Thinkpads Forum

Just managed to get my hands on a pristine set of ThinkPad X201s yesterday.
Everything is set up really quickly and nicely on Windows 10.
I have a question though, regarding the Wifi and Network card.

It connects to 2.4GHz Wifi networks fine, but speeds cannot match those on the 5GHz band.
I am wondering if all X201(s)(i) are like this, or just some drivers/network card issues?

I have tried all the drivers available on Lenovo website, and even installed Windows 7 instead of 10 to test, but all gives only the 2.4GHz detection. I have also checked the device manager settings, but no option to turn on/off 5GHz band option.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

edit: Just checked HWinfo64 and found this to be my network card details:

The Realtek RTL8191SE is a highly integrated single-chip MIMO (Multiple In, Multiple Out) Wireless LAN (WLAN) solution for the wireless high throughput 802.11n specification. It combines a MAC, a 1T2R capable baseband, and RF in a single chip. The RTL8191SE provides a complete solution for a high throughput performance wireless client.

The RTL8191SE baseband implements Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) with 1 transmit and 2 receive paths and is compatible with the IEEE 802.11n specification. Features include one spatial stream transmission, up to two spatial streams reception, short guard interval (GI) of 400ns, spatial spreading, and transmission over 20MHz and 40MHz bandwidth. At the receiver, extended range and good minimum sensitivity is achieved by having receiver diversity up to 2 antennas.

For legacy compatibility, direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS), complementary code keying (CCK) and OFDM baseband processing are included to support all IEEE 802.11b and 802.11g data rates. Differential phase shift keying modulation schemes, DBPSK and DQPSK with data scrambling capability, are available along with complementary code keying to provide the data rates of 1, 2, 5.5 and 11Mbps with long or short preamble. The high speed FFT/IFFT paths, combined with BPSK, QPSK, 16QAM, and 64QAM modulation of the individual subcarriers and rate compatible punctured convolutional coding with coding rate of 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, and 5/6, provides the maximum data rate of 54Mbps and 300Mbps for IEEE 802.11g and 802.11n MIMO OFDM respectively.

Other details: http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/prod ... ProdID=226

You forgot to mention the most important part: that card is only single-band!
Which means it only works in the 2.4GHz band, and NOT in the 5.0GHz band.

RealBlackStuff wrote:You forgot to mention the most important part: that card is only single-band!
Which means it only works in the 2.4GHz band, and NOT in the 5.0GHz band.

Thanks! Should I change the card to centrino 6250 or 6300 instead?

2.4GHz has a wider reach and is widely available, also in coffeeshops etc.
If you live in an apartment building, you might have (too) many neighbors on 2.4GHz.
5GHz needs to be closer to the wifi-source and is not available everywhere (yet).
Get a dual-band if you insist, but unless you have 2.4GHz overload-problems, it's hardly worth it.
Instead upgrade to the newer AC, such as Intel 7260HMW, if you want a new card.
Newer is not always better though...

Thanks boss! That's great advice. I will stick to current configuration on the X201s with single-band wifi card then (I could get around 50mbps from speedtest.net and connected to wireless N 2.4GHz at 144.5mbps rating, while my X220 gets 80mbps up/down connected at 300mbps)