Plugable 2.5G USB-C and USB to Ethernet Adapter – Dual-Connector 2-in-1 USB-C to RJ45 2.5Gbps LAN, Compatible with Thunderbolt 5 & 4, USB4, USB 3.0, Windows, Mac, ChromeOS, iPhone 15 & 16

Bought a few of those over time as I upgraded my ISP connection speed to 2.5Gbps. Very conveniently comes with USB-A/C adapter and had no failures over the couple of years. The network connection is stable and as fast as advertised when measured with iperf3. Good deal for the money as well.

I used this on a QNAP TS-453a NAS (plugged in via USB 3.0 port) and it was easily detected! It has a RealTek (RTK8156) chipset. Connectivity was stable at 2.5Gbps (no disconnects!). Build is plastic. It's slightly warm to the touch as expected but not hot. The only thing I disliked about it was the fact that it makes it a little hard to unplug the Ethernet cable (I used 3 different ones). Worth noting - It uses a USB C and a detachable USB A adapter for versatility I gave it 5 stars mainly because I was happy with the functionality and outcome of this mini project.

Works perfectly right out of the box! 2.5Gbps full duplex!

Using the 2.5 Gbe adapter between my Lenovo Yogo C930 laptop and my QNAP NAS. Immediately after installation I was getting near 2.5G read speeds from the NAS and only 1G write speeds to the NAS. Went into the adapter's driver Advanced settings to make sure Jumbo Frames were on at 9K setting, but that was not available. My next troubleshooting steps were to check my hardware connections (wiring between router, switches, and NAS). Made a few changes and both R/W speeds drop to 1G. After that I went back to my original hardware setup, but R/W speeds were stuck at 1G. So I decided to update the 2016 driver that was pre-installed on the 2.5 Gbe adapter, but Windows stated the "Best driver was installed". So I went to the Pluggable's website and found the recommended 2021 driver. Downloaded that driver which allowed me access to change the Jumbo Frames setting from "Disabled" to "9014 Bytes" and that worked. I now get 2.3G write speeds and 2.5G read speeds between my Yoga C930 laptop and my NAS! I would have scored this a 5 star rating, but it was not plug and play. Users that are not a little tech savvy could have issues out of the box and just return the adapter. My setup is as follows: - QNAP TS-253 NAS which has (2) 2.5Gbe ports - QNAP QM2-2P10G1TA PCIe Expansion Card with 2 x PCIe 2280 M.2 SSD Slots - (2) Samsung 870 EVO 500 GB NVME SSD drives installed in the QM2 Expansion card (RAID 1, Used for caching) - (1) QNAP 6-Port 10GbE & 2.5GbE (QSW-2104-2S-US) Unmanaged Network Switch - Asus AX89X Router with (1) SFP+ 10G port, (1) 10G Ethernet port Please note my setup if for future expansion to 10G networking, but for now I'm only looking for use the 2.5G performance.

Full disclosure, I used this for a very specific use case. I recently upgraded my entire home network to 2.5 GBe and while all of my computers already had NICs that could handle that, my Synology DS920+ didn't. For the uninitiated, this NAS is actually a great little package that has most of the features of its bigger counterparts, with the exception of native 2.5 GBe support (neither on-device nor through expansion). This adapter was on the community sourced list of 2.5 GBe adapters that would work for the upgrade. I can confirm that it works. It takes a little bit of setup on the device, but once you enable it and install the driver, it works perfectly. I'm actually kinda glad since this probably ends up costing a fraction of what it would be if Synology offered a first party solution. This dongle is small enough to tuck away behind the NAS so that it's completely out of sight and I'm able to saturate it fully with around 200 MB/s transfer speeds, which is definitely an upgrade from the 90 MB/s that I'm used to seeing. I did briefly also test this on my M1 Macbook Pro (since the onboard wifi card is actually kinda terrible) and can confirm that I was able to get full throughput on that device as well.

Hits all the right buttons for consumer and IT Pro. Combo USB A and C, MAC address printed on the side, Link and Activity lights bright enough to actually see. I believe windows 11 detected it without going online to find a driver. 2.5G Speeds. Affordable. I don't see a reason to pay less for a 1G adapter anymore with this available.

First off, I tested this on OS X Mojave, Catalina, and Big Sur on 3 different machines and the results were the same for all three. You MUST install the latest drivers from the Realtek site to get 2.5Gbe speeds, otherwise it will only work as a normal Gigabit ethernet connection (and a sub-par one at that). I repeat, if you don't install the drivers, the built in OS X drivers work only as a gigabit ethernet plug. You can check if it's installed right by going to the Apple menu, select "About this Mac" and then click the "System report" button. In the window that then opens, on the left side click on "network". You should then see in the top right section "USB 10/100/1G/2.5G". Click on that and in the window below that's filled with lots of tech jargon there is a section called "Ethernet - Media Subtype". That section should say "2500Base-T". If it says 1000Base-T you didn't install the drivers correctly and you aren't getting 2.5Gbe speeds. So I unhooked my built in ethernet and tested only using this USB dongle. The dongle overheats within 15 seconds of transferring data at 2.5gbps speeds, then slows itself down to worse than gigabit speeds. This is using 5 foot Cat 6a cables, which should be far above the spec needed for 2.5gbe. Testing between a PC with a dedicated 2.5Gbe PCIe card, a single 62GB file took 10 minutes over the built in the built in gigabit connection of my MacPro, but took almost 20 minutes using the 2.5Gbe connection. (Both machines were using SSD's also) Looking at the traffic on my 2.5Gbe Qnap switch, I could see the transfer spike at the start up close to proper 2.5Gbe speeds, but then rapidly fall below normal gigabit as the adaptor overheated. This happened on another 2.5Gbe USB dongle (Also Realtek based) I purchased at the same time. Based on the reviews I knew overheating would be a problem, but I didn't think it would be this bad. The CableCreations plug is larger then the other one I bought so I hoped it would have better cooling, sadly it does not. I bought some small heatsinks off Amazon also. I'm going to tear the dongle down and see if applying a proper heatsink will help with transfer speeds. The moral of the story is while these do "work" they are just not that good. They are OK for quick bursts of data, but if you need 2.5Gbe, you probably are gigs and gigs around, and they are BAD at that because of the overheating. I'm going to break down and just buy a Thunderbolt 10Gbe adaptor I guess.

I upgraded to 1.2 Gig down and 35 Meg up from Comcast/Xfinity. I then bought an Arris S33 modem. (Note, never plug anything into the second Ethernet port on the S33 if you are a residential customer. When the modem reboots the one IP address Comcast will give you may not be given to the 2.5 Gig port.) I then realized that I had nothing in the house that could do faster than 1 Gig Ethernet. (My WiFi is eero 6+, which only can do 1 Gig, and the Windows laptops we have only have a 1 Gig Ethernet ports, and the Chromebook has no Ethernet port.) I have an Acer Chromebook 317 with a Pentium Silver N6000 @ 1.10 GHz with 8 GB of memory. I've wanted an Ethernet adapter for it before, but always worked around the problem by borrowing another laptop. I plugged in the USB-E2500 and saw a message I've never seen before "Update firmware on Unifying Receiver". I clicked OK and saw a message that the update failed, but asking if I wanted to try again. I went to try again and found that my mouse didn't work. But my trackpad (which I have off when Chrome OS is running) was working. Apparently I was running at a lower more basic level of the laptop. Using the trackpad I ran the update again, and this time it said the update worked! So I took the laptop to the S33, unplugged my eero and plugged in the USBC-E2500. Two minutes later it was still "connecting" when I viewed Ethernet in my Chrome OS settings. I cycled power on the S33 and when its light went blue the Chromebook was connected. I then tested the speed. On speedtest.net I got 1269.28 down and 41.67 up. On xfinity.speedtest.com I got 1367.5 down and 39.5 up. Comcast /Xfinity sold the service as 1200 down and 35 up. Life is good!

Das Teil ist sein Geld wert. Durch die Standard 10/100/1000 MBit Karte wurde meine Gigabit 1000er Leitung nur zur Hälfte beim Speed Test mit etwa 500 MBit ausgereizt. Nach dem Anbringen mit einem Cat 8 Kabel und dem 2,5er Adapter an den USB-C Port verdoppelte sich bei mir die Leistung auf fast 1000 MBit im Speed Test. Das hat sich also voll gelohnt für mich. Es ist nochmal merklich schneller geworden.Nur der Treiber war veraltet auf der Hersteller Seite. Es gibt einen Neuen besseren beim Chip Hersteller.....

It's working perfectly fine, I used it with my desktop pc and with tiny pc. I am using it for PFSENSE, Pfsense does detect it on tiny Lenovo pc M93Q, but you have to plug it on yellow usb port, otherwise it won't work, will keep disconnecting. Other option, if you are plugging it to tiny pc, is to install proxmox, this usb adaptor could be put in any USB port, proxmox will detect it and then use it in any VM\CT. Regards, M

il dispositivo non viene visto dai nap qnap e non è possibile installare dei drive unix con cui farlo rilevare. Testato su un ts251a. E' necessario prendere il prodotto QNAP QNA-UC5G1T che costa 3 volte di più ed ha un chipset differente. Tenete presente che per saturare la banda delle interfacce di serie (gigalan) dovete avere un nas che ha installato almeno due ssd sata in raid 0.

I picked up the Plugable 2.5G USB-C Ethernet adapter and it worked perfectly right out of the box with my Unraid server. No drivers, no tweaking, no headaches. I plugged it in and the interface showed up immediately and negotiated at 2.5 Gbps. Performance has been solid and stable so far. It’s a great way to add faster networking to systems that don’t have built-in 2.5 GbE, especially if you’re running Unraid or other Linux-based systems. Very happy with the purchase and would definitely recommend it if you need a simple and reliable 2.5 Gb adapter. 👍

The adapter meets expectations. The internal chip is high quality, as described.