HP Pavilion 15 laptop - WiFi/WLAN card upgrade help

Hello,
I have a question about my secondary laptop which i could do with upgrading. It is a HP Pavilion laptop, model number 15-p189na. It runs Windows 10.

The day to day usage of this laptop is great, it has an i5-4288U, 8GB and 1.5TB storage. The only problem I have with this laptop is the abysmal Wi-Fi speeds that I get, it has a 2.4ghz only Wi-Fi card which I believe is a Realtek RT8723BE. It does have Bluetooth as well but in order to get decent speeds, I have to use a 5GHz USB plug in wireless adapter.

I have heard that HP whitelist some of their components, so you can only upgrade to a certain model. Is there any way I can upgrade the Wi-Fi card to something that supports wireless AC, as well as 5GHz?

I am not worried about the disassembly process as I also plan to upgrade from the 1.5TB spinny disk to a 512GB SSD, as well as a RAM upgrade from 8GB to 16GB.

Any help and advice greatly appreciated!

Please see this HP link:

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebo...d/td-p/6462676


See if you can check the specs for the notebook antenna(s).



Others:

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04427554.pdf (pages 86 - 88)

https://support.hp.com/us-en/product...547520/manuals
https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers.../model/7547520
https://support.hp.com/us-en/product...ent/c04404446/
https://h30686.www3.hp.com/?lang=en-US


RTL8723BE - REALTEK

zebal said:

IF there is an upgrade...
if not, external USB dongle is what I would do.
Not only your choices are wider, but you buy a good quality WI-FI adapter, HP equivalent is not measureable.
Example world class WI-FI adapter:
AWUS036ACH – ALFA Network Inc.

There are much better than this one, you can catch even aliens with those.

Hello,
Thank you for the advice! I do currently have a small TP Link Wi-Fi adapter which does 5GHz only, so I have the option of 2.4GHz & Bluetooth via the inbuilt card, and 5GHz via the external adapter.
I want something that is small enough to leave permanerntly connected, plus since this is/was a laptop used for semi-portable tasks, going from one room to another, in a laptop bag, I'd rather not have something big and bulky that would possibly get damaged, or damage the USB ports. For a more permanent solution I do have a Netis WF2190 which does 2.4 & 5GHz and has two large antennae on the side.

zbook said:

Please see this HP link:
https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebo...d/td-p/6462676
See if you can check the specs for the notebook antenna(s).
Others:
http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04427554.pdf (pages 86 - 88)
https://support.hp.com/us-en/product...547520/manuals
https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers.../model/7547520
https://support.hp.com/us-en/product...ent/c04404446/
https://h30686.www3.hp.com/?lang=en-US
RTL8723BE - REALTEK

Thank you for those links. I've asked on the HP Forums and it seems like, with a bit of modification, I can shove in a AC7260 card which does wireless AC on 2.4 & 5 & BT4.0. Only thing is, I need a second antenna so a bit of disassembly is required to fit the antenna, or complete disassembly (including the display) for a factory fit look.

It may be worth it though.

Why do you want a AC WIFI adapter if your internet speed is 75Mbps? Even a lite N will do the job.

Installing a second antenna isn't a easy task. You may need to disassemble almost all the laptop.
As your laptop has only one antenna, it is a secondary laptop and you have a 5GHz USB my advice is to keep as it is.

Megahertz said:

Why do you want a AC WIFI adapter if your internet speed is 75Mbps? Even a lite N will do the job.
Installing a second antenna isn't a easy task. You may need to disassemble almost all the laptop.
As your laptop has only one antenna, it is a secondary laptop and you have a 5GHz USB my advice is to keep as it is.

Where I am using this computer, the wireless 2.4GHz network is just woeful to say the least. The speed that I receive is nowhere near the 75Mbps that I have stated - mostly it is about 30Mbps. That also reminds me; I haven't logged onto Tenforums for a while so need to update my specs. My internet connection is actually 100Mbps, which I do receive (on other machines) and is more than the theoretical maximum of the useless 802.11n job that was shoved into the laptop. The wireless 5GHz USB dongle currently in use comfortably outperforms the built in Realtek 802.11n WLAN card, which apparently has a theoretical max. of 72Mbps. Most modern Wireless N devices can handle much more than 72Mbps, in fact my desktop PC (which I don't use much) has a wireless N PCI card which does both 2.4GHz and 5GHz and tops out at 300Mbps (apparently). Needless to say, I get full ISP speed from it (100Mbps).

Whilst I do want to try and get something better installed, if it is going to be too much hassle then I'll probably just stick with the USB 5GHz dongle. I don't mind disassembly though as I have almost fully disassembled a laptop before (albeit an old Windows XP laptop).

Hello

See if you can put this second antenna on the keyboard side.

itsme1 said:

Hello

See if you can put this second antenna on the keyboard side.

Hello,
Thank you for your reply - so you are saying that I should install the second antenna underneath the keyboard, near to the motherboard area, rather than in the top of the display where the other one is?
Will this negatively affect reception or should this be fine? If this works OK then I won't need to disassemble the display, which will help a lot as I don't really want to do unnecessary work that will risk damage.
Having said that, I'd rather it worked properly, and I have to remove the motherboard anyway because I need to upgrade the RAM to 16GB, and on the HP 15 P Series, the only way to get to the RAM is via the motherboard!
Regards

Hello

Yes it will work well I did it on my 17 inch laptop. On this laptop I had an intel 1x1 wifi adapter with two antennas, I changed to a 2x2 adapter. When I disconnected the two antennas to change the wifi adapter, one of the two male connectors of the 1x1 adapter has unsoldered and got stuck in the female connector of the antenna. Temporarily I put an antenna on the keyboard side, in browser favorites I put a link for two 70cm antennas from Aliexpress.com and I have dell's guide to change the wifi antennas.


The internet speed is good, download 450 to 530 Mbps, it varies depending on the days and the servers, Upload 360 Mbps. These are good real speeds for 2x2 ac wifi.
If you use an antenna that ends in a pigtail with a metal sticker, be careful that it does not touch any components on the printed circuit board.