I was quite happy with my cheap router, 2.4Ghz wireless N only. It let me use the full 36mb/s of my connection... until this week, when wireless performance dropped to 4mb/s - but still the full 36 with an ethernet cable, so it's definitely the Wi-Fi that's gone wrong. I tried changing the channel, but they're all full of my neighbours' routers (I live in a tiny house, not quite an apartment, but almost as dense). I think somebody new moved in, installed a router, and saturated the channels.
I bought a new router, found a completely clear 5Ghz channel, and I want to use it 5Ghz only - with such dense population, shorter range is actually an advantage, strange as that may seem to Americans with gigantic houses. I live here: www.stewartmilnehomes.com/media/image/floorplans/floorplan694.pdf, and I imagine an average American house to be like this: https://binged.it/2obNS1y (that was on the first page of results when I searched for "average American house"!
I have connected my TV, a couple of game consoles, a couple of laptops, a few tablets, some phones, and all of them connect at 5Ghz, fast and stable with no problems all over the house.
Only my desktop tower is stuck at 2.4Ghz, due to the basic Wi-Fi card. It would be nice to add Bluetooth at the same time. The M2 cards are about half the price, but the PCIe cards have tons of aerials sticking out the back, which makes me wonder if the M2 card signal would be blocked by the case. I wonder this because I bought a PCIe card to add some USB 3.0 ports, and it came with 5 external, and 1 internal. I tried plugging my keyboard+mouse dongle into the internal port... and it didn't work. (Why would you want an internal USB port anyway?)
My motherboard has a spare M2 slot (I hardly ever turn it off, so having a fast boot drive is not a priority), but no aerials. I have a spare PCIe slot too, so it's just the money - compare, for example, http://amzn.eu/d/aX1lQxV and http://amzn.eu/d/3jVsGU0.
I bought a new router, found a completely clear 5Ghz channel, and I want to use it 5Ghz only - with such dense population, shorter range is actually an advantage, strange as that may seem to Americans with gigantic houses. I live here: www.stewartmilnehomes.com/media/image/floorplans/floorplan694.pdf, and I imagine an average American house to be like this: https://binged.it/2obNS1y (that was on the first page of results when I searched for "average American house"!
I have connected my TV, a couple of game consoles, a couple of laptops, a few tablets, some phones, and all of them connect at 5Ghz, fast and stable with no problems all over the house.
Only my desktop tower is stuck at 2.4Ghz, due to the basic Wi-Fi card. It would be nice to add Bluetooth at the same time. The M2 cards are about half the price, but the PCIe cards have tons of aerials sticking out the back, which makes me wonder if the M2 card signal would be blocked by the case. I wonder this because I bought a PCIe card to add some USB 3.0 ports, and it came with 5 external, and 1 internal. I tried plugging my keyboard+mouse dongle into the internal port... and it didn't work. (Why would you want an internal USB port anyway?)
My motherboard has a spare M2 slot (I hardly ever turn it off, so having a fast boot drive is not a priority), but no aerials. I have a spare PCIe slot too, so it's just the money - compare, for example, http://amzn.eu/d/aX1lQxV and http://amzn.eu/d/3jVsGU0.
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.