How hard to swap wifi in thinkpad?

My x220 has a better wifi "card" than my x230. I thought it would be just a wifi card but I think there's an antenna in the display bezel. The x220 has the N6205 (3X3) and my x230 has the Intel N2200 (2x2). I'm thinking I'd rather take the dual band wifi over the HD camera I have in the x230. The camera slot seems to be the same size, is it possible to swap these wifi setup?

 

^^^ It is possible, with some patience and manual labor.

The Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6250 is 2x2, not 3x3 as you stated. The only difference between it and the Wireless-N 2200 is that the former supports "dual band" (2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz) whereas the latter supports "single band" (2.4 GHz).

The bigger number "5.0" sounds awesome, but in practice, 2.4 GHz is usually the better choice for most WWAN environments.

I wouldn't bother swapping them if I were you.

(By the way, my ThinkPad has a "better" WiFi card than both your X220 and X230: Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300. Great name. I don't think I am any happier. )

 

Oh you're right. It is 2x2. Maybe it's possible, wish there was a guide on how to do it. I don't mind tearing it apart, I've done a complete breakdown on different laptops. Ill look into this since I really like the dual band.

 

Consult the well-illustrated ThinkPad X230 Hardware Maintenance Manual.

No need to tear the whole thing apart. Disable device. Turn off machine. Remove all power sources. Open cover, detach antennas, remove card, insert new card, attach antennas, close cover. Connect power. Restart system. Install driver. Done.

$700 service charge, please.

 

It's very easy to swap the cards. I've done this between my X220 and T420s. You just need to remove the keyboard or palmrest of X220 to gain access to the wifi card. Carefully disconnect the antennas.

However it's not easy to swap the antennas. If you have a webcam in your X230 then it might come with only 2 antennas.

It's worth to note that the 3x3 setup would only offer you more bandwidth with certain routers/APs, but not more signal strength. I've tested and confirmed this in http://forum.notebookreview.com/len...-wifi-cards-have-similar-signal-strength.html

 

Doesn't Lenovo whitelist WLAN cards with different generations? This may not work at all, X220 and X230.

Sent from my SGH-T769 using Tapatalk 2

 

Yep. I opened up the keyboard and trackpad, disconnected the antenna and swapped the n2200 with the n6205. The x230 works with either but the x220 is not working with the n2200. On boot, get error about unauthorized pci card or something. Seems like you gotta edit the bios or something so it's not worth it. I'm just going to have to use the single band wifi. Thanks for the help everyone.

 

The cards should be forwards compatible as long as it is a current generation card still being offered on the model line, but not backwards compatible without a BIOS modification.

 

Do you have the latest BIOS in the x220?

 

Do you check this by pressing F1 at boot?
To answer your question, I'm not sure what version bios i have and what is the most recent.

 

You can run System Update and see if there is a newer BIOS update.

Sent from my SGH-T769 using Tapatalk 2