Here are my top 10 tips for improving your laptop’s Wi-Fi signal and speed.
Number 1 - Change your Wi-Fi power settings. Windows controls how much your Wi-Fi gets,
more power equals better performance, but less battery life, it’s a tradeoff, but fortunately
you can set different options for when running on wall power or battery power. To open the settings,
right click the battery icon and select power options. Change the settings of the current plan,
change advanced settings and go to Wireless Adapter Settings. Settings
Maximum Performance should help improve Wi-Fi. This option might not show up on all laptops,
if it’s not on yours then check out the links down in the description.
Number 2 - Don’t block the Wi-Fi antenna. Wi-Fi works best with a direct line of sight,
more distance and more obstacles in the way equals a weaker signal. The location of the
Antenna in your laptop will vary, but in general they’re in the lids, on the sides,
or even on the back corners like in the case of Lenovo’s Legion 7. Often the manuals will
show you where they’re located so you know not to obstruct them. Putting the wireless
access point in a central location will also help ensure that you get the range possible.
Basically don’t stick it in a cupboard in the corner of your house or something.
Number 3 - Change bands. Since Wi-Fi 4 in 2009 both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands have
been available for wireless networks. Generally 5GHz is faster, but it’s also shorter range,
it’s a tradeoff. I’ve set my home network up with separate 2.4 and 5GHz networks. The devices that
stay far away from the access point are on the 2.4GHz network as they get better range,
while everything else that’s much closer stays on 5GHz to get the better speed. Plus having all
your wireless devices on different bands helps reduce interference. Generally the 2.4GHz band
is more congested, more devices like Bluetooth keyboards and mice for instance use it too,
and even running microwaves are known to cause interference with 2.4GHz networks!
Number 4 - Change channels. Within both the 2.4 and 5GHz bands there are also a number
of channels available. The channels overlap each other, and the more wireless networks on
the same channel or overlapping each other will increase the amount of interference.
There’s just more to compete with. You can check which channels are in use in your area
with software like Wi-Fi analyzer, which is available through the Microsoft Store. In this
example we’re seeing lots of other networks on the 2.4GHz band on channels 8 and 11, and it’s
suggesting I move to channel 1 as it’s not in use, so doing this should improve the connection
and changing it is a very simple option in the web interface for the wireless access point.
Number 5 - Upgrade your Wi-Fi drivers. For most laptops, Windows update will probably
automatically update the Wi-Fi drivers for you, however there are often newer versions
that offer improvements and fixes available on the manufacturers website. Intel for example has this
super simple option to download a tool which automatically detects what’s installed in your
laptop and will tell you if you need any updates. Although Intel Wi-Fi is very common in laptops,
it’s not the only option out there. If you’re not sure what model you have then you can open
task manager and if you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network the model will be listed here. Otherwise
failing that you can try software like Hardware Info and check the specific model of your Wi-Fi.
Now that previous screenshot that I showed you to demonstrate upgrading the Intel drivers was
actually from this laptop, and before applying that update I wasn’t able to connect to this
router over the 5GHz network, but as soon as I applied that update I was able to connect no
problem and I was able to get significantly better speeds compared to the 2.4GHz band,
so yeah just goes to show that it’s definitely worth checking for updates.
Number 6 - Update your router's firmware. Basically you want to keep both ends of the
connection up to date, not just the laptop, as updates often improve things like performance,
stability and security, so check if there are any updates on the product
page for your wireless access point from time to time. Newer models like the one
from ASUS I’m using also give you the option to check from within the web interface too.
Number 7 - Upgrade your Wi-Fi card. I changed the Wi-Fi card in this laptop from Wi-Fi 5
to Wi-Fi 6 for about $20. You can check out some prices of Wi-Fi cards with the links down in the
description. This simple change was able to offer me great speed boosts on both my 2.4GHz and 5GHz
networks, but keep in mind that both the Wi-Fi card and wireless access point need to support the
same Wi-Fi version. At least for best performance, generally they’re backwards compatible,
so this is a Wi-Fi 6 access point and I could connect to it from a Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 4 laptop,
but for best performance I’m going to want to upgrade the laptop to Wi-Fi 6. This will depend
on your laptop, most laptops have removable Wi-Fi cards but some are soldered to the motherboard and
can’t be changed. If you’re in doubt it’s pretty easy to check inside or refer to the manual.
Installation while powered off is straightforward. There are two antenna cables attached to the card.
Take note of the order as it does matter. Remove the cables, unscrew and remove the card,
insert the new card, reattach the cables in the original order and turn the laptop back
on. In Windows generally a Windows update will be enough to get you up and running,
but if you only have Internet access with Wi-Fi then you’ll want to make
sure that you download those drivers from the manufacturers website first.
Number 8 - Wi-Fi extenders. For bigger areas even a single powerful access point might not
be enough to give you all the coverage you need, especially if you have lots of solid walls. There
are different types of Wi-Fi extenders. Generally I’d suggest keeping away from the repeaters that
just connect the existing Wi-Fi network because if the signal to the repeat is already weak then
that won’t improve much. In the best case, if your house is already wired for ethernet
you can connect Wi-Fi extenders directly to the wired network. If it’s not, there are still Wi-Fi
extenders that only need to connect to power, as they can use the power wires to transfer data.
Number 9 - Upgrade your Wi-Fi antenna. My old router let me unscrew the antennas and
replace them with bigger options with higher gain, and this should help improve the signal,
but it depends on the specific model and if it supports this,
and what sort of antenna it came with. If yours doesn’t support this then there’s still step 10.
Step 10 - Upgrade your Wi-Fi router. This is of course a more expensive option and more of a last
resort out of all the options covered so far, but the fact is newer Wi-Fi standards found in newer
models offer faster speeds and more range, though it does of course vary on the specific model.
You might have to do some research and check out reviews first. If you’ve got something that does
Wi-Fi 6 then you might not want to spend more to get something that only goes up to Wi-Fi 5.
Even if it is more expensive. Unless you’re just accessing content over the local network,
say from a NAS for instance, at the end of the day you’re probably going to be more
limited by your Internet connection than your wireless access point.
If most of the content that you access is out on the Internet then it’s going to depend more
on your internet speed and latency. Even if you have the best Wi-Fi in the world,
download and upload speed will be bottlenecked by your internet connection,
so if you still have problems after trying everything in this video then you might need
to follow up with your Internet Service Provider. Before ASUS sent over their new AX89X with Wi-Fi 6
I was stuck with an 8 year old router which only offered Wi-Fi 4. No matter what I did, even if I
was sitting in the same room as this thing, Wi-Fi was basically unusable. Now the speed boost I get
in the same room is pretty crazy, and even when on the other side of the house the difference is
also significantly faster. Seriously, before this thing my Wi-Fi was just pathetic.
The main reason that I wanted this particular model is because it’s got a 10 gigabit port,
which is overkill for most people that are just accessing the Internet. But it means
I’m not being bottlenecked by gigabit speeds when copying content from my NAS over Wi-Fi,
which is something that I do very often with large files now that I’ve got Wi-Fi that actually works,
and now that I’ve got a modern wireless network I can actually start testing Wi-Fi
in my laptop reviews, something I haven’t done in the past because of my crap Wi-Fi,
so if you’re new to the channel then make sure you get subscribed for all of that upcoming future
content. You’ll start to see Wi-Fi benchmarks in my upcoming laptop reviews soon. Come and join the
community in Discord and get behind the scenes videos by supporting the channel on Patreon,
and check out some of my other videos over here next, I’ll see you over in one of those.