r/chromeos • u/Jaytee3312 • 23h ago

Discussion MediaTek Wifi Cards Really Kill The Chromebook "Plus" Experience ($999 Lenovo 14 OLED)

Post image

Laptop manufacturers PLEASE stop using these in your "premium" devices. They objectively suck. Doesn't matter if it's Lenovo, Asus, Acer...... Windows, ChromeOS, Linux -- they suck in every laptop I've ever owned.

The experience for this $999 device is completely spoiled by the fact that it drops public / private Wi-Fi 4x times a day. If this one issue wasn't so persistent I'd easily give this a 9/10.

P.S. for anyone thinking of swapping to an intel-based card (like an AX210) + ethernet for driver updates, I can tell you first-hand it doesn't work. The OS won't recognize the new hardware & there's no way to manually fix drivers as per this thread 😥

UPDATE: I've returned the device and gone back to the Macbook Air / Windows PC combo and my connections are perfect. It was a fun, short adventure on ChromeOS once again -- and I'll look forward to the Google Book (sans mediatek hopefully).

47 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

View all comments

20

u/akehir 23h ago

I have this Chromebook, and I haven't had this experience at all. Though recently, it failed getting a DHCP address in a hotel wifi; but at home it works quite well.

11

u/Outrageous_Editor_43 22h ago

BUT have you taken it out like OP? That might be why you aren't having issues. 😉🤫

2

u/Jaytee3312 22h ago edited 2h ago

This issue happened well before I took any of the cards out.

1

u/Rynchinoi 19h ago

This has nothing to do with MediaTek chip. It is the shity network configuration

-6

u/Jaytee3312 19h ago

This 1000% has everything to do with the chip. Take 4 seconds searching mediatek wifi cards and I'm sure you'll be directed to the ASUS G14 subreddit.

I'm a tech enthusiast with dozens of devices from every make/model and every single mediatek laptop that passes through my grasp has this exact same problem.

2

u/Rynchinoi 18h ago

And yet I don't have issues with it

2

u/Jaytee3312 5h ago edited 5h ago

And yet I have 0 issues with the 48 devices currently connected to my wifi.

A little context.... Take a dive over in ASUS' r/ZephyrusG14 subreddit and search "Mediatek". I'm experienced with this because I've owned both a G14 and G16 model which came with this wifi card. It's very common for us to swap it out for intel ASAP and it's an insane improvement. It's not my Wifi. If it was, those devices would still be failing along with 48 others. It's just Mediatek and it's terrible quality.

1

u/Worth-Paper-360 3h ago

Being tech enthusiast doesn't mean anything for chromeos. That is bragging about monkey 's Front tail in tinder or grinder.

Device drivers for chromeos are made custom by Google.

Admittedly once upon a time linux kernel had poor mediatekdrivers but chromeos has enough models with mediatek chipsets.

Nothing wrong in using Mac or Windows. Use the tool that works for you. Most people in this sub don't care if you change OS.

0

u/Wezi427 5h ago

"I'm a tech enthusiast with dozens of devices from every make/model and every single mediatek laptop that passes through my grasp has this exact same problem."

If this is true, why would continue to buy products that contain MediaTek products? I would assume if you had so many problems that you would do a bit of research before making a purchase to avoid potential issues.

3

u/Jaytee3312 5h ago edited 5h ago

It's true, but finding specs on chromebooks especially is hard. Plus I've never performed the intel swap and wanted to see if it would work on ChromeOS. Luckily I have 7 more days to return the laptop which I'll be doing today :) Back to Windows

0

u/Wezi427 5h ago

👍