Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsIt does provide 1Gigabit LAN!
Reviewed in Canada on March 19, 2021
I bought this Gigabit to USB with USB 3 ports specifically for the Amazon Fire Stick. The quality is really good. It's smaller than what I imagined as it is slightly larger than the Fire Stick. I first tested the LAN connection on the Fire Stick and found that the download speed was better than what I had experienced with the UGreen's version. On SpeedTest.net, I got results mostly from 170-230Mps, whereas with the wireless connection from the Fire Stick alone gave around 120-150Mbps. I'll come back to this download speed with the Fire Stick after the discussion with other LAN tests on my 3 computers as I find this Amazon Basics USB Gigabit LAN is interesting.
Note: The SpeedTest.net download speed for me is capped at around 320Mbps on my Shaw Internet300. I haven't tested any file transferring from one computer to the another to record the actual Gigabit LAN setup.
Computer Test #1
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Testing it on my self built computer with both USB 3 Boost and USB 2.0 ports, I tested the Amazon Basics Gigabit LAN adapter - first with USB 3.0 on the back panel and later with USB 2.0 on the front panel. The results for both using SpeedTest.net was pretty much the same - over 300Mbps (slightly more with the USB 3.0).
Computer Test #2
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This is a test on an old 2010 Dell XPS 8300 model with no USB 3 on board. So, all the external ports are USB2.0. What is interesting about the connection is that Windows 10 will see the Amazon Basics USB connection to the LAN as a Realtek Gigabit LAN Adapter and it will show 1Gb. USB 2.0 should cap the network speed to less than 450Mbps. So, testing it SpeedTest.net, I got speeds around 290-300Mbps, slightly lower than what I got for Test #1. I connect the LAN cable back to my Broadcom network adapter on my Dell computer and the speed there is around 323Mbps. So, the speed is not bad for the USB 2.0 ports. I tested both the front and back USB ports. What is surprising out of both of these tests is that Windows 10 will recognize that the Amazon Basic's LAN is a Realtek Gigabit adapter and still reads it with 1Gb throughput!
Computer Test #3
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This is a test on another older 2015 Dell OptiPlex 3020 where I've just upgraded it with an Intel WIFI6 AX200 wireless adapter card, 16GB DDR3, and a Samsung EVO 860 SSD. It has it's own Gigabit LAN adapter as well. Again, I tested the download speeds using SpeedTest.net on all the USB ports - USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 on the back side and USB 2.0 on the front panel. All USB ports recorded anywhere from 300-323 Mbps download speeds. As well, for the USB 2.0 ports Windows still sees the Amazon Basics Realtek LAN adapter as 1Gb LAN.
Fire Stick re-test #4
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Since the initial test gave somewhat of a lower test on the Fire Stick vs the results from the computer, I thought I'd test it again. Since we all know that the Fire Stick is a USB 2.0 port (or so it should be because it uses a Micro USB), the download speed should be around 300Mbps or more. However, when re-testing and because I'm testing it at prime time at around 6pm when everyone in my neighborhood is likely on the Internet browsing, my speed on the Amazon Basics Gigabit LAN adapter fluctuated between 100-175Mbps and at times would reach back to the 218-230Mbps. These results aren't very pleasing and it leads me to believe that the Amazon Basics USB3/Gigabit pass-through dongle is actually doing its job. However, the Fire Stick is the one slowing down the Internet download speeds, both on it's wireless and LAN connections. I'm wondering if the Fire Stick USB is actually on version 1.0! I'll be updating my finding for my review of the Fire Stick Lite on my other review.
All in all, I think this Amazon Basics USB 3 port adapter with the Realtek Gigabit LAN adapter is good, way better than the UGreen one I bought and returned immediately. This is definitely a keeper for me to use on my Fire Stick and for my computers.
I might provide more updates if I decide to test the actual file transfer throughput for the Gigabit tests.
It seems Amazon has an issue with picture uploads lately. So, I will provide the pictures that I took a bit later.