Summary
Performance of the BrosTrend AC5L USB key is respectable. Data transfer speeds are also reasonable although we weren’t that impressed with speeds over longer distances as the AC1L device obtained similar speeds. However, the AC5L had lower packet loss on our extreme test so the connection is more reliable. Minimizing packet loss is just as important as improving transfer speed.
Installation of the driver is a breeze under both Ubuntu and Manjaro. The installation script is well written and documented with comments. That’s a virtue for all the BrosTrend Wi-Fi devices we’ve tested.
It’s so refreshing to see a WiFi hardware provider that provides Linux support. BrosTrend offer a support ticket in the event that you run into any issues installing their driver. This support covers their drivers, but not other drivers available from other sources such as GitHub repositories. Bear in mind that BrosTrend don’t support some Linux distros such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux or openSUSE.
The AC5L supports monitor mode, IBSS, Managed, AP, P2P-client, and P2P-GO.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary