Getting handed the Edimax nLite Wi-Fi device one day, I was expecting to write about a small peripheral that would extend my Wi-Fi range, and not much more. Such was the size of the device (not much bigger than half a regular USB flash drive with a 3 dBi antenna attached) that it did not occur to me that the Edimax was a whole Wi-Fi dongle in and of itself. The Edimax EW-7711UAn Wireless nLite High Gain USB Adapter has a mouthful of a name, a bunch of features, all in just a fraction of the size of a traditional wireless adapter.

My mistaking the nLite for a simple antenna was an understandable mistake, unless I noticed early on how the antenna terminated with a USB connector. The whole package consists of the antenna/USB device, a one meter extension cable, a CD driver and manual. For such a small device, the nLite is nicely designed with iPod-white plastics and sturdy pivots for the antenna. An indicator light for activity and a WPS (Wireless Provisioning Service) button can be found on the USB end, while the USB connector itself is in a nice gold color, reminiscent of high-end audio cables, although in this case it is mere aesthetics as the actual data contacts are found inside the rectangular USB case.

"An antenna attached to a thumb drive" is the most apt description we can give this device.

The nLite is unique not only due to its size; it incorporates draft-n compatibility, and the WPS adaptability that can be used at public hot-spots or local office networks with a customer-access component. Also unique is the fact that although this is a draft-n adapter, it only sports a single antenna – thus cutting down on draft-n’s theoretical top speed of 300Mbps to half – claimed maximum data rate for the Edimax nLite is a not-too-shabby 150Mbps.

The indicator light works exactly like its desktop integrated LAN counterpart.

For testing, I plugged the nLite into my trusty MSI Wind, testing the transfer of a 1.09GB file from the netbook to another computer connected to our local office network. The transfer test was done using both the Edimax and the Wind’s on-board Wi-Fi device, to provide a point of comparison. The file transfer test is meant to eliminate uncontrollable factors such as internet provider speed, local office throughput, drops in service, lag and whatnot. The test was performed at 5, 10 and 15 meter distances from our Air Live wireless router, with each distance tested three times and then averaged, for both on-board and nLite wireless adapters.

The most important specs are front-and-center on the nLite's packaging.

The results are close to what I expected – the distance didn’t matter as much as physical obstructions such as office partitions and walls, and the Edimax nLite definitely made a difference in transfer speed. Refer to the chart for details, but in general, the Edimax cuts down transfer time by an average of 3 to 4 minutes for that 1.09GB file – a big difference when we’re talking about multiple large files transferred over the course of a day. A good example of this faster transfer speed is the transfer performed at 5 meters – while the Wind’s on-board Wi-Fi adapter handled the transfer in an acceptable 10:32 (min:sec), the nLite accomplished the same transfer task in a blazing 6:23 (min:sec) – more than 4 minutes faster.

The nLite didn’t perform much better at range however, something that I was hoping it would do. Testing just outside our office in a long corridor separated from our router line-of-sight by 3 dry-wall partitions, the nLite dropped off from the network with the same frequency as the on-board adapter. When I moved back into the office, performance (at around 12 meters with a single office partition between the router and the Wind), transfer speed still displayed the same delta as when testing at 10 meters or 15 meters. Undoubtedly, given a clear space from router to the netbook, we would have been able to see just how much better the range would have been, but given the real-world situation of many obstacles between source and adapter, we can safely say that the nLite gives negligible range improvement when in a closed environment, but improves performance in terms of transfer speed in line-of-sight conditions.

A screenshot of the nLite's included wireless management application.

In other words, our office is too small and too cluttered to properly test the range of the nLite; that being said, actual range should improve over an integrated solution due to the guaranteed extra range afforded by the attached 3 dBi antenna, the higher positioning (typically) of the antenna, all coupled with the fact that the nLite comes with a 1-meter cable that can be placed in a more router-accessible place (like on top of one of our office partitions, at which point performance would jump up drastically). All in all, the nLite product is a jam-packed bundle of technology that supersedes integrated solutions’ performance not so much due to the draft-n compatibility or better electronics, but due to its design and packaging in addition to its forward-looking specification list. More pictures to follow.

Tiny WPS switch on one side of the adapter.

The nLite with its adapter.