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Jordan, Amman
1 Level
710 Review
64 Karma

Review on Edimax BT 5.0 EDR Nano USB Dongle for PC - Fast Transfer for Bluetooth Headsets, Speakers, Keyboards, and Mice - Compatible with Win 8/10 and Linux 2.6.32-5.3 (Fedora & Ubuntu) - BT-8500 by Patrick Ordonez

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Flakey Networking Products

My desktop PC doesn't have BT on MB so I've always used a dongle. My previous setup was an Asus BT4 dongle so I decided to upgrade as some of my new devices have BT5. I started getting another Asus dongle since my old one worked so well, but settled on this one based on the Linux compatibility and decent reviews. There was an error. This thing was a problem from the start and did nothing but make my system unstable. When I first plugged it in, my system froze for a few seconds. Eventually he said he was building a new device. It took a lot longer than usual. Not a few seconds, but 2-3 minutes. I tried headphones and they worked but the audio was laggy so I figured maybe installing their driver would help. Downloaded from their site and started the installation. It all started well, but then stopped and just seemed stuck. There was no sign of activity. The hard drive indicator does not blink, the screen does not change or anything else. I saw that it takes a while to install the drivers so I just left it as is. Finally, after 30 minutes or more, I got a "Done" screen and asked if I wanted to restart. I decided to restart later as I had to work. When I started the reboot it went to the windows restart screen and just sat there. After a few minutes I left and left everything as it is. When I returned to the room 15-20 minutes later, I was greeted with a Win10 BSOD. There was no useful information on the screen, so I pressed the reset button and prayed. It loaded but took a little longer than usual. The dongle was in my device list, but the headphones would not connect. I reconnected them and somehow it worked. The audio was static and out of sync. Another reboot, normal this time, and everything seemed to settle down. I looked at the system logs to see if there is any information about this BSOD and it said the driver is not working. I checked and the driver used is Microsoft and not Edimax. Did I go through all this setup drama for nothing? I am not really sure. All I can say is that my system is not as stable as it used to be. The audio cuts out, the screen refreshes for no apparent reason, and some games just won't load due to audio issues. When they finally load, I have no sound. I read a review of another dongle that mentioned it uses a USB 2 connector to make it work properly. I always plugged my old dongle into a USB 3 hub and it worked fine. I did the same with this new key. I've tried moving it to a USB 2 port and seems to like it a lot better. Why the new tech device needs to be plugged into the old tech port is pretty cryptic to me, but it's working for now. I'll play with it a bit more, but most likely I'll return this and order an Asus key, or go the other way entirely.

Pros
  • Weight
Cons
  • No Insurance