3rd party Usb/Thunderbolt to gigabit ethernet adapter

[sankv9725]

hi,
i recently purchased a MBA, and i am planning for a gigabit ethernet adapter. I am looking for a 3rd party Usb/Thunderbolt to gigabit ethernet adapter. i am able to decide on the items in the market as there are mixed reviews about them.
i am looking out for 3rd party adapters which people have used in day to day activities and had no issue like
plug and play or software trouble etc.
Please do help me out.

Thanks in advance
San

 

[posguy99]

You wouldn't just buy the supported one because...?

 

[Boyd01]

You wouldn't just buy the supported one because...?

I don't know what has changed since I looked into this in 2014, but at that time the Apple USB adapter was slow, I think it was USB2.0, and benchmarks showed it did not reach gigabit speeds. I did not want the Apple Thunderbolt adapter because I use that port for an external monitor with at DVI adapter.

I got the Inateck USB 3.0 adapter and have been pleased with it, although the 802.11ac wifi on my 2013 MBA is fast enough for almost everything I do these days so I have not used ethernet recently. See this thread, I posted my impressions and test results there. I was running 10.8x at the time, FWIW. https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/inateck-hbu3vl3-4-ethernet-converter-review.1731986/

 

[Boyd01]

Looking at that old thread, the speed tests I posted don't really show what the Inateck adapter is capable of since I was using a Time Capsule internal disk which is very slow. Here's the Blackmagic disk test between my 2013 MBA with the Inateck USB adapter connected via gigabit ethernet to a Mac Mini running file sharing. The Mini was using a USB 3.0 external drive that clocks locally around 170MBytes/sec

 

[sankv9725]

You wouldn't just buy the supported one because...?

@posguy99 i wish i don't burn my pocket all in one go,