not too far away (within 1 floor and probably 2 or 3 rooms away) this should get you reasonable speeds.
This review is for the TL-WN881ND 300Mbps model. I’ve had this Wi-Fi card for over 18 months now, so I thought I’d leave a review.
I use this on a PC that sits on the other side of the house from the router. I also previously used it on a server. It comes with two small antennas, and while you might find these adequate, I find that the signal strength benefited from a larger aftermarket antenna. Reliability has been absolutely flawless. I get very heavy use out of this, so I’d notice if there were any reliability issues, but there have been none. I’ve never seen the connection dropping out.
Operating system support is excellent. It works perfectly fine with Windows 10, no issues there. And I can especially recommend this card for any users of open source operating systems. In my case, I have found it to work perfectly with both Linux and OpenBSD. The card uses the Atheros AR9287 chipset, which is well known for its excellent open source compatibility. Unless you have a particularly obscure or exotic setup, it will work.
The only people I wouldn’t recommend this card for are those who will be regularly transferring lots of large files across a local network. Those people would probably benefit from a newer model 802.11ac card. This card is 802.11n, so it’s restricted to 300mbps. This is still more than sufficient for typical internet speeds, or for doing some light file transfers and streaming over a local network. For people who don’t need blazing speeds, but want a Wi-Fi card is reliable, has excellent compatibility and is great value for money, I thoroughly recommend this.
I looked into getting one of these because I like to watch instructional videos on my TV while I exercise (so I don’t become completely desk-bound), but Chromecast just didn’t play nice with those. Additionally, my connection speed used to be around 40Mbps *at best* when using the powerline adaptor, so I’m quite glad to get around 70 (and often around 78) during the day as I work from home and having a good connection is nice.
The WiFi router I connect to is in the next room, so there’s a solid wall between my PC and the router, which is at about 3m of distance, if I had to take a guess.
I’m a bit wary of opening up my PC case and installing stuff, but this was really easy to install. You just have to make sure you have the right connection on your motherboard. Then you twiddle the antennae in, insert the CD that’s provided, install the software, connect to the WiFi of your choice and you’re done!
So far, the connection itself is reliable. I only had a couple of hiccups with Chromecast in the evening, but that could be the device itself, too. I’d definitely recommend this card, it’s really affordable for what it allowed me to do.
I’ve been using a USB wifi adapter for my internet connectivity ever since I went wireless many years ago. Recently it’s been temperamental, and finally refused to connect at all. So, internet being as necessary as it is, I did a quick search on Amazon (luckily laptop still working fine) to see what was available. I almost ordered another USB adapter, but Amazon was pulling up some PCI cards in its search results and I thought that might be better since I had some spare slots, and it would remove any speed restrictions due to my USB 2.0 ports.
I settled for this — not the cheapest, and a long way from the most expensive, but with enough ok reviews to make me think I probably won’t be wasting my money.
It arrived around an hour ago. Took five minutes to slot into place, about 7 minutes more to install the drivers and software from the included disc, and I was connected again. It really was a piece of cake. But the thing I most noticed was the increase in speed of my internet connection. I’d recently changed to fibre broadband and hadn’t really noticed any speed difference with internet browsing on my desktop PC. My old USB adapter I was recording 23Mbps on a speed test. With this new TP-link adapter the speed has shot up to 37 Mbps. It was worth it just for that.
Anyway much too early to vote on reliability, but for ease of installation, signal strength, and effectiveness I’ll give it full marks. If I encounter any problems in the future, I’ll update this review.
My PC is running Windows 7 and I’m using the driver that came on the installation disc with this adapter. Broadband is Fibre form Talktalk using the supplied Talktalk Router.
My PC was using an old netgear 54mbs G USB wifi adpater, and I had just got a new N router from my ISP to help me stream video. The card was easy enough to install using some common sense and an anti static wrist band (I always use one, better safe than sorry). But when my PC booted up windows told me it had failed to install the new hardware, my software for the old netgear usb wifi stick was still on the PC so I uninstalled this (though I ended up panicking and clicking cancel as I realised I could use the internet to download the latest drivers from the manufacturers web site, it uninstalled it but I think because I clicked cancel there was still some trace of the netgear stuff on there and it possible ended up conflicting with this new card installation.)
To cut a long story short, the drivers for this card off the disk provided didnt work, so I re installed the old netgear wifi stick and went to tp links website and downloaded the latest ones from there for my OS. These didnt work for me either, so I decided to see if windows update would find the drivers for me, it did and they work fine (the driver on windows update isnt called TP link, its called whatever the hardware chip is based on.) Since then it has worked fine, great signal though router is in my downstairs front room window and the PC is only in the room above. Greatly improved my PC video streaming performance.
Nothing much to say about this product: this is decent and gives the impression of a well-built product (and I have experience with computer hardware of 15 years).
I moved to a bigger place with two floors and needed a reasonably-priced N card, and–despite being a Wifi sceptic–decided to give it a chance.
The reception, considering the best possible position of the router, was full with Win7 reporting the signal is either ‘Good’ or ‘Excellent’. However–and this is the same problem with laptops I have–the speed and reliability was not even close to the one I was able to have using a good Cat5e/6 or even cat 5 cable: especially when I was working on files directly on my NAS.
My criticisms, therefore, is not on the product itself but on the move most places (including academic institutions) are making these days towards Wifi (setting aside the questionable and potential health issues: hopefully this is not like the case of asbestos). For instance, in my local NHS hospital, with strong links to the local university, each floor has Wifi routers to provide EDURoam services–despite the concerns which have been made about WiFi in Canada (for instance)
Buying a 20m+ of shielded Cat5e (either STP or FTP; not UTP) for c.8 and placing it discreetly between the floors (using an old in-wall tunnel), obviously gave more value-for-money than this–or for that matter–any Wifi ‘n’ card. This is obviously my humble opinion. In addition, in many newer flats Cat5e cables (perhaps only in the US) are already installed as telephone lines, and all is needed–in most cases–is just to replace the phone jack (RJ11, lots of info on youtube on this) with an RJ45.
The reason why I gave it 4 stars, rather than 5, is because Amazon’s description says (as to 24/12/12) ‘TPLink TLWN881ND Wireless N300 PCI Express Adapter ships with both full height and low profile brackets TLWN881ND Networks Wireless Adapters’. Well, I didn’t get mine which was quite disappointing when I wanted to reuse the card for a home-built streamer in the living room, which is across the room from the Wifi router. The issue was reported by one of the reviewers of this product, and Amazon seem to have resolved the issue for him: but this is not amazon’s fault, because the product’s box was factory sealed.
EDIT: I needed after-sale service, because I needed an LP back plate, which TP-Link’s website says the device should come with–my card didn’t come with it (the package was factory sealed). However, I e-mailed TP-Link UK, and received the part I needed (even for a card which wasn’t supposed to come with it). I give the product 5 stars (over my original 4) as a gratitude to the after-sale service of TP-Link UK. I should definitely prefer their products, where possible.
The Card is well packed in purchasing box lots of buy me now info.
The box contains the card, CD and quick start guide.
Installation is easy open the PC make a hole in the case and pop the card in to the PCI slot – MAKE SURE that you have a PCI express slot avialable. I found that mine was very close (towards the top of the ‘slot stack’) which could be close to the audio connecteions and all that othe 110 odd wires that seam to grow out of the back of my PC. So you’ll need to think about where the antennas go.
I found that moving them about made a real diiferance to the signal so it worth a play. I’m using the link from the end of the garden (shed) to a just inside the house so it’s a good 15m with a few walls in the way and I’m getting 75% signal and full speed connection with no issues.
Set up was easy I used the supplied CD using the supplied app but set it up manually.
So good value for money and it works as advertised. I’d have no problem buying another one when I decide I need another.