Wifi Upgrade for 15S-FQ2048NT

[SHAW_TR]

Hello,

I have 15S-FQ2048NT and I am planning to upgarade Wifi card to Intel AX200NGW Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.1. But I could not find any information about support for my laptop ? Do you know that 15S-FQ2xxx series have whitelist for upgrade or I am free to upgrade ? Also I could not find user/service manual for 15S-FQ2048NT. Thank you for your help.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

Your notebook only has one antenna wire connected to the Realtek RTL8821CE wifi adapter your notebook comes with, and the Intel AX200 would require two antenna wires in order to work properly.

HP has a service manual on your notebook's support page that is not associated with your notebook's model series and the information in that manual is for older notebooks with the Intel 8th gen core processors.

HP Laptop PC 15s-fq2000 Manuals | HP® Customer Support

In any event, it would not be worth the trouble to completely disassemble the entire notebook including the display panel area to properly install a second antenna.

[SHAW_TR]

Thank you for the answer. I just did the ram upgrade and I saw that too. Only one antenna for wifi.

Thank you for the manual. They are pretty same for disasembling. Probably I won't upgrade the wifi. No need to dis-assamble the screen for only one antenna.  

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Yes, it is unfortunate that HP can't just install wifi cards that need two antenna wires, so that they are easier to upgrade, or at least run the second wire and have it available if necessary.

[SHAW_TR]

Agree. Adding second antenna must not be so hard. I wish HP added double antenna regardless of the wifi card or notebook configuration.

Also heard that some users added second antenna and clipped it to into back cover of the notebook which has much space. But I do not think it will work, anntenas should be on highest point and at sharpest edge so it can collect much signal. Wiring a second antenne and leaving it in laptop does not make sense.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You are correct.

Here is a related discussion...as I suggested to the other forum member, antennas need to be 'tuned' to have the best wifi reception.

Re: Wi-Fi module upgrade for 14-dh1015ur - HP Support Community - 8289787

You can't normally construct your own antenna system and expect it to work great.

[SHAW_TR]

That's what I thought. Maybe only "reasonable" solution is for me is trying to upgrade.  Buying AX200 card with extra antenna and pluging the my notebook's single antenna AX200's main antenna port and wiring second antenna and pluging to aux port on wifi card and place the antenne in laptop to closer to egdes (far from battery) (my notebook has no 2,5 slot lots of space in it) for bluetooth and signal coverage. If it does not work, I can loose bluetooth coverage probably. (what I am expecting is LoL) I can use AX200 on my barebone desktop and downgrade my laptop to wifi5.  Worth to try will cost me around 15-20 USD.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You can try it.

Just make sure you connect the original antenna wire to the Main antenna terminal, not the Aux terminal like he did .

The only time you would do that is if you wanted both the wifi and bluetooth to work with one antenna wire and you had no plans to add a second one.

The second wire should allow for decent BT reception as long as your BT device is not too far away from the notebook.

[SHAW_TR]

I will do it in upcoming days and share the results.