For a lag & stutter free HD experience you need to use either Lan cabling or a fast and reliable wifi-dongle.
But which one suits best for it?
Is 150 Mbit/s enough or do I need 300 Mbit/s ? With antenna or without? Maybe the model Edimax 7811, which is recommended on many sites?
I bought some popular models to test them in combination with the PI 2 and summarized the results in a neatly arranged table.
All wifi-dongles listed here work out of the box / plug and play in Openelec without the need of installing any drivers.
All data listed here is based on real testing results and not flattering data from manufacturers.
Results
| Rank | Product | Power usage | Transfer rate | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Edimax EW-7612UAn | 0,8 Watt | 99,5 Mbit/s | US UK |
| 2. | TP-Link WN822N (v3) | 0,7 Watt | 85,6 Mbit/s | US UK |
| 3. | Edimax EW-7811UAC | 0,6 Watt | 73,4 Mbit/s | US UK |
| 4. | TP-Link WN722N | 0,9 Watt | 70,5 Mbit/s | US UK |
| 5. | Edimax EW-7811UN | 0,5 Watt | 60,2 Mbit/s | US UK |
| 6. | TP-Link WN823N | 0,8 Watt | 58,2 Mbit/s | US UK |
| 7. | D-Link DWA-140 | 1,0 Watt | 25,7 Mbit/s | US UK |
Testing Environment
Everything was tested with a TP-Link 1043ND Router in 2,4 GHz network.
Distance between Raspberry Pi 2 and router was about 10m with 2 walls between.
OpenELEC version 5.03 was installed on the Pi and for measurements I used iperf .
To have certainty of stability and response time I played the movie Avatar (1080p, DTS- Sound, 15GB file size) and zapping through.
Power consumption was measured using the power meter PM 231 E from Brennenstuhl.
Conclusion
You can’t go wrong with Edimax 7612UAn (1st place) and TP-Link WN822N (2nd place). Both of them have tons of power and provide an undisturbed Streaming-experience on your Pi 2.
Even fast skipping and also big skips through longer movies are not a problem for both dongles.
On serveral sites and forums you will find recommendations for the small Edimax 7811UN (5th place). For it’s compactness it delivers decent performance.
Because of this price-performance ratio i would also recommend it. If your router is not too far away, you’re won’t have any problems with it, however, on bigger distances I would recommend using a more powerful Wifi-adapter.
To conclude, I would like to tell you, that I’m glad that I made this test to get certainty using one of the fastest Wifi-dongles on my Pi 2. 🙂
