The fastest and most reliable way to connect your PC to a network is still via Ethernet, but if running a wire isn't realistic, the right Wi-Fi card can still give you plenty of speed for working from home, streaming, and gaming. Wi-Fi routers have improved a lot, and while many motherboards have onboard Wi-Fi these days, upgrading to a higher-performance card can improve both latency and speed.

These cards are based on a handful of chips from companies like Intel, Mediatek, and Qualcomm, with some offering better compatibility than others. That's especially true if you want to use it with a Wi-Fi 7 router, as only Qualcomm-based Wi-Fi 7 cards work with AMD motherboards, while most will work with Intel. Keep an eye on the generation of Wi-Fi they support, preferably aiming for Wi-Fi 6 or newer. Cards that support 160MHz on Wi-Fi 6 or 320MHz on Wi-Fi 7 offer the best speeds overall, although that also depends on the network coverage. If coverage is a challenge, an external antenna is a must in order to get the best signal possible or extend the network via mesh nodes, extenders, or wired backhaul.

If you’re eyeing one of these Wi-Fi cards and the Bluetooth connection matters to you, keep in mind that to use the card’s Bluetooth connection, you’ll need to connect a cable to one of the USB 2.0 headers on your motherboard. If you plan to take this approach, make sure you have a vacant USB 2.0 header and enough room to easily route or hide the cable.

Our top picks for the best Wi-Fi cards for your PC in 2024

If you have a decent PC and feel like the only thing holding you back is your wireless connection, then the Asus PCE-AXE59BT is all you need. It's easily the best Wi-Fi card on this list because of its reliability, performance, and overall value. For starters, it features a compact, low-profile design that will easily fit into the aesthetic of any PC build. It also has a magnetized antenna base that features two external antennas to improve signal strength and coverage. This Wi-Fi card supports the latest Wi-Fi 6E standard with a MediaTek chipset and can reach a theoretical maximum speed of up to 2.4Gbps at 5GHz and 6GHz. During our review, this card had no problem keeping up with a Gigabit connection, topping out at around 940Mbps.

This card also supports the newer 6GHz band, which enables more bandwidth, faster data transfers, and less interference with other devices connected to the router. With this band enabled, the adapter can support up to seven 160MHz channels, enabling multi-gig speeds and support for high-bandwidth activities.

These capabilities should be enough proof that this is by far the best Wi-Fi card for productivity, streaming, and gaming. The wide coverage means that you get reduced dead zones, and you also get Bluetooth 5.2 support to connect to your favorite wireless peripherals. The only major downside with this one is that the new 6GHz Wi-Fi band is solely supported on Windows 11, not Windows 10, so if your CPU doesn't support Windows 11 or you just don't feel like upgrading, you'll need to use 5GHz (which is still quite fast).

If the ASUS card above is a bit pricey, the TP-Link Archer TX20E is the next obvious choice. It delivers about 90% of the functionality but at a lower price. The only thing holding it back is that it’s not a Wi-Fi 6E card. However, if Wi-Fi 6 is good enough for you, then this might be the best Wi-Fi card in terms of reliability.

First off, considering the price, the fact that you’ll get support for speeds up to 1.8Gbps is incredible, which works out as a 1.2Gbps connection at 5GHz. Even cheap network devices aren’t slow anymore, and it’s up to internet service providers to catch up. You'll also get a reliable connection thanks to the dual-band Wi-Fi 6 controller. The main difference between Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 6 is the use of the 6GHz spectrum. For most people, Wi-Fi 6 is plenty. Unless you have a Wi-Fi 6E router, you won’t find much use for it anyway.

The best part about this card is its wide compatibility. It works with Windows 10, Windows 11, and even with most Linux kernels. The drivers aren’t a pain to install. It has a pretty compact size, and it even features two external antennas for wider coverage. This is an excellent Wi-Fi card that punches above its price class. Keep in mind that, like many of these cards, you'll need to connect to an internal USB 2.0 header for Bluetooth support.

Wi-Fi 7 is still rather new and, as such, not many devices support it. While a lot of new Android models have been including the new tech, desktops and laptops have been slower to adopt Wi-Fi 7 and the earlier Intel BE200 chipset didn’t support most AMD systems. The MSI Herald-BE solves this by using the Qualcomm NCM865, which works on both Intel and AMD machines so that you can use it with your Ryzen CPU. You can even remove the Wi-Fi module and install it in a laptop if you want.

The NCM865 is a capable Wi-Fi module with support for 320MHz connections, enabling transfer speeds of up to 5.8Gbps. Of course, you’ll need a Wi-Fi 7 router to get the best speed out of this router, but if you’re trying to get multi-gigabit wireless speeds across your home, Wi-Fi 7 is one of your best bets. Wi-Fi 7 can also deal with congestion better than Wi-Fi 6E with 4K-QAM. Finally, MLO support allows you to use both 5GHz and 6GHz connections at once, typically with 5GHz used for upload, to improve latency. If you're a gamer, MLO could be a big Wi-Fi upgrade for you.

This card comes with an external antenna, which is especially important given the lower power levels used by many 6GHz-capable routers. It is also equipped with Bluetooth 5.4, so you get an upgrade to the latest Bluetooth standard.

There are already a lot of great Wi-Fi cards on this list, and most of them deliver excellent speeds at a reasonable price. However, if you don’t care about the widest coverage or gaming-related features, the EDUP PCIe Wi-Fi 6E adapter is a solid choice.

This Wi-Fi card features a low-profile design and two external antennas. While it looks rather plain and boring (it’s certainly not earning any points in the style department), it’s small enough that it won’t be noticeable in most builds. If you’re okay with the design, you’ll be getting a lot of value here.

This card is cheaper than both of the picks above and below, yet it manages to keep up with them in terms of performance. With the Intel AX210 chipset, you're getting Wi-Fi 6E speeds, Bluetooth 5.2, and a tri-band configuration. As for the exact speed, you can expect up to 2.4Gbps as a theoretical maximum connection speed on 5GHz or 6GHz.

The only real con is that the drivers can be a bit finicky. There might be a few issues if you had a Wi-Fi adapter installed before this one, so make sure you wipe the old drivers or disable a built-in card before installing this card. Otherwise, this EDUP card is an excellent value that’s hard to ignore because of the price-to-performance ratio.

Are you a gamer who needs something blazing fast, affordable, and well-designed? If all of that speaks to you, this might be the best Wi-Fi card that you can buy. The Gigabyte GC-WBAX210 using an Intel AX210 chipset has everything that a gamer would want.

First off, it supports the latest Wi-Fi 6E standard, which means it features the new 6GHz band. As a result, you’ll enjoy more bandwidth and less latency when you’re playing games online. In terms of speed, this card can go up to 2.4Gbps with ease. This is certainly more than enough for quickly downloading a few games. It also looks good and will fit into any build regardless of the color theme. You may not expect to hear that in a guide about the best Wi-Fi cards, but it's true. It has a bold “Team Up, Fight On” engraving on the back, a clean-looking heat sink, and an aggressively styled external antenna.

However, there are a few downsides to this card. For one, it only supports Bluetooth 5.2 instead of the newer 5.3. This seems odd, as everything else about it is quite high-end. Other than that, the drivers can be a bit buggy during installation. Plus, while the coverage is good, there’s some room for improvement. These issues are all worth mentioning, but none of them are significant enough to be dealbreakers. Pair this Wi-Fi card with one of the best routers for gaming, and you’ll get the high-end experience that you deserve.

The TP-Link Archer TXE72E is very similar to the Archer TX20E. The only discernible difference is that this one works better if you want to connect to multiple Bluetooth devices. It features Bluetooth 5.3, the latest standard, and it lets you easily switch between multiple wireless devices.

For those who have multiple wireless headphones, keyboards, or mice, this card is ideal. It’s a bit pricey compared to the Archer TX20E (which is often on sale) but justifies the price with its performance. Speaking of which, its Wi-Fi speeds are quite impressive as well. You can easily achieve 2.4Gbps on the 5GHz and 6GHz channels, and 574Mbps on the 2.4GHz channel. There is very little latency with both the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections, which also makes it a decent option for gaming. All of that sounds great, but you might be asking why this one is lower on the list if it's that good.

Well, it’s because there’s a small design flaw with the I/O bracket. For some PC cases, the bracket is too long, and for others, it’s too short. This seems to mainly be an issue with ITX and mATX cases, so you’ll be fine if you have an ATX case.

The Intel Wi-Fi 6 Gig+ Desktop Kit is by far the most unconventional Wi-Fi card on this list. So far, only PCIe Wi-Fi cards have been covered, but this Intel kit is very different. Instead of using the PCIe x1 slot, this one plugs into an M.2 2230 socket that uses a Key E or Key A design. As you can probably guess, this slot is not available on certain motherboards.

While the Intel AX200 card used in this kit is far from rare, it's not terribly common to see a kit like this without a PCIe carrier card. It’s a bit hard to install, and the cable that connects to the antennas can be hard to hide. Still, if you've got a compact PC like a mini-ITX build, this card can be a solid upgrade without taking up a valuable PCIe slot. This card supports Wi-Fi 6 with 80MHz connections, so up to 1.2Gbps on the 5GHz band. You could also use the same antenna and bracket later with an upgrade to a newer card like the Intel AX211 or BE200. The Bluetooth connection is rock-solid as well.

Intel does sell adapters separately if you don't have an M.2 Key A or Key E socket on your motherboard. Still, considering that it’s an extra expense and it’s hard to install, this card will not be ideal for everyone.

Whether you just need a cheap and reliable Wi-Fi solution for an older PC, or you don't have a fast internet connection to begin with, the TP-Link Archer T4E is really about as cheap as you'd want to go for a Wi-Fi card. It has a capable AC1200 connection with 2x2 MIMO support, which means your maximum connection speed at 5GHz is 867Mbps. That's plenty of speed for most people; but keep in mind that those numbers are its top ideal-scenario speeds, so you'll never quite reach them in practice.

This is a capable Wi-Fi 5 adapter when it comes to interference with support for 256-QAM, but if you've got a lot of nearby neighbors (such as an apartment building), the 1024-QAM support on a Wi-Fi 6 card would result in more consistent performance. That, of course, assumes you have a Wi-Fi 6 router that supports it.

This adapter does not include Bluetooth, so if you need both functions, you should choose a more capable card. That being said, this card comes with a low-profile bracket and passive cooling, so you can fit it into a compact desktop PC without worrying about overheating or clearance.

Getting the most out of a wireless connection

Wired Ethernet connections are generally always better than wireless ones, but are much less convenient. Wi-Fi has gotten faster, especially with Wi-Fi 6 and newer, but it's still less predictable than using a good Ethernet cable for your connection. Wi-Fi needs to contend with interference caused by anything from other Wi-Fi routers to HVAC appliances.

If you want the best of the best, the MSI Herald-BE is a strong choice. It offers transfer speeds up to 5.8Gbps with Wi-Fi 7, 320MHz band support, and 4K-QAM. You also get MLO support, which allows you to use multiple bands at once, improving both throughput and latency. Unlike Intel Wi-Fi 7 chips, it even works on AMD Ryzen systems.

The Asus PCE-AXE59BT is a great overall choice with a fast Wi-Fi 6E connection and 160MHz support for a multi-gigabit connection. This Asus card is fast, provides excellent coverage, and has everything you need for a great experience. It uses a quick Mediatek chipset and will have no trouble keeping up with file transfers at over 1Gbps if you share files over your local network.

The EDUP Wi-Fi 6E adapter is another affordable, quality choice. It uses the well-liked Intel AX210 chipset and supports connections up to 2.4Gbps at 160MHz.

These selections show that wireless performance has come a long way, and you should take advantage of the advancements to improve your connectivity.