HP Pavilion 15-p073TX Wi-Fi Adapter upgrade

[Adarsh723]

Hi,

I am using HP Pavilion 15-p073TX and it has Broadcom BCM43142 802.11 bgn 1x1, now I want to upgrade it to dual band, basically I want to upgrade my laptop to support 5G network as well. So which would be a best adapter to replace with and will the new adapter work with just driver installation or we need whitelisting as well. Also I am looking for option in India.

Thanks.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Your notebook only has one Wi-Fi antenna wire connected to the Broadcom Wi-Fi card.

Dual band cards will require two antenna wires if you want the wif and Bluetooth to work.

If you do not care if you have Bluetooth, then you can upgrade your notebook to this model card:

Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 802.11 ac 2x2 Wi-Fi + BT 4.0    HP Part # 710661-001

Unfortunately, I would have no idea where you can find that model card in India, but you should search by the HP part number, not the model of the Wi-Fi card.

There are plenty of them for sale on the eBay USA site is all I know.

710661-001: Search Result | eBay

Below is the link to the service manual.   

Attach the single antenna wire to the Wi-Fi card's 'Main' antenna terminal.

c04402649.pdf (hp.com)

[Adarsh723]

Hi,

First of all thanks for the information.

However Bluetooth is something which I use a lot. Is there any other network card that I can use?

In manual I see Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 802.11 ac 1x1 WiFi + BT 4.0 combo adapter (with dual antennas) is listed as an option but not sure what 1x1 means and will it serve the purpose of 5G and Bluetooth. Also dual antennas means do I need to add another antenna in order this card to work?

Thanks

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

The Intel 3160AC also requires two antenna wires for both the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to work properly.

The 1 x 1 means that the card supports one data stream up and one data stream down which equals 433 MBPS on the 5.0 GHz Wi-Fi band with an AC router.

The 7260AC is 2 x 2 which means it has twice the throughput...two data streams down and two up.

You could always buy a USB Bluetooth adapter.  They are very small nowadays and hardly stick out of the USB port.

Or you can skip the hassle of taking the notebook apart and buy a USB dual band Wi-Fi adapter and use the Broadcom Wi-Fi card's Bluetooth.