USB 3.2 to 5GbE Adapter (WP-UT5) Realtek RTL8157 Wired LAN Network Connection 5G, 2.5G, 1G, 100Mbps

Most 2.5gbit USB adapters are based on a similar Realtek chipset, but they are CPU hungry. I bought this to increase the network bandwidth available on an Intel N100 based mini PC. The CPU could not keep up to provide full 2.5 gbit speeds. This 5gbit card provides much better performance at 2.5gbit speeds on lower powered systems. Perfect for what I needed.

This adapter gets hot and drops packets on a regular basis. Difficult to get file transfers done when you can't rely on the ethernet connection. My built-in 1G ethernet port on my laptop performed 100% better than this one. Shameful, to say the least. Not often I don't recommend a purchase but this is the exception.

I originally wrote a scathing review of this thing, but I deleted it after doing more extensive testing. This thing can work well under the right circumstances, but that's something you need to be very wary of if you're thinking of buying it. The hardware you have, the OS you use, and the driver you're running all have to be just right for this to work well.Whether this will work for you is very much hardware-dependent. If you're planning to plug this straight into a machine with at least a USB 3 port, you might be okay. If you're planning to plug this into a dock or a hub, or if your machine uses an internal hub with other things on it, there's a good chance you'll have a bad time.As an example, I have a 16" 2024 MacBook Pro. Plugged straight into the machine with the right software (discussed below), using iperf3, I get consistent performance of around 4.7 Gbps in both directions. I also have a Dell S2722QC monitor, which has 2 downstream USB ports that nominally support 5 Gbps. Performance if I plug it into this thing is a total crapshoot, and I don't know why this is. Unplugging it and plugging it back in leads to wildly different results, sometimes with performance as low as 300 Mbps, other times exceeding 3 Gbps. Sometimes it ends up being poor in one direction, other times it's fine both ways. I can't make any sense of it, but it makes the device unusable in this configuration. It's also worth noting that a 1 Gbps Ethernet adapter performs at full speed in both directions consistently plugged into the same monitor, so I don't know what's going on here.Now on to the software side of things. On Windows, forget about it if you aren't using Windows 11. This thing is unstable under Windows 10. And even if you run Windows 11, you will need to update the driver from the one included with Windows to have a good experience. You can either install it from the Realtek website or run Windows Update after plugging it in. If you don't do this, it will only sync with your switch at 2.5 Gbps, performance will be very poor (worse than a 1 Gbps adapter), and you'll experience dropped packets.On macOS, I've seen people report good experiences with 14.5 and above, but I can say from experience that you will experience issues if you run 15.0-15.3. These problems appear to have been fixed in 15.4, which was only released a few days ago as of the writing of this review.I didn't do as much testing on Linux, so all I'll say is that if you aren't running a recent kernel, you aren't in for a good time.In summary, this might work for you, or it might not, and you probably won't have any way to know until you buy it. Personally, I'm on the fence about whether to keep it or return it.

I have this connected to my Mac Mini M4 through my TB3 dock. It is connected at 5Gb through my UniFi Aggregation switch via a 10Gb SFP+ module that can negotiate between 1,2.5,5 and 10Gb speeds. I did numerous iperf3 tests against my 10Gb server and had a consistent 4.70Gb throughput in both directions.So far I haven’t had any strange behavior.

Device seems to work on an old QNAP NAS, but it seems it throttles down much more than the 2.5GbE USB dongles I've tried.

This as worked amazingly well to add 5gbps connectivity to my Synology NAS

Inexpensive. Works great when using a USB 3.2 Gen2 port. No complaints!

I keep getting dropped packages to my router, my other USB 2.5Gb network adapter did not have this issue.