I bought this after experiencing severe lag whilst playing Super Smash Brothers Ultimate online with several friends living fairly close to me.
Short story: It fixed the lag.
*You may need to go into your settings and select "Wired Connection" while the Switch is docked.
More details:
My router supports 802.11ac and I have fibre internet. The router achieves around 400-700Mbps via WLAN depending on the device connected, and there are approximately 10 devices connected wirelessly. The router is capable of 1Gbps on a wired connection using a Cat5e or above cable.
The Switch is connected using the 5GHz band when on wireless.
The connection test via the Switch reports the same internet download/upload speed for wired and wireless. Thus, it was deduced that a wireless connection did not impact the internet speed available to it. The difference laid in the stability of that connection. Also consider that on wireless, the electrical signals are transduced into radio waves thus increasing latency.
Testing for approximately 10 minutes with a friend in Europe who also has fibre internet, there was no perceived lag for either of us when using a wired connection.
Testing the wired connection with friends closer to me, we tried several stages; large stages, stages with animation in the background, scrolling stages, and stages that morph, yet the experience was no different to a local match.
We tried 1v1 and 4v4 which did not affect the quality of the connection.
Previously, on wireless, the lag made the game virtually unplayable online. It also impacted the NES online 2 player mode rather detrimentally, but did not affect Mario Kart 8 Deluxe to any noticable degree.
Further testing showed significant improvements when using a wired connection and employing some higher level gameplay techniques in Smash. We tried perfect shield, dash cancelling, and "tech"-ing off rebounds. All worked as expected, thus strongly confirming this device delivered on its promise for me.
When reading other reviews, I felt compelled to write a more thorough and analytical review in the hopes of aiding others considering purchasing this peripheral, because £25 for an adapter isn't cheap!
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