Realtek Wi-Fi Cards, just are rubbish

[chazzy2501]

From my HP ProBook 440 G7's to my G8 and now my brand new expensive Lenovo E14 Gen6 21M3, All have come with Realtek cards, all are just crud. (think more profane description)

 

The brand new Lenovo ThinkPad E14 (21M3) comes with a new Realtek 6e Wi-Fi module, I though I'd escaped the unlucky jank I had with the old 8833 cards.... Wrong!

 

The new RTL8852CE is borked.. These cards even using the latest 330 drivers, will not work with Miracast. They'll connect, the image quality will drop and after 10-30 seconds they'll drop the screen mirroring.  (Using Epson EB-720Wi and 760Wi, nice UST laser projectors)

 

I tried every permutation to get it to work and I just said to the teacher let me try something... I have some old Intel 8265 cards, I popped it in and it works immediately, 100% and the teacher claims that her files open much faster now and the wallpaper is back?!..  Almost an hour faffing with the 8852 card and opening a brand new laptop and sticking a 2017 Wi-Fi module the laptop works much better!

 

These old intel cards were the fix for the old Realtek cards in my 2019 laptops (that would connect but pass no traffic, then drop the signal to 1 bar (after 2 years)) I replaced all Wi-Fi Realtek modules... looks like I'm doing that again in the near future... I thought Realtek would be ok this time, I should have my head checked!

 

I've opened a tech support from Lenovo but am expecting a run around of very remedial checks and blaming the environment or projectors.

 

 

 

[psydii]

We're seeing the latest batch suffer from connectivity issues. (I previously mis-spoke on another thread and referenced Atheros, but no they are 8852BE's) . For us it *seems* as though the problems stared in 6001.15.123.330  as they had been fine until this driver started getting installed. We have had some success rolling back to an earlier version (on machines that still have those available.

[3s-gtech]

I've experienced similar. It's as if to get their products into OEMs they've undercut them on price, and done that by making something that barely works. Last real issues I had with them were back in Lenvo E series netbook things, which were slow anyway but the wifi was awful.

[psydii]

Just checked Lenovo support. They've been releasing an updated version across various laptop models over the last week. 

 

"[Problem fixes]

-Fixed Realtek RTL8852BE WLAN disconnection issue"

[3s-gtech]

9 minutes ago, psydii said:

Just checked Lenovo support. They've been releasing an updated version across various laptop models over the last week. 

 

"[Problem fixes]

-Fixed Realtek RTL8852BE WLAN disconnection issue"

You had one job, wifi card. One job.

[chazzy2501]

20 minutes ago, psydii said:

Just checked Lenovo support. They've been releasing an updated version across various laptop models over the last week. 

 

"[Problem fixes]

-Fixed Realtek RTL8852BE WLAN disconnection issue"

Yes, tried this, was hopeful with the description but nope... The title says 8852BE but later also says for CE

Edited May 23, 2025 by chazzy2501

[psydii]

Sorry to hear that. I shall remain with hope as our symptoms are different, so perhaps so is the root cause.

 

I will never get over the (I think) Intel Wifi Link 5100 in early Dell E series, a product so bad it took nearly 6 years for me to restore SLT's faith in the wireless network, and I haven't touched Dell laptops since.

 

..it was also a product so bad it made mid-patent-lawsuit Meru products look good. (for those who weren't there, Meru had an unusual take on wifi congestion/traffic management using a single channel architecture" which in the abg years was (apparently) second to none. But when n came along there were some things in the standard that negated some of that advantage and also presented new challenges for SCA. About the same time a patent troll sued  and stopped them from some of the techniques they were employing to bring SCA into the n era. The result was n Meru was awful (for about 3 years) until the day the suit was settled. That very day, I saw the news pop up in my feed, a Meru engineer called me with a new firmware, and suddenly it was all fine again.  It was never good, but we could live with fine)

 

Anyway, remind again me why we trust wifi  to be our most critical infrastructure layer?

[DalekSec]

Always had issues with realtek cards going back 10 years, i try to avoid them like the plague, Intel cards on other hand i've never had issues

[andy_b]

I thought I'd left the problem of dodgy WiFi Cards 15 years behind me

[Norphy]

On 23/05/2025 at 15:02, 3s-gtech said:

You had one job, wifi card. One job.

Well, considering most WiFi cards contain the Bluetooth module too, technically it had two jobs

Edited May 26, 2025 by Norphy

[3s-gtech]

9 hours ago, Norphy said:

Well, considering most WiFi cards contain the Bluetooth module too, technically it had two jobs

That’s the side-gig - the pocket money little earner. Not sure the Realtek ones are much good at that either!

[mikes]

Seen a lot of garbage wi-fi adapters personally - I bought an Asus Wifi-6 card PCI-E back when that was the current standard, the 5GHZ connectivity was worthless and no matter the spectrum, if you use over about 10MB/sec, for over 2 minutes, the wireless networking stops working totally and you have to disable/re-enable the NIC for it to start working again. Had to cap steam etc at 5MB/sec download. 

 

Just bought 3 Refurbed Lenovo T490's off Amazon and they are in very good condition for the price, but am having issues with the Intel AC 9560 NIC's - Windows says "Not available" and will not do any wireless networking at all with the preferred Intel driver. The Microsoft driver works fine. I've had other odd issues with other Intel wifi NIC's in the past, dropouts, needing to change advanced settings for them to work, so they haven't been perfect for me at all.

[chazzy2501]

Lenovo have made me clean the OS, update all drivers, update the BIOS, run the laptop in 2.4ghz only mode, run the projector in 2.4ghz only mode and now uninstall eset antivirus! Still runs poorly and buggs out in interactive. 

 

 

[CraigM]

Oh goodness me, this topic is so relevant to me. I have 7 Huawei D 15 laptops that we bought back in 2020. They came with the Realtek 8822CE card and goodness me did I develop a dislike for that card! Slow Wi-Fi network association, struggling to connect after the laptop wakes up from sleep and more. Later driver updates helped, but it still makes me twitch when I see them. 

Our grade 08 (Form 2 UK equivalent if I did my maths right) learners this year had to start using devices for e-textbooks, but it was a BYOD situation. I had a kid come to me since their laptop would not connect even though he was following the provided instructions perfectly. He had a nice enough laptop, but it was using some or another Realtek card that had like 5 year old drivers powering it. I found more up to date drivers and all of a sudden the laptop was now connecting and working.

 

Why Windows Update also doesn't update the drivers on the devices when an updated driver exists on the Windows Update Catalogue site is beyond me.

[3s-gtech]

Windows Update can do it, we see that happen with new builds. Again though, I've seen that not work properly on Realtek cards (but be fine on other vendors' kit).

[Dos_Box]

I have to admit, I've bought a TP-Link USB WiFi card for a emulator PC I'm working on and that is a Realtek based AX affair (can't recall the chipset though) and I've had no issues with it.
And I've tested it's throughput quite a bit with no issues. The drivers are in their (TP-Link) own wrapper though, so could be 'fixed'.
I only found out it was Realtek when I tried a few Linux emulator front ends and had to manually install the drivers via command line. It also worked fine on Linux.
TBH, it's probably the first Realtek WiFi chipset I've had AFAIK.
 

[chazzy2501]

Just an update to this thread, Lenovo support in the end stated that the laptops DO NOT SUPPORT this use case.... I can stop using the interactive feature and or stop using internet to make it work however. (so no miracast / interactive AND or internet)

 

This may be related to the realtek cards not supporting MCC (Multi Concurrent Connection) ((but realtek state they do)) which although isn't required for Miracast is super duper handy.  (MCC can use 2.4 and 5ghz separately, not the same as the new MLO in wifi7 btw) 

 

I am replacing all the realtek cards with intel AX210 cards, immediately better.