Bluetooth: Integrated or External?

Hello, I would like some advice on the following scenario.

I am purchasing a laptop in the coming days, and I have the option of upgrading my wireless card to one with integrated Bluetooth. While I have integrated bluetooth on my current laptop, I seldom use it. However, I would like to have this feature in my new laptop. Therefore:

Should I get the integrated Bluetooth (for an extra $25)? Or should I go for one of those external micro USB adapters? What are the pros and cons? Any external (preferably micro) adapters you guys would recommend?

 

I'd go with integrated- for several reasons including my dislike for network hardware on USB (possible driver problems), fact that BT integrated into Wi-Fi will not have worse range than USB one (but may have better) but mostly because for practical reasons.
If you rarely use BT than chances are that you either manage to get USB one damaged by the time you finally want to use it and if you move around with your notebook you're gonna end up forgetting it so you won't have it with you anyway.
$25 is not a fortune and for that money you get something that you won't damage or forget and with proper- non-USB connector.

 

Another question: Do you think integrated Bluetooth will have any significant impact on battery life?

 

No but now that you bring that up USB offers no power management so integrated BT may actually be better in this respect.

 

I'm in total agreement with Downloads.
External stuff is easily broken no matter how small, it's a risk.

USB has some power management, but not much.

 

Most integrated BT solutions that I've seen by Sony, Acer, and a few others actually connect using internal USB headers, or the USB pins through the mPCIe slot. So any power savings would have to be in the driver software for that particular chipset reference. Usually, they do have it, it's just you have to dig to find the settings. Usually through the Device Manager. You can set the scanning interval, the output power (sometimes), and whether you are discoverable. But for decisions sake, I'd definitely go internal.

 

Alright, thanks for the help everyone. It sounds like integrated is definitely the way to go. I appreciate the help, seeing how I'm not really an expert when it comes to networking/wireless hardware.

 

Pretty much **every** mini-pcie card is really a usb card. This includes a lot of the small netbook SSD devices.

I'm sure that there are some real mini-pcie devices that are actually using the PCI buss, but I've never run across any. Doesn't mean they don't exist through.

So when talking about usb devices, this means that internal usb devices are subject to the same limitations as external usb devices. Some chipset drivers are actually pretty damned capable when managing usb ports and power drain. Some aren't. Some of those chipset drivers can talk to the USB port that is found on an internal card mini-pcie card, some can't. Sometimes you're reliant on the laptop maker to supply a utility that can turn that mini-pcie slot on and off. Sometimes that utility will actually work. Or not.

The main difference being that you can manually unplug the external device to either replace/upgrade it or to make sure that it's not pulling power when you don't want it to. And you can probably bet that the drivers (including whatever power management the driver supports) will work with a wide variety of laptops and operating systems.

No such flexibility with internal devices. You are at the mercy of the laptop maker for functional utility software that can not only turn the internal mini-pcie slot on and off, but is also functional with whatever card you decide to put into that slot. Lot's of laptop makers use a white/black list scheme that forces users to buy their cards from the laptop makers. Buy and try to use a card that isn't on the approved list and things stop working.

'security and safety' issues will lean towards the internal devices. But for power management and driver issues, it's as much a crap shoot as anything else.