WLAN wifi card upgrade Lenovo E555

I have a Lenovo E555 20DH002TUS bought February of this year from vendor Eluktronics, who apparently configures these laptops. In hindsight I am really regretting not springing for the better wireless network. This particular model came with AMD A10-7300, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, Realtek RTL8168 gigabit Ethernet and Realtek RTL8723BE 802.11n WLAN.

Is there any possibility I can find a good 5 GHz 802.11ac card with the correct number of antennae and connector size? Are the antenna in the laptop the dual-band variety, or will they only work at 2.4 GHz? What about the infamous BIOS whitelist, is that an issue for this notebook as well?

Thanks in advance for guidance on this issue.

Lifespeed

 

If Lenovo will sell you an AC class WiFi card for your specific system; buy that. Otherwise? Good luck trying to get it to work.

 

You're saying Lenovo blocks non-approved cards in the BIOS? A more-specific answer addressing the issues wouldn't hurt.

FWIW, I did inquire directly to Lenovo about buying a card. I have no idea if they'll respond.

 

Sorry for my cryptic reply (tired).

My experience? I love Lenovo/IBM notebooks (especially with Intel Inside/Intel LAN/WiFi/FP Readers), but if I get one without the features/hardware I need? I return/sell it and get the one I need.

Good luck.

 

Rumor has it the BCM43162 is compatible with the E555. Lenovo part number 04X6019.

Edit: here on Lenovo's site the driver support claims Win 10 x64 for E555. Read the text file.

 

@lifespeed1 check out whether that card is listed in HMM, just to be on the safe side. I personally installed modded BIOS which removed whitelists to my Lenovo, but it doesn't seem to be an option for your model.

 

What is "HMM"?

 

@lifespeed1 Hardware Maintenance Manual - what Lenovo calls their service manuals. Your machine came with 802.11ac option according to datasheet, so I believe it is safe to buy the module in listing.

 

Sounds promising, thanks! It sounds like you know where to find this manual, post a link? I could try to ferret it out, but if you've already done so . . .

Is any WLAN card numbered 04X6019 acceptable, it doesn't have to come from Lenovo does it?

 

@lifespeed1 here's the link, however I wasn't able to find WLAN FRUs in there. You can also get it from Lenovo website. If the module is Lenovo-branded and advertised by seller to work with your machine, it's safe to buy - and if it doesn't work for some reason, that's seller's problem, not yours, at least on eBay.

 

I bought this one, slow boat from China. Under $20 if it doesn't work out, but indications are it was an option for this model.

Edit: It has integrated Bluetooth (4.0) also. The original WLAN card has integrated Bluetooth, so hopefully the laptop will function as original with much better wifi performance.

 

Update:

BCM43162 1x1ac+BT4.0 WiFi Card, FRU 04x6019, Lenovo #20-200573 card arrived and was installed. Although care is needed not to damage those tiny coax connectors, the actual hardware installation took about 15 minutes. It actually took longer to find the drivers.

This card has single-stream 802.11ac "main" and Bluetooth 4.0 "Aux" connectors, same as the original card except newer standards for both. The performance is the expected 433Mb link speed on 5GHz, actual file transfers on the local network were about 320Mb so very good for this hardware.

It is a noticeable performance improvement, well worth the $17! It took some searching to find both the bluetooth and wifi drivers for Lenovo, not sure if the generic Broadcom drivers would have worked.

Thanks to all who helped, the humble E555 Thinkpad is a lot more tolerable now.