USB wireless adaptor

I recently upgraded to a new Plusnet Hub One. I've been finding it brilliant so far, but my newish (just 1 year old) laptop doesn't have dual band WiFi. Does anybody have any experiences with these USB adaptors. Do they bypass the laptop WiFi? Also does anybody have any recommendations (not really keen on TP-Link, as had a router from them that didn't work that well).

They work as an additional adapter so you can disable the built-in one in your settings if you want. As your Hub One is a wireless-AC router, you should buy a wireless-AC adapter to get the best bandwidth. I have used an Asus USB adapter and that worked really well with my HH5. I think BT also do one.

trouble with many of the ac dongles is that they are very big, and literally stick out like a sore thumb.
I did use a bt one on a desktop system, and that was limited to about 280mbit, - the speed of usb2

Another option is to look into retrofitting an 802.11ac card into your laptop.

Most laptop cards are standard mPCI-E and in most laptops in my experience they are relatively easily accessible. Obviously it's at your own risk but the reward is worth it if you don't mind poking about inside your machine. The cards (depending on what you buy) range anything from £15-50 - with an intel 7260-AC being around £20 these days.

I've upgraded a few of my own laptops over the years to keep up with wireless trends, even if the laptop only came with a single band card they've always worked fine on the 5GHz band in my experience. Probably not *as* well as if they'd been designed for it but it beats using an external adapter.

Don't attempt this unless you or a friend know what they're doing working inside a laptop though, not worth risking breaking things for faster wifi

It infuriates me how many laptops sold today *still* don't come with dual-band wireless, even business machines. Anything to save a few pennies on the BOM I guess!

Edited by summat (Sat 13-Feb-16 18:27:57)

It's quite slim(ish) laptop (Lenovo Flex 2 14), and don't think it would be an easy job (not something I would feel comfortable doing).

In reply to a post by Timalay:

It's quite slim(ish) laptop (Lenovo Flex 2 14), and don't think it would be an easy job (not something I would feel comfortable doing).

the hardware manuals are online
try
http://www.manualslib.com/manual/675418/Lenovo-Ideap...
or
http://static.bhphotovideo.com/lit_files/93668.pdf

It's much neater and better to change the built-in network card. Most laptops have a decent size aerial wire around the screen. However, some manufacturers use a 'white list' BIOS; only 'approved' components will be recognised and allowed to work.

Lenovo used to be one of the manufacturers who did this, but it's hard to find out which models it applies to. They claimed that it was to prevent radio signals above the locally (country or region) permitted level being broadcast. The more cynical would suggest it was so that you had to purchase parts from them at their prices!

Originally, my old Dell Vostro only had a 2.4GHz wireless g card. I retrofitted it with a dual band wireless n card (an Intel 4965AGN card, since it only takes the old 'double length' cards). However, I had to untick the 'allow the computer to turn off the device to save power' option in the power management tab of the driver (network and sharing centre/wifi status/ properties/configure). This option doesn't apply to all makes/models of card, it depends on the individual driver.