Customer Ratings & Reviews

There is a driver incompatability that rendered all networking functions on two different MacBooks that I own inoperable, including the wifi adapters on both machines. I followed the driver installation instructions precisely, using drivers that I downloaded for the product from the Insignia website. My machines are a late 2016 Macbook Pro with touch bar, running OSX High Sierra, and a 2015 Macbook Air with OSX Sierra. I ended up having to boot both machines into recovery mode and having to reinstall the operating systems on both machines in order to remove the Insignia (Realtek) adapter drivers and restore any networking functionality back to both machines. This is unacceptable to me, and this incident led to an extremely stressful day, considering one of the two of us in my household works from home and relies on conducting video conference trainings as part of her career. I am concerned that people who are not as competent with computer diagnostics and repair as I am will purchase this product and end up with non-functional machines. I whole-heartedly feel that continuing to sell this product as-is, and without any disclaimer whatsoever, is completely negligent behavior on the behalf of Insignia/Best Buy, and is also a prime example of false advertising, deliberately misleading consumers such as me. It is safe to say that neither my partner, nor I, will unfortunately never purchase or recommend any Insignia branded product again as a result of this experience. I hope that in the future you do more to protect your customers from potentially damaging their equipment by using your misleading products and advertising.

Consumers seem to be forcing computer makers to make laptops thinner to the point that they may look like a folded piece of paper in a few more years. That endless quest for thinness has resulted in the loss of many legacy connections. This dongle is a result of one of those losses. After getting my $1300 laptop home I was looking forward to improvement in performance not reduced performance. Imagine my dismay when I tried to plug my 100 Mb up/100 Mb down Ethernet cable into my brand new i7 Kaby Lake powerhouse and found that that the computer had been limited to slow Wi-Fi speeds because eliminating the Ethernet plug allowed them to shave a few mm off of the thickness. THAT'S NOT PROGRESS! The good news is that this USB3.0 to Gigabit dongle brings high speed internet back to my crippled laptop. It says in the dongle's included instruction manual that it only works with older Microsoft Operating Systems, but you can install the required software to Windows 10. Of course my new supposedly high performance laptop could not easily install the app software BECAUSE IT DOESN'T HAVE AN OPTICAL DRIVE so it can be THIN! You can buy another dongle to connect your less capable but THIN laptop to an external DVD drive to install the software. I don't blame this USB3.0 to Gigabit dongle for any of my problems. IT IS THE SOLUTION. It works perfectly and gives the high internet speeds that older laptops are able to achieve out of the box.

I bought this to use for my Macbook air because the wifi where I go to school at is so slow. I didn't realize I had to install with a disc, but then that wasn't a problem because you can go online to download the software instead. I got it downloaded to my Macbook, and the first week it worked pretty well. After the first week I had to reinstall the software before I used it each time, if my laptop even moved a certain way it would disconnect from the Ethernet adapter, so it was making me have to sit my Macbook completely still. After about 2 weeks the adapter would not reinstall anymore. The light will be green when I plug it in, but the download will not re-download anymore and work. This may work better for others who buy it, but my experience with this is very unpleasant, especially since I bought this and a Ethernet cord to do my school work with to have faster internet, and it has not done me much use. It is also expensive for this and the Ethernet cord considering I paid around $50 for both, and I can't use the cord without the adapter. So my money has went to waste. I now just have to connect my Macbook to my hotspot on my phone to have faster internet. This may work for others, but if you have a Macbook Air, you may want to hold on to your receipt for a few weeks just in case it stops working.

MAC BUYERS BEWARE! The required driver for this adapter (which is included on a CD in the box) will crash Macs with a kernel panic. This is a KNOWN problem -- google "mac panic realtek driver" for more information (Insignia supplies a realtek driver on their installation disc). It happened to me two hours after installing the adapter. I removed the adapter, but the driver is still installed on my computer. An uninstaller is NOT included on the installation CD. I contacted Insignia tech support Insignia Tech Support for instructions on how to uninstall the driver and after requesting TONS of information on the problem, they were beyond useless. They simply instructed me to contact Apple support for instructions on how to remove the driver, and washed their hands of it! This is not an Apple problem -- it's an Insignia problem which THEY ARE AWARE OF -- and they can't provide you with a method to remove their corrupt driver from your Mac. UNACCEPTABLE!

I lost ALL networking capabilities when I Installed the driver for this on my 2015 MacBook Pro running MacOS High Sierra. Wifi wouldn't work, ethernet wouldn't work. Complete loss of connectivity. After I got it yesterday morning, I spent the rest of the day trying to recover from the driver installation. What a terrible way to spend a Saturday. The Geek Squad technician at my local Best Buy spent over an hour trying to fix the problem. Nothing she did would work. I had to reinstall the operating system to get my networking back. Save yourself the pain and get something else!

Bought this to attach to an Acer Chromebook 14. It does the job. At first I thought something was wrong with it, since it has super aggressive power saving. That is, when it can’t get a PHY layer connection, the whole thing shuts off and de-registers from USB. I found out the issue was actually my switch which had a bad port, not the adaptor - but other adaptors will stay on with an intermittent connection. This won’t. So, keep in mind that this probably isn’t appropriate for something like a wake-on-lan remote application (although it may be smart enough to turn on in such a situation.) But if you have a standard solid Ethernet connection, it’s just fine.

Everything is to be sacrificed to the world of form-function, thin-ness, and wireless-ness. Notebooks are becoming thinner and thinner, and with that, are losing out on older features such as cd drives (lol), better cooling tech (inb4 watercool a Macbook like Linus), and in this case, ethernet ports. We're getting to the point where our devices will be as thick as a USB type-A port, (and that's just till type-C becomes more popular), and for those of us who still need a laptop for on-the-go usage, being able to directly plug into an ethernet jack and not have to deal with the difficulties wi-fi speeds can present can directly determine the success of a "Netflix-and-chill" session, especially in the likes of cruddy college dorm wi-fi. Thankfully, devices such as these exist, and ensure that as we stream the latest episode of Mahou Shoujo Ball Z, that I won't have to transform into a pretty SSJ12 sailor at the consistent "buffering" symbol of rage.

After two months of using this adapter, it seems to work a-ok. I bought this after my desktop's built-in ethernet jack bit the dust. Bought this one since it was the cheapest at the store. For some odd reason, mine came in a box that claimed that this unit was capable of 10Gbps. I do need to note that I purchased an open box unit for the reduced price, so maybe it just got put in the incorrect box. I don't have the hardware to test whether or not it is capable of the 'advertised' speed. I didn't use the driver CD to install the drivers, I just downloaded them from the internet beforehand. They are posted on the Insignia site for the product, very convenient (driver zip has Windows/Mac/Linux drivers in it). Aside from the iffy marketing on the box, this product gets two thumbs up from me.

I was humming along on the computer one day when out of nowhere I get a BSOD. I have no idea...I restart everything just fine. Became apparent upon restart that the motherboard modem on my Asus Pro R2.0 died a rather sudden and ignoble death. Ran out to the closest Best Buy to see what kind of replacement I could get for this sudden emergency and this adapter fit the bill. A small amount of driver installation time later, one USB 3.0 port is acting as my new modem. I've now been running it for two or three months and have no issues with it. I mainly use my internet connection for surfing and the online game World of Warships at this time. This adapter handles the speed of the connection easily and handily. While I would of course rather have my regular modem operational, this adapter is a worthy understudy. Great speeds, very reliable.

I bought a flash drive (128-G), and an adapter (USB to Ethernet). Both were for USB-3.0 which I wanted to test on my computer on the USB-2.0 port. The Geek Squad person (CHRIS) was EXTREMELY helpful by going to get units of both devices in both USB-3.0 and USB-2.0 form. We tried the USB-3.0 devices and both worked. We were able to pay for both devices at the Geek Squad counter (no need to go through regular check-out). Chris returned the unopened devices to their display places in the store. I had to admit that Chris did all the things I would have done myself. It couldn’t have been any easier. By the way, I am currently using both devices regularly and have not had any problems. Chris is at the Columbia, MD store.

This item is worthless. It will not work on Windows 10. I went in to Best Buy and told them the model of laptop I had and my need, which was to hook up to the Internet service via hardware due to the very slow wifi. The laptop, a new high end laptop, has no Ethernet port or CD player. The salesman suggested this adapter. Right out of the box the installation was via CD, which most laptops no longer have. So I went on the website to download the driver and it told me it is not Windows 10 compatible. So I called the company, and indeed the product doesn't work with Windows 10...and they don't make a product that does. I ask just one question: why does Best Buy even carry this product?

After installing Gigabit Ethernet Service I found my laptop network interface was only rated at 10/100mbps. Searched Best Buy and found the Insignia Gigabit Adapter that could be installed with a minimum of effort via my laptop USB 3.0 port. The Adapter worked out of the box and I did not have to load new software or drivers which came on a install CD. Now I am getting network speeds up to 600 mbps. The only notable feature to watch is the external usb Gigabit Adapter can run warm to hot at times. The Insignia Adapter was very reasonably priced at about $25.00. Also noted my HP Laptop was running Windows 10. Also purchased CAT 6 network cables which were rated for higher speeds.

My fathers on-board died, so we went out to get an internal PCI-E replacement from our local Best Buy, sadly, they do not have those in stock. We had to settle on this item, at the time thankful he had several USB 3.0 slots (never had a prospected use for them till now), however after a couple hours of trying to get it to work and trouble shooting with Insignia over the phone, we were going to return it as defective, I decided to just try a regular 2.0 slot. Turns out it worked right away, no problems, even runs just as fast as the on board did, at ~200 Mbps, according to speedtest.net. Not sure if this is a Windows 7 64-bit pro thing or what...

I didn't knock this item in the overall rating because I never found out if the product worked or not. I purchased this for the Nintendo Switch and was unable to get it to work. Not sure if it is because the switch was not yet patched and the USB ports were still operating in USB 2.0 mode at launch. Unsure if this product supports USB 2.0 and 1.1 or not. I purchased another brand that specifically said it had legacy support and it worked straight away..

This is a reliable product that says USB 3.0 but I used it for several months on a 2.0 USB slot, and it worked great there too. I have it in a 3.0 connection now, but I don't notice the difference. Perhaps my network traffic is just not the heavy. The motherboard on a [brand name I like, so I won't mention the brand] included the ethernet connection. When that broke, I thought I was going to have to replace the whole computer, but the Geek squad guys pointed me to this product. It was inexpensive and worked great from the moment I plugged it in.

Bought this while on vacation. My wife's Surface II Pro needed to download an update, but the update was for the wireless adapter! Since we were in an Hotel, we needed to get a wired connection to the Hotel Internet service. The Best Buy suggested an Ethernet to USB Adapter might work, if we had a way to install the software driver for the USB to Ethernet dongle. I took a chance and bought this. Surprise! My wife's Surface Pro II already had the driver for this device. It worked perfect right out of the box. No downloads, no nothing, and we had a connection. My wife updated her Surface and was back in action within minutes. This device saved us a bunch of trouble!

I bought this for my laptop that doesn't have a network port and it has issues connecting to some wi-fi. It works well enough as I used it for a VPN connection to work and had it connected for 8 hours at a time. Most of my work is done with an RDP to a remote system, but I also run some local apps that references data on network drives. Really no issue there. Although the network cable was still a little loose even though it "clicked" into the jack, the overall quality is good enough and it does the job. I did get some brief disconnects but nothing out of the ordinary compared to my regular wi-fi connection when that works.

I would give this -10 stars if I could. I would call it garbage if I could, but at least the only problem with garbage is it doesn't work. After installing the drivers for this, not only will it not work, it will also bork up your wi-fi and render it useless. The only way to fix it is a complete re-install or figure out a script to remove the files that were installed. Just stay away from this thing if you are on a mac. Did not test on Windows.

This device does exactly what it says, and allows network traffic to scream once it is working. The only issue was the lack of support for Windows 10 out of the box. The provided CD software had to be transferred to a flash drive to get it to the laptop (with no optical drive), and then it wouldn't install. I had to dig into my 22+ years of technical experience to force Windows to recognize the device and go searching for drivers on the internet. Now my son, who uses this on his laptop at college, is able to get off the slower and erratic Wi-Fi and use the hardline in his dorm room.

There is no support on this past windows 8 nor MacOS 10. I installed the software on High Sierra and it literally removed the hardware for my wifi adapter and it did the same thing on windows 10. If you chance it, make sure you set a restore point and back up your computer because this will give you hours of troubleshooting and restoring. Spend the little extra and get a quality adapter that has been supported past 2014! I'm going to return and get an apple branded so I can just skip the headaches.