Wireless Chipset Poll 2015-2016

[remixedcat]

What wifi chipset do you prefer? I have been asked by a hardware company to issue this so I hope to get as many people to participate as much as possible.

You get one choice for one question and one choice for the other. I've made the poll appear to have two questions. Please don't chose the divider items!!!

Please note: consult wikidevi if you are unsure of the chipset your router uses. Please also specfiy the router you use.

I will be leaving a null vote and will not indicate my choice on thier request, however Please be as honest and straightforward as possible and don't hold ANYTHING back on your responses! Please post detail experience as well!!! The more the better! If another company pressures you in ANY way shape or form please let me know so I can forward to the hardware company.

This will have two sections:

adapters
and
routers

Please also indicate how good the OS or alternate firmware support is and be as honest as you can and only post firsthand experience and no 3rd party or "that's what she said" responses.



Thank you.

 

[Shou Miko]

Where is Intel in all this?

They make Wireless chips too

 

[remixedcat]

not enough options

 

[Ferrum Master]

None of them, each of them has it's ups and downs. It's just a matter of luck ie what things the user actually does, so some may trigger some bugs some not. It may be erratas, collaborations with some other devices, room - interference(bad antenna design), thermal envelope, how cooled the thing is and in colder places it does not matter, but in hot areas it will start to throttle (yes WLAN power amp does that too) etc things...

It all sums up as always... You can't have pretty and smart in one person

 

[Jstn7477]

I can't answer for routers, but for adapters, I always go for Intel when possible. Every Realtek solution I've had in my two notebooks and tablet has been annoyingly bad, and it seems that 5GHz support and decent Bluetooth is too much to ask for from Realtek. I haven't used Broadcom WLAN devices outside of the mid 2000s, but they seemed fairly decent. I've upgraded both my notebooks to an Intel 6200 (back in 2011) and 7260AC (my 2013 notebook, just upgraded two months ago so I could use my Microsoft Sculpt mouse without it dropping every few minutes) and have been problem-free.

 

[McSteel]

I'd say Intel for adapters and Broadcom for routers. Though these choices tend to change depending on the price bracket - when going for cheap but good enough, usually Atheros is a good bet, at least in my experience.

 

[Aquinus]

Atheros is nice in Linux because it always simply works, however. I've seem to have had the best experiences with Broadcom when it comes to wireless however Intel is right there next to it and might even be better because of driver support IMHO. FWIW, Intel wifi devices tend to like to "just work" in modern Linux distros as well.