WIFI Internet speed on a HP laptop 15-BW-069

WhoisDannie

I was given an HP 15-BW069 with Windows 11 pro 22H2 and when I test the internet speed on WIFI I get 52Mbs download speed and 49.4Mbs upload speed with my virgin media 1000Mbs internet.

With wired on my desktop I am currently getting over 500Mbs download speed and 90 Mbs upload speed though later on in the evening it will be a lot faster.

Is this drastically slow speed a limitation of the laptop and what can I do to increase it?

Peter999_2

Unfortunately your laptop only has a Wireless N card installed which severly restricts your maximum speed.    The only way to increase it is to replace the wireless card, if this is even possible.   It could be that even if it has a wireless card that can be replaced it might only have one aerial instead of two.

Personally, if it was me, instead of replacing the Wifi card I would be buying a USB Wifi dongle instead, something like the below : 

TP-Link AC1300 Nano Wireless MU-MIMO USB 2.0 Adapter, Dual-Band, Miniature Design, Supports Windows 10/8.1/8/7, Mac OS 10.15 and earlier, Highly Secure WPA3, Easy Setup (Archer T3U Nano) : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Sea_Shell

Glad I found this thread, as I was just about to ask something similar.

Yesterday we had fibre BB installed and was surprised not to see vastly improved performance on both my laptop and mobile phone.   We've gone from 9mbps to 90, so should be 10x faster.

How can I tell if I have an "N" card?  I have an Acer Aspire 5750.    (might just order one of those dongles for the sake of £13).     ETA - just ran a test and only getting 62/47 on the laptop and 50/36 on my phone.  (at 8.30am)

What about my mobile.  Moto G6.  What's holding that back?

Tucosalamanca

Sea_Shell said:

Glad I found this thread, as I was just about to ask something similar.

Yesterday we had fibre BB installed and was surprised not to see vastly improved performance on both my laptop and mobile phone.   We've gone from 9mbps to 90, so should be 10x faster.

How can I tell if I have an "N" card?  I have an Acer Aspire 5750.    (might just order one of those dongles for the sake of £13).     ETA - just ran a test and only getting 62/47 on the laptop and 50/36 on my phone.  (at 8.30am)

What about my mobile.  Moto G6.  What's holding that back?

Are you connected to 2.4 or 5ghz signal?

It can make a substantial difference to device speeds (5ghz can be much faster)

Sea_Shell

How do I tell?

It's a Vodafone power WiFi 6 hub.

I think it can support both.


ETA - my phone seems to be on 5ghz, that's what's showing in settings...but still takes about 5 seconds to load MSE pages ☹️, no better than before.

Heedtheadvice

One other thing you both could try is to do some WiFi signal analysis. It is easy.

Download Wifi Analyser. It will show you the channels you are on, if you have any competition on that  channel from other wifi devices close by and if you could change channel for one with less interference plus what your signal strength is.

WiFi can suffer from effective speed reductions where the signal quality is poor as it may  need to do repeat transmissions to get 'good' data communication. Analysis apps ( there are several free ones) can help you find out and optimise signal channels for best reception. Routers will usually auto set channel selection but often do not hop around channels so can pick  one that might be best at it's selection time but signals will vary depending upon where your device is located and what other routers/ devices are in use in your vicinity. Just one of the reasons wired ethernet can be a lot more reliable though maybe not as convenient!

Tucosalamanca

The router would usually show something like "home_wifi" and "home_wifi_5G"

Apparently Vodafone hub works a bit differently, so I can't help I'm afraid....

Sea_Shell

I just expected it to be noticeably faster straight out the box. ☹️

Even getting only 50mbps should be noticeably quicker than 9 surely?

Luckily we haven't paid a premium for it.  It's actually cheaper than our old supplier.

debitcardmayhem

Sea_Shell said:

I just expected it to be noticeably faster straight out the box. ☹️

Even getting only 50mbps should be noticeably quicker than 9 surely?

Luckily we haven't paid a premium for it.  It's actually cheaper than our old supplier.

Not necessarily noticeably quicker, web use / email etc not usually, downloading big files maybe, streaming depends on the quality, you may notice the lack of buffering. What do you expect to be quicker?

Sea_Shell

debitcardmayhem said:

Sea_Shell said:

I just expected it to be noticeably faster straight out the box. ☹️

Even getting only 50mbps should be noticeably quicker than 9 surely?

Luckily we haven't paid a premium for it.  It's actually cheaper than our old supplier.

Not necessarily noticeably quicker, web use / email etc not usually, downloading big files maybe, streaming depends on the quality, you may notice the lack of buffering. What do you expect to be quicker?

Loading web pages.    Like here on MSE.  I expected new pages to load much much quicker, but they still take 3-5 seconds to load.

The fire stick TV does seem a little faster to load.

PHK

Are you sure your phone is a Moto G6. That's six years old and with a weak processor is going to struggle to render pages.