Why Is My Work Laptop’s Wi-Fi Slower Than My Other Devices?
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Earlier this week, we talked about setting up your home internet , but poor wireless connections remain a major concern for those stuck in new home offices. But what if the problem isn’t with the wireless network; what if this is your device?
Question
Lifehacker reader Hankigamus writes :
“I can get decent Wi-Fi speeds on my phone, my wife’s phone, and other connected devices, but my laptop seems to have a very limited testing speed. It has high specs (a decent gaming laptop) – is there a reason for that? “
Life-changing response
I’m glad you did the basic troubleshooting work already, although I would spend a few paragraphs to get around them all. In short, you’ve studied the Wi-Fi situation and analyzed it with multiple devices and / or services like fast.com , speedtest.net or whatever you like. And you’ve identified an important fact: your Wi-Fi is generally fast, except for one device you’re struggling to get consistent speeds on.
This allows us to focus only on the gaming laptop. And since you phrased it that way, I am assuming that it is running some fancy network card from a “gaming” manufacturer – for example, the Killer Wi-Fi card. My initial suspicion or hunch is that there is something in your wireless card that is causing some kind of problem.
However, to begin with, I would recommend looking at what the card is (based on your invoice or the specs you made when you bought the laptop). If you can’t find it that way, you can also look in Device Manager> Network Adapters . Do a quick Google search to see if yes, it supports the speed your network is running at.
If, for some reason, your “decent” gaming laptop didn’t get the hang of your wireless setup, then you might have a terribly slow wireless connection (although I doubt it). If you have wireless-AC, which I assume you are doing, then you should be able to see some great test speeds, since your gaming laptop certainly has at least 2×2 cards, in other words, it supports over at least AC1200 or maximum theoretical speed of 867 Mbps on a 5 GHz network (867 Mbps @ 5 GHz + 300 Mbps @ 2.4 GHz = ~ 1200 Mbps).
Don’t let the math confuse you. In short, you need to make sure your gaming laptop is using a 5GHz home wireless network for speed tests. You didn’t mention which data plan you have for your internet connection, but if it’s something powerful – say 300 Mbps or more – you will only see a fast connection if you are using 5 GHz (and wireless AC like already mentioned if your Laptop and router support this).
Also, I have to mention one thing, if you are the type of person who has your router using the same SSID for both 2.4GHz and 5GHz and allows your devices to connect to whatever they want to connect to maybe your gaming laptop is stupidly connecting to your slower 2.4GHz wireless instead of the faster 5GHz wireless. You can try to separate these two parameters in the router settings: for example, “[yourwifi] _2GHz” and “[yourwifi] _5GHz”.
For the sake of argument, I’m going to assume you’ve done all of this and still get much faster speeds on your smartphones than your decent-spec gaming laptop. In such a case, I would like to check if there are any updated drivers for your laptop’s wireless card. Find your laptop manufacturer and your wifi card manufacturer and have a look; it’s possible that updating (or even reinstalling) your network card drivers might give you the speed you want.
If you still can’t get great wireless speeds from your gaming laptop, you may need to (or want to) bypass your NIC completely. While they can be finicky, a third-party Wi-Fi adapter that supports at least AC1200 might be your best bet. It will cost you a little extra money, and I absolutely hate buying replacement hardware that should already work fine in a laptop, but it’s an option.
It’s also probably worth checking if you can get better Wi-Fi speeds on a different connection – an open wireless network, a friend’s house, etc. – to rule out an issue with your home network. I’m not sure if this is the case, but if you suddenly see 5x the speed of a friend’s Wi-Fi network compared to your own, perhaps resetting your router to factory defaults can fix any problems (and installing the latest firmware. etc).
But these are my ideas. Am I missing anything, Lifehacker readers? Other than replacing a router that may not be at fault, or reinstalling Windows from scratch (ugh), I have few other potential solutions. I think the key is the answer and luckily they are cheap ?