Please recommend USB wifi

I bought a job lot of HP thin clients (t7510s) and the x-86 legacy works a treat except I cant find a usb wifi dongle that works. Please can someone recommend a reasonably priced dongle ( around $10 us) that has been tested with x-86 legacy 19.07.1 please.

Thanks in advance
Tecko

The best USB wifi doesn't use USB, but is PCIe based instead…

Vendors don't design USB chipsets for 24/7 or AP uses - and this shows. In many cases, the firmware (and/ or drivers) for USB wireless cards don't properly support all the features needed for (and specific to-) AP mode, especially interoperability with powersaving clients or IEEE 802.11w are often (almost always) a problem (smartphones, notebooks, IoT and more). In addition you're often dealing with design-inherent issues, such as the antennas being too close to each other for MIMO to work properly or the devices overheating during long term operations.

I'd strongly recommend against even considering USB based wlan cards, if PCIe isn't an option, using a dedicated concurrent dual-band AP/ router running OpenWrt is almost always a cheaper (you can often get a decent concurrent dual-band AP for the price of a single 5 GHz capable WLAN card) and much better/ more reliable solution (on the used market and with quite some patience, you might find those starting around ~20 EUR/ USD - new, prices for decent stuff starts around 50-80 EUR/ USD).

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The project I am working on will require 50 of these thin clients working in concert and PCI is not a option because of hardware limitations and 50 APs at even $ 50 is not a option because of financial limitations, so usb is the only viable option. This project will only require 2.4 GHz and will only be active for short periods .5 to 1 hour. Any recommend for a usb dongle that is known to work will be much appreciated.

Will the thin clients use the wifi adapters in client mode, as access points, or some kind of mesh?

Generally in ap mode but at some point client mode

I use the Alfa AWUS036ACM and Netgear A6210( MediaTek MT7612U driver) on the Atomic Pi running OpenWrt x86 ,good performance,stability and support 802.11ac WiFi . If you are in the US Microcenter sells the A6210 refurbished for $20