The WiFi 5 (802.11ac) standard was adopted more than 10 years ago. Still, the driver support of WiFi 5 USB adapters “out of the box” on Raspberry Pi OS is still very limited. However, here, we tested three of these adapters.
In this article we will go a step further and test two WiFi 6 USB adapter (802.11ax). WiFi 6 was adopted in 2021 supporting 2.5 and 5 GHz. Only WiFi 6E is also supporting 6 GHz. As in the previous article, we’ll also discuss the availability of driver software and the performance of these adapters based on our long-term observation.
Our first choice is the TP-Link AX1800 Archer TX20U in which I had high hopes after the fantastic TP-Link AC1300 (WiFi 5). The second choice is the Netgear AXE3000 Nighthawk with WiFi 6E support. The tests were performed mainly on a Raspberry Pi 5.
The TP-Link AX1800 Archer TX20U
The TP-Link AX1800 Archer TX20U is not supported “out of the box” by the Raspberry Pi OS. The adapter has a Realtek 8832AU chipset. Unfortunately, Realtek decided to support these chipsets with an out-of-kernel driver instead of doing the right thing and providing a mac80211 technology in-kernel driver. There is only the GitHub repository from Larry Finger improfing the RTL8852AU_WiFi_linux_v1.15.0.1-0-g487ee886.20210714 driver, which is of very poor quality. I didn’t found any new Linux driver from Realtek or TP-Link, later is only supporting Windows 10 / 11. It even seems that Realtek terminated production of the 8852au chipsets, which indicates that at least for Linux user to buy an adapter with that chipset could lead to a dead end.
The problem is that Larry Finger’s GitHub repository acts like a single point of failure because all other sources I found are going back to his repository. Trying to install the driver from his repository will not work probably because of incompatibilities with recent Linux kernels but according this conversation it could also be a specific bug tied to the chipset in the TP-Link AX1800 Archer TX20U. Don’t expect that Finger will try to solve that issue or release a new version of his driver because, unfortunately, he passed away on June 21st, 2024, 84 years old.
Take away: DO NOT BUY a TP-LINK AX1800 Archer TX20U
The Netgear AXE3000 Nighthawk
Surprisingly, the Netgear AX3000 Nighthawk runs “out of the box” by the Raspberry Pi OS because it works with a Mediatek mt7921au chipset, which is supported since the Linux Kernel 6.4. The Netgear is similar in size to the TP-Link Archer T4U AC1300, our favourite 5 GHz WiFi USB adapter. The adapter showed stable operation and a high data throughput during the tests. Nevertheless, a long observation is still necessary to confirm the positive first impression. Supported bands are 2,4 GHz, 5 GHz or 6 GHz. However, we couldn’t test the 6 GHz because of the lack of such a network.
The Netgear has an optional comparative massive USB 3.0 docking station attached to a cable. Even if that’s not ideal for a mobile setting and not mandatory to use, it could be helpful in a stationary setting to distance the signal-producing interfaces on the Raspberry Pi from each other. The frequencies of the internal WiFi chip, the onboard USB 3.0 interfaces and the high-speed WiFi adapter plugged into one of the two onboard USB 3.0 interfaces could lead to interferences, especially if all the network components are using the 2,4 GHz band (for more details see here).
Update (18th Dez 2024): The Netgear adapter seems to connect just fine to 5 GHz networks but not (always) to 2.4 GHz networks. It associates but does not authenticate with the Access Points. Also, the adapter doesn’t have hot-plug capabilities “out of the box”, meaning that the adapter has to be plugged into the Raspberry Pi before starting the Raspi up.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, the TP-Link AX1800 Archer TX20U was a bad buy. Linux support is very unlikely, and we can only repeat our warning: DO NOT BUY a TP-LINK AX1800 Archer TX20U.
However, the Netgear AX3000 Nighthawk would be a worthy successor to the very liable TP-Link Archer T4U AC1300, especially because of the “out-of-the-box” compatibility with the Raspberry Pi OS, if we manage to figure it out how to get it to work with 2.4 GHz networks.
For more up-to-date information on USB-WiFi under Linux see here.