From experience, it is not so much the laptop or desktop Wifi antennas that make the biggest difference. It has a lot more to do with the Wifi router or access point.

It can also have to do with the power output of the particular Wifi card.

Another aspect of the range, and a big one at that is the construction and electrical characteristics of the building you are in. Some places are absolutely horrid for Wifi.

The Wifi antennas in laptops are pretty standard from what I have seen. They probably did get better over the years but that is also going to have to do with them tweaking for the different standards.

You can buy replacement Wifi antennas off of eBay and probably other places that you can install yourself. You would have to run the cables yourself and take apart the screen to mount the antennas where they are supposed to be.

I must add that performance varies wildly depending on your drivers.

I've found laptops where generic drivers (i.e. Intel) shows low power and OEM drivers (i.e. HP, Fujitsu) shows lots of networks; on other laptops their own driver fails but he generic works... there is no rule except having both drivers at hand.

You have to dig up the specs of the model and unit number that you purchased. Some ship with 1x1 WiFi and others ship with 2x2 and many ship with one or the other, depending on what build choices were made by the purchaser.

I usually have the best luck with Intel based wireless cards. If a laptop comes with something else, I'll remove it and replace it with an Intel one.

Some laptops have a bios lock so you can’t upgrade the WiFi card or they only support a certain model WiFi card.
So the Best thing to do is to use a USB Wifi Adapter or Wifi Bridge.
These are guarantee to work.
Don’t waist your time and money trying to upgrade a Wifi card or antennas in a laptop. Some laptops only have one antenna.

RetroGamer4Ever wrote on 2021-08-24, 11:08:

You have to dig up the specs of the model and unit number that you purchased. Some ship with 1x1 WiFi and others ship with 2x2 and many ship with one or the other, depending on what build choices were made by the purchaser.

Yup, likely to be highly model specific rather than brand specific, even then, some other option card, in the exact same configuration otherwise may make it better or worse, just by being in the way or coincidentally reflecting signal conveniently.

Longest range device I've got is an ancient android tablet that sees SSIDs of businesses half a mile away in town (i.e. through lots of buildings and in a "hostile" wifi environment. 100+ APs) I used to like using it on the road where I'd just have to stop in sight of a McDonalds or similar to get on the wifi. Unfortunately, it's browser ceased to deal with the login portals a couple of years back and now the battery is done. I'd imagine in a quiet wifi environment across fields, if I could see it, I could connect to it.

Unless you're looking at a very narrow time period, brand says very little. Consider that brand names get different ODMs to make their laptops (eg. Dell's consumer line and business lines come from completely different factories & designs), and WiFi is such an afterthought (last year there were STILL high-end gaming laptops being sold with 2.4GHz-only 1x1 SISO WiFi-n, because almost no-one buying even bothers to look) it really depends on the engineer doing it and whether anything else was deemed more important.

There are a few specific models worth mentioning; the MacBook Pro 'Retina' series with WiFi-ac (2013-2016) is generally considered to have the best WiFi implementation in a laptop. I certainly haven't found a better one and that's not for lack of trying.

However if you are looking for a PC laptop, unless someone who actually knows about WiFi has done a comparative review (almost never happens), you don't have a clue.

But...

These days the antenna design of most laptops is pretty standard, two dualband antennae somewhere behind the TFT screen. What differs a lot more is the card that it's connected to. A lot of laptops come with SISO 1X2 NICs. Replacing that with a 2x2 MIMO NIC will double performance. Thing to watch for - and this is brand-related - is that some brands use nasty BIOS whitelists; Lenovo and HP are pretty notorious.

If you want to upgrade the thing to watch is interface (mPCIe vs M.2) and antenna connection (Hirose u.FL vs w.FL). In general M.2 always uses w.FL.

I've upgraded all my laptops to WIFi-6, in one case WiFi-6E. The newer ones have M.2 connectors and I've just used native Intel AX200 NICs. The older one (Lenovo x220 with custom BIOS with whitelist removed) had mPCIe. I used a mPCIe -> M.2 adapter and added an AX210, so my 2011 laptop now has 6GHz support (shame I don't have a matching AP yet...)

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-08-24, 12:19:

Some laptops have a bios lock so you can’t upgrade the WiFi card or they only support a certain model WiFi card. So the Best thi […]
Show full quote

Some laptops have a bios lock so you can’t upgrade the WiFi card or they only support a certain model WiFi card.
So the Best thing to do is to use a USB Wifi Adapter or Wifi Bridge.
These are guarantee to work.
Don’t waist your time and money trying to upgrade a Wifi card or antennas in a laptop. Some laptops only have one antenna.

Yeah, older Thinkpads are notorious for blacklisting wifi upgrades.

Ran into this issue a long time ago (over a decade) with a friend who had one. Would give an 'unauthorized netowkr card' error at POST. Ended up using the "DOS no-1802" as that was what was available at the time. However it seems like theres been a lot of progress since then: https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_with_u … CI_network_card

FYI: communication goes both ways, go figure 😉
If one of them falls short, problems arise.

That's insane manufacturers would blacklist hardware so it couldn't be installed/recognized. Thanks, now I know one more qualifier to look for when making a purchase decision.. 🤣.

wiretap wrote on 2021-08-24, 17:50:

That's insane manufacturers would blacklist hardware so it couldn't be installed/recognized. Thanks, now I know one more qualifier to look for when making a purchase decision.. 🤣.

Same goes with laptop video cards. Even if the card will physically fit, some models have a whitelist of cards that will work.

I once did a mod to my old HP NX6125 so that I could use arbitrary WiFi cards in it rather than whitelisted ones... the mod hides the card until POST completes and when windows begins to load it is visible and gets used 🤣.

http://www.tmeeco.eu/BitShit/NX6125wifi0.jpg
http://www.tmeeco.eu/BitShit/NX6125wifi1.jpg
http://www.tmeeco.eu/BitShit/NX6125wifi2.png

---

As far as range etc. goes, I have not had problems with intel NICs and my Lenovo X200t could pick up gas station WiFi 100 meters away (line of sight existed) at usable speeds too.

Actually the best ones are Intel and A.... something wifi cards, as long it is brand for brand like for HP, will work in HP, IBM for IBM, etc.

Cheers,

wiretap wrote on 2021-08-24, 17:50:

That's insane manufacturers would blacklist hardware so it couldn't be installed/recognized. Thanks, now I know one more qualifier to look for when making a purchase decision.. 🤣.

They do it to prevent third-party repairs and user upgrades, both of which keep $$$ out of their service centers and parts ordering businesses, and to keep users from installing hardware and software that they don't and can't support. That's why you should always choose the highest quality/most expensive WiFi option with an OEM laptop or desktop, as they pretty much all have hardware whitelists hidden in the firmware these days. One easy way to get around older low-end WiFI cards is to use a USB extension cable (M-F) that lets you use a USB WiFi adapter that you can position for optimal reception and transmission by taping the cable to the exterior of the laptop., which works best with USB 3.X adapters.

Intel cards for sure, also Thinkpads seem to be pretty decent in my experience

I remember back in the day I had one of those blue and black WIFI routers made by Lynksys, and that router was amazing. I could go to the park near my house and still get internet access, and the distance was a good 1000 feet away! Now with my new router I am lucky to get internet on my porch. I believe the lower the MHz on the router the farther the signal will go, with higher ones penetrating better through walls and the like. But if you want shear distance, a low MHz older router does wonders for line of site use. Sorry, this is about the routers, but thought it pertained enough for me to mention it.

Tom

Tommaso72 wrote on 2021-08-28, 17:05:

I remember back in the day I had one of those blue and black WIFI routers made by Lynksys, and that router was amazing. I could go to the park near my house and still get internet access, and the distance was a good 1000 feet away! Now with my new router I am lucky to get internet on my porch. I believe the lower the MHz on the router the farther the signal will go, with higher ones penetrating better through walls and the like. But if you want shear distance, a low MHz older router does wonders for line of site use. Sorry, this is about the routers, but thought it pertained enough for me to mention it.

Tom

wrt45g? those were very popular and firmware could be replaced with openwrt or tomato etc.

In theory, the centrino branded machines should have the best antennas, as wifi was part of their integrated technology platform. Therefore one of the cheapest ways to allow better wifi power conservation would be to put better antennas in. This is alright for long range if the wifi module can go up to full permitted output power still when demanded. Over aggressive seeming power saving could sink that assumption though.