Amped Wireless UA230 USB2.0 802.11ac WLAN adapter

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Intro: The Amped Wireless UA230 is Amped’s latest high powered wifi USB adapter.  It has 20dBm output power, and a 3dBi external high gain antenna.


Setup:
It was pretty much plug and play on windows server 2012. I plugged it in and windows detected it as a Realtek RTL8811AU Wireless LAN 802.11ac USB 2.0 Network Adapter. No drivers are needed if it’s done that way.
After that I wanted to use it in my laptop and I installed drivers according to instructions and rebooted and then plugged in the adapter. It took a while to install the Amped UA230 driver and after a while windows 7 fell back to the same Realtek RTL8811AU driver instead. After that, however it did connect to a network effortlessly. Even faster than the built in one the laptop has. 


Test rig specs:
Specs of server : Intel i53570K/16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1600 RAM/Nvidia Geforce 650Ti/Samsung 840 120GB SSD/Windows Server 2012 Standard/Realtek GBE NIC

Specs of Client: HP2000-412NR/AMD E300/8GB DDR3 RAM/500GB SSHD/AMD RADEON 6310/Windows 7 x64 Home Premium/UA230


Airtight C75 AP performance:
5Ghz 802.11ac  Same room
Result: -32dBm Average: 12Mbytes/sec or 96Mbps
UA230A-5GHZ-C75-INSAMEROOM.png
5Ghz 802.11anac 35 ft from ap thru 3 walls
Result: -52dBm Average: 10Mbytes/sec or 80Mbps
UA230A-5GHZ-C75-35ft.png



Aruba Networks RAP109 AP performance:
5Ghz 802.11an same room:
Result: -62dBm Average: 10Mbytes/sec or 80Mbps
UA230A-5GHZ-RAP109-INSAMEROOM-2.png

2.4Ghz 802.11n
Result: UNABLE TO CONNECT DUE TO POSSIBLE CLIENT ADAPTER OR AP DIFFICULTIES


Amped Wireless RTA15 (configured as an AP) Performance:
5Ghz 802.11ac
Result: -52dBm Average: 10Mbytes/sec or 80Mbps
UA230A-5acGHZ-RTA15-INSAMEROOM.png
5Ghz 802.11an
Result: -52dBm Average: 10Mbytes/sec or 80Mbps
UA230A-5nGHZ-RTA15-INSAMEROOM.png
2.4Ghz 802.11n (20Mhz) same room
Result: -28dBm 8Mbytes/sec or 64Mbits/sec
UA230A-2.4GHZ-RTA15-INSAMEROOM.png
5Ghz 802.11ac 35 ft from ap thru 3 walls
Result: -62dBm Average: 8Mbytes/sec or 64Mbps
UA230A-5nGHZ-RTA15-32.png

Cisco Meraki Z1 router performance:
5Ghz 802.11an same room
Result: -45dBm Average: 12Mbytes/sec or 96Mbps
UA230A-5GHZ-Z1-INSAMEROOM.png

2.4Ghz 802.11n (20Mhz)
Result: -45dBm 5.80Mbytes/sec or 46Mbits/sec
UA230A-2.4GHZ-Z1-INSAMEROOM.png


Cisco Meraki MR12 AP performance:
2.4Ghz 802.11n (20Mhz) (ap located 36ft downstairs 4 walls+ staircase
Result: -64dBm 2Mbytes/sec or 16Mbits/sec
UA230A-2.4GHZ-MR12-36ft.png

D-Link DAP2960 AP Performance:
5Ghz 802.11an (ap located 36ft downstairs 4 walls+ staircase
Result: -47dBm Average: 10Mbytes/sec or 80Mbps
UA230A-5GHZ-DAP-2690-36ft.png
2.4Ghz 802.11n (20Mhz)
Result: 4Mbytes/sec or 32Mbits/sec
UA230A-2.4GHZ-DAP-2690-36ft.png

Windows 10 quick setup notes:
Note: I did an in place upgrade form windows 7 to windows 10 technical preview on a seperate system to see if the adapter would work after I upgraded.    
I installed the driver downloaded from ampedwireless.com and windows 10 said it was successful. I rebooted and the driver installed fine, however I had the following error message:
win10-ua230.PNG
That was not good. So I went to update the driver and used windows update to search for a new driver and it is now working with the following driver:
I get proper link rate 433Mbps as well. Seems to be working fine under that driver, however. 

win10-ua230-2.PNG



 Overall: 8/10
Recommended:Yes