The 3 Best USB Wi-Fi Adapters of 2025

Top pick

This USB adapter may look a little like a gaming accessory, but it provides a steady, no-nonsense Wi-Fi 6 connection to your network.

The MSI AX1800 WiFi USB Adapter (GUAX18) is the best USB Wi-Fi adapter for most people because it hits the sweet spot between price and performance. It typically sells for around $40, and it performed well on our speed tests, just behind our former and new upgrade picks, the Netgear Nighthawk A7000 and Nighthawk A8000, respectively. And as with all our picks, we had no problems with dropped connections on this adapter during testing.

The adapter easily plugs into a desktop or laptop’s USB port, and after a quick driver install it provides a steady Wi-Fi 6 connection to any Windows 10 or 11 PC. We recommend the MSI AX1800 for most people who want to add a Wi-Fi connection to a laptop or desktop without having to open up and tinker inside the machine. It’s also good for PCs with glitchy built-in Wi-Fi. If you want to spend around $20, or if you have a gigabit internet plan and need to work with the latest technology, look at our budget pick or our upgrade pick, respectively.

It offers a great balance between price and performance. Though the MSI AX1800 was not the absolute fastest competitor in our test group, it was one of the fastest for the price. We’ve tracked the MSI AX1800 between $30 and $40 for the past six months, and it only briefly topped $45. That makes it $20 to $50 less expensive than our current and former upgrade picks and about $30 less expensive than a competitor with similar performance.

Its connections were steady, even in our toughest conditions. In our long-range bathroom location, the MSI AX1800 was able to connect at 54 megabits per second, or twice the speed necessary for 4K videos—that means it’s fast enough for you to watch two videos at full resolution simultaneously. In contrast, this testing environment is notoriously difficult for Wi-Fi signals, and we’ve experienced dropouts on other Wi-Fi adapters and smart speakers while testing in this location.

It’s sturdily built. Constructed to serve home users and gamers, who may be hard on their equipment, this adapter has a rugged case and antenna hinge.

You can use it with a laptop or a desktop PC. Like most of the USB adapters we tested for this guide, the MSI AX1800 is compact, so its body and antenna won’t get in the way while you’re carrying your laptop around your home. This adapter also comes with a docking cradle with a connected USB Type-A cable, so you can connect the cradle’s cable behind a desktop PC and relocate the adapter and its antenna up on a shelf, where it has a better chance to connect to the router.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

MSI is a new competitor in USB Wi-Fi adapters, and during our research for this guide, we didn’t see many reviews online about this particular stick. However, the company has been making similar internal PC components for decades, including PC motherboards and laptops with both wired and Wi-Fi networking. We’ll keep our eye out for issues if they crop up, but we don’t anticipate any.

While some other Wi-Fi adapters in this guide have two-year warranties, the MSI AX1800 has only a one-year warranty. We still think that’s long enough for you to determine whether the adapter has any defects.

We don’t love the large, white MSI logo painted on the side of the adapter’s antenna. While such an ostentatious display may look fine or even be encouraged on, say, a gaming laptop, it might raise a few eyebrows if you use the adapter in a business environment.