WiFi Card vs. Mesh WiFi

[TechTippee]

Hello TechTippers,

 

Looking to improve the WiFi in my home, I want to move the points closer together. However, that would require untethering one of them from my desktop, which gets WiFi via one of the hubs' Ethernet ports. The mesh WiFi is a Google Wifi (not Nest, mind you) system that has some sort of smart switching between 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz depending on your device's proximity to the hub. Because neither the hub nor my desktop are directly wired to the main router/modem, I am running on WiFi speeds. Therefore, I figured I would buy a WiFi card capable of both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz, move the hub to improve the overall connection around my home, and use the card to connect to the hub.

 

I'm interested to see if adding a second "link in the chain" adds any kind of additional performance hit, since I was already gaming on WiFi to begin with, or if the benefits of "tightening" the mesh override that. My question is this: What are some simple, repeatable things I can do to test connection speeds, etc.?

[TechTippee]

Bumping