Why your laptop has worse WiFi than other devices

Having a good Internet connection is essential nowadays. However, on many occasions we can have problems. For example, it is common that the speed is not adequate or that cuts appear. And this is something that sometimes only affects some devices. In this article we are going to talk about why the WiFi of the laptop can work slow and in other devices it works better. This will help you to solve some problems.

What causes laptop WiFi to go bad

Why your laptop has worse WiFi than other devices

If you browse the Internet from your laptop , download a file or simply do a speed test and see that little arrives, but instead on another device you do well, it can happen for different reasons. Some of them you can solve in a simple way, while others are going to be limitations of the computer itself.

hardware limitations

The first cause is that you have hardware limitations, more specifically in the WiFi card . Your laptop may be old or the internal card it has is limited and does not allow you to navigate at a high speed or have good coverage. This is something that can happen in many devices and that especially affects laptops.

To solve this problem you can choose to purchase a new network card. You can buy an external one, which has greater coverage and thus be able to have better speed and avoid annoying cuts that affect the performance of the equipment. It is important to know what the maximum speed of the network card is.

Do you have any malware

Another reason why WiFi is slow on the laptop and may be fine on other devices is that there is some kind of malware. Maybe you have a virus that you have downloaded through some program or file without realizing it. That may be slowing down the connection.

To solve this problem it is essential to have a good antivirus. This will help you detect problems and correct them as soon as possible. For example, Windows Defender is a good solution, but there are many others, both free and paid. Whichever you choose, you should check that it works well.

Equipment is outdated

Do you have the equipment updated correctly? If it is not, it may be weighing down the quality of the WiFi connection. For this reason, it is always advisable to verify that you have the latest version of the operating system. This will help not only to improve performance, but also to correct possible problems that appear.

Something more concrete is to check that the network card is up to date. To do this you have to go to Start, enter Device Manager, Network adapters and there you select the one that interests you, which in this case is the WiFi card. Click on it with the second mouse button and click on Update driver .

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You don’t use the right band

Current equipment can work in both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Using one or the other can mean a significant change in signal quality. Therefore, we always recommend choosing well. Basically we can say that the first one is the one that allows you to navigate from a greater distance with respect to the router, although with less speed. Instead, the 5 GHz is the one that offers the highest speed, but is more sensitive to distance.

If you see that the laptop’s WiFi is not working well and other devices are connecting faster, you can check if you are using the correct band and choose another one to verify that it works correctly.

You are in a dead zone

One more reason is that you are in an area with little coverage , while another device is better located. This is commonly known as a dead zone and it is basically a place where the WiFi signal is very limited or not at all and you cannot connect.

In this case, what you would have to do is change the location or use some device to improve the signal. For example a WiFi repeater, Mesh system or PLC devices that help improve coverage.