[SOLVED] Looking for wifi adapter recommendation

[millworker301]

One of our laptops gets a very slow wifi speed. I would like to see about replacing the wifi adapter in the laptop.

Laptop is a Lenovo ideapad 110

Adapter that is currently in it is realtek 8821ae wireless lan 802.11ac pci-e nic

If I have used any of the wrong terms, my mistake. I only dabble in the stuff.

Anyway, if you guys can give me some reccommendations I would appreciate it.

Thanks

 

[bill001g]

Your first step is to see if you can find instructions for replacing a wifi card in that unit. Some are easy with simple access doors on the bottom others you must have things like a heat gun to try to open things that are glued together.

In general any card that will physically fit will work. There are only 2 or 3 different sizes so it should not be real hard to find one.

The main thing to consider is that you can not easily add antennas. I had issues finding tech specs for your card and machine but I think it only has 1 antenna. Even though a newer card with more antenna will be faster you can not take advantage of this without antenna to connect to them.

Also be very sure you check if the new card has bluetooth support. I think your current cards does...again you really need to find the tech specs.

Pretty much unless you think the speed problem is related to a defective card you may not see much improvement. You already have 802.11ac so this is not like upgrading from 802.11n to 802.11ac. Most the faster 802.11ac cards accomplish this by using more antenna which you can not really change. Then again my simple search for your card found lots of complaints about performance on that card. Maybe it is just a lemon, realtek cards are generally pretty good so maybe just a different model number will help.

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

To save "going under the hood" as it were, you may want to consider getting a USB WiFi adapter & disabling the existing adapter in Device Manager.

Many USB WiFi adapters these days are "nano" devices which are not much longer than wireless mouse dongle.

 

[DeauteratedDog]

If you do go with an external USB adapter, avoid the 'nano' adapters - they just don't have enough room for a decent antenna.

There are some very capable (3 spatial stream) USB adapters available, but they aren't cheap. See, for example:
https://www.newegg.com/netgear-a7000-10000s-usb-3-0/p/N82E16833122956
or
https://www.newegg.com/edimax-ew-7833uac-1-x-usb-3-0-type-a/p/N82E16833315157