WAVLINK 5Gbps USB-C to 5GbE Adapter Review

USB to Ethernet adapters have had a challenging past, especially in the 5GbE generation. Years ago, we did a USB 3.1 Gen1 to 5GbE Network Adapter Guide and found that the adapters of that era sucked. The WAVLINK 5Gbps USB-C to 5GbE adapter is decidedly better due to a new Realtek chipset. Another aspect here is that the cost is going to be attractive to many. We purchased ours for around $35-40. That is slightly more than 2.5GbE adapters but also much less than 10GbE adapters, especially since those tend to use Thunderbolt. Getting half the speed at less than a quarter the cost is perhaps the biggest benefit of a solution like this. Of course, this is still early enough in the cycle that there were some bumps along the path.

If you just want to check prices, we purchased ours on Amazon (Affiliate link.)

WAVLINK 5Gbps USB-C to 5GbE Adapter Overview

The unit itself has a single port. This is rated for 5GbE, but we also tried it at 2.5GbE and 1GbE speeds.

On the host connection side, there is a USB Type-C port. For many systems, this works well. For others, Type-A ports are more plentiful. The USB connection in this generation is a USB 3.2 Gen2 or a 10Gbps connection. That is unlike the previous 5Gbps USB adapters where the interface bandwidth was not enough to saturated the Ethernet side given the USB overheads.

Here is the bottom.

Here is the side profile.

Looking at the other side, we can see a neat detail. Inside the module we can see a little heatsink. Something that we noticed was that the unit worked well if these vents were clear. If they were blocked, then that is when stability can be an issue.

On the topic of issues, when we first installed this on the ASUS ROG NUC, we could not hit 5GbE speeds. The reason is quite simple. This is a newer adapter with the Realtek RTL8157 NIC, a newer adapter.

That means it is time for drivers.