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- HP Community
- Notebooks
- Notebook Wireless and Networking
- Network adapter upgrade

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09-14-2023 01:22 AM
I have an HP 15 notebook running Windows 10which is fairly old but doing well. A friend changed the original hardrive for a solid state one a couple of years ago, otherwise the machine is as it was when we bought it. The wifi performance of the machine is pretty poor and I think I would like to replace the network adapter for something more up to date. The laptop is mainly used for online activity for my kid doing their homework etc. It currently has a Realtek RTL8723BE card. Can you suggest a suitable replacement with a view to improving the performance? The laptop if usually no more than 3m from our router and yet will only perform at a fraction of the speed that all the other devices in our household manage. Any help greatly appreciated.
09-14-2023 07:02 AM
Hi:
I believe that your notebook only has one Wi-Fi antenna wire connected to the Realtek Wi-Fi card and any dual band card would require two antenna wires in order to work properly.
In order to add a second antenna wire, you would have to order the dual antenna kit listed in chapter 3 of the service manual including the display panel to properly install the missing antenna wire.
If you want to open up the notebook and confirm how many antenna wires are connected to the Realtek card and there happen to be two of them, I'll give you a few suggestions.
09-14-2023 08:51 AM
Hi Paul. I've opened it up. Photo attached. What do you think? I actually don't care about Bluetooth at all. Just want quick WiFi connection so wouldn't care if I had to choose. Not keen on too much messing about as I'm not that confident. Thanks for you help.
09-14-2023 11:00 AM
You're very welcome.
OK, if you can live without BT and a possible degradation of the Wi-Fi reception, you should be able to install either one of these cards:
Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260 802.11 ac 2x2 Wi-Fi + BT 4.0 HP Part # 710661-001
Broadcom BCM4352 802.11ac 2x2 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth 4.0 combo HP part # 724935-001
You should be able to find either of these cards on eBay.
Search by the HP part number, not the model of the wifi card.
When you get the card, attach the single antenna to the Wi-Fi card's 'Main' antenna terminal, not the 'Aux' one.
09-14-2023 11:06 AM
Hi Paul.
Thanks again for your reply. No I don’t want a degradation of Wi-Fi reception. The main reason for changing the card would be to attempt major improvement. I get about 70mbs download on my tablet and smart phone around the house, but the laptop is only achieving about 18. And it keeps going offline and generally being slow when trying to work online. Chatting with a friend, he suggested changing the network card, hence my query here. So can you suggest something that will improve things? I’m on the verge of buying a new machine so this is a last throw of the dice because connectivity aside, the machine works fairly well and as I said, has mainly be used for online work for my kids (homework and the like).
Thanks again in advance.
09-14-2023 02:53 PM
You're very welcome.
You could buy a USB dual band AC Wi-Fi adapter.
Then if you need Bluetooth you can use the Realtek Bluetooth adapter which is part of the internal wifi card.