I got both cards to compare and see which one was better. I am primarily concerned about latency so signal strength is important to me.
I thought the Asus might be worth it for the external antenna, but it seems based on my results that even though both have the same Broadcom chipset, the Asus has a better 5ghz signal strength regardless of the antenna. I'll be keeping the Asus. Just wanted to share my results with others who are not sure which adapter to get. I am using Windows 10 and inSSIDer. Win10 drivers for both devices have not been released yet (using windows 8.1 drivers), so maybe results might be different once those are released.
Signal strength test to Apple Airport Extreme AC1750 router, about 12 feet away, not direct line of sight. Windows showed link rate for both devices to be 866mbps sometimes going up to 1gbit. If I put the external antennas in different places, I can get slightly better signal, but I kept it in same place for the test. I let inSSIDer run for about a minute and used the average. Not a gold standard scientific test but at least gives me some idea of which card has a better signal.
Asus w/ Asus external antennas -42 (5ghz) -44 (2.4ghz)
Asus w/ TP link antennas -44 (both) with 2.4ghz somtimes going up to -42
TP link w/ TP link atennas -39 (2.4ghz) -55(5ghz)
TP link w/ Asus external antennas -39 (2.4ghz) -55 (5ghz)
So basically the antennas didn't make any difference, but the Asus performed better with 5ghz, slightly worse with 2.4ghz. 10db difference seems pretty big to me. Asus is definitely worth the extra cost
I thought the Asus might be worth it for the external antenna, but it seems based on my results that even though both have the same Broadcom chipset, the Asus has a better 5ghz signal strength regardless of the antenna. I'll be keeping the Asus. Just wanted to share my results with others who are not sure which adapter to get. I am using Windows 10 and inSSIDer. Win10 drivers for both devices have not been released yet (using windows 8.1 drivers), so maybe results might be different once those are released.
Signal strength test to Apple Airport Extreme AC1750 router, about 12 feet away, not direct line of sight. Windows showed link rate for both devices to be 866mbps sometimes going up to 1gbit. If I put the external antennas in different places, I can get slightly better signal, but I kept it in same place for the test. I let inSSIDer run for about a minute and used the average. Not a gold standard scientific test but at least gives me some idea of which card has a better signal.
Asus w/ Asus external antennas -42 (5ghz) -44 (2.4ghz)
Asus w/ TP link antennas -44 (both) with 2.4ghz somtimes going up to -42
TP link w/ TP link atennas -39 (2.4ghz) -55(5ghz)
TP link w/ Asus external antennas -39 (2.4ghz) -55 (5ghz)
So basically the antennas didn't make any difference, but the Asus performed better with 5ghz, slightly worse with 2.4ghz. 10db difference seems pretty big to me. Asus is definitely worth the extra cost
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