Is it worth using LAN cable instead of Wi-Fi on your notebook/laptop? (test)

It's more and more common today that people buy notebooks instead of PCs. Because of it's portability, the place it takes to store it and probably because they simply believe that those tower cases under tables are too old-school and they believe that notebook with the same setup as desktop PC has the same power. There is also a lot of those who only use the notebook on a static place everyday.

I also bought new notebook not so long ago, altough I still preffer powerful PC with normal monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers. I needed notebook because of it's portability. But when I'm at home, I only use it on my table next to my PC and that made me think about the sense of using Wi-Fi.

I was looking for something powerful but not over-priced so I bought this one: 

Acer Aspire V3-772G-747a8G1TMakk 

(Full HD 17,3" anti-glare Acer ComfyView™) screen, Core i7 2.2GHz with turbo boost up to 3.2GHz, 8GB DDR3 RAM, Nvidia GeForce GT 750M 4GB  combined with Intel HD graphics for better power-management, 1TB HDD, Acer Nplify 802.11a/g/n + BT 4.0, etc etc...)

Only thing that worried me was that it has no SSD disk but it has one free slot for second HDD so I can add it later :) And Win8 on it still, after installing some software, start from turned off state to usable state in less than 30 seconds so in this case, it's not so limiting.

Wi-fi networks are faster and faster, but it's still not as fas

t as using LAN cable. But is the difference so big for you to even notice? Of course it is with high speed internet connection.  But I now have only 25Mbit VDSL connection, so I was nearly sure that it won't be so noticeable. I was wrong. When it's about browsing the internet, it's almost the same on my PC that is connected via cable and notebook that is connected via wi-fi but mostly used (when I'm at home with it) max 3 - 5m from the router, without walls and other obstacles. My internet connection is limited under the capabilities of my notebooks wi-fi, but when it came to downloading something directly (through the router of course) from my PC to notebook using shared folders, I was almost immediately showed how slow the wi-fi actually is.

I decided to test it using speedtest.net to show the differences between notebook using wi-fi but placed only about 30cm far from router, and between notebook connected directly to router using 1,5m long LAN cable.

Here are  my results:

First tests (Wi-Fi)

wi-fi test no. 1.1

wi-fi test no. 1.2

First tests (LAN cable)

LAN cable test no. 1.1

LAN cable test no. 1.2

Second tests (Wi-Fi) (After unplugging the LAN cable) 

wi-fi test no. 2.1

wi-fi test no. 2.2

Second tests (LAN cable) (After connecting the cable again)

LAN cable test no. 2.1

LAN cable test no. 2.2

 
So as you can see yourself if you check these tests, my results are only slightly different, but there is a difference!

Difference between WI-FI and LAN cable was approximately 1-2s better ping for LAN cable in my case. You probably won't notice that, but when you're talking about ping in such low numbers, every second counts! :)

Another, more interesting difference is the upload speed, which is very sad part of the story about my connection type (VDSL...). LAN cable was approximately only less than 0,02Mbit better in my case and that's practically no difference at all.

And the most interesting and quite big difference is the download speed of each type of connection.
The highest difference in my tests was in download speed - 4,73Mbit!
And that is a bit more than 20% of the maximum speed of my internet connection!

Also, if there is anyone else at home connected to the same router via wi-fi, the speed is going to vary a lot if they're actively using the connection at the same time, but it's not so dramatic while using cable. Plus I don't know if this is true, but it feels to me that my PC connected to the router via LAN cable has a bigger priority than any other device connected to the same router at the same time via Wi-Fi.

You probably won't even care about the max. speed of your connection while having the notebook on your lap browsing social networks somewhere around the house, but when it comes to work or downloading, and you are going to stay still with it on some table for a longer time, it's actually becoming more reasonable to use cable connection instead of wi-fi... I can only recommend it.