Intel Network 7260.HMWG WiFi Wireless-AC 7260 H/T Dual Band 2x2 AC+Bluetooth HMC

This was a great upgrade for my Qosmio laptop. I purchased the card on Amazon from A4-TRADE and had a disappointing experience with them on two fronts - first they apparently sent electronic shipping info but never actually shipped the product (so I had to contact them after several days to get them to actually ship it). When the item arrived it was in a standard (rather than an anti-static) plastic bag - an item like this should ALWAYS be shipped in anti-static packaging. I'd suggest checking with your chosen supplier before purchase that they will ship it in an anti-static bag. However, a supplier who doesn't use anti-static bags is also unlikely to use anti-static precautions when handling the board for shipping. No gripes at all with the device itself, speeds are fast and so far I haven't noticed any of the disconnection type issues some reviewers have complained about. I suspect their disconnection issues may actually be more to do with their routers rather than the device (reviews of some recent AC routers have many users complaining about daily or frequent disconnects). Anyway, worth getting the latest firmware for the router! To install in the Qosmio laptop was relatively easy, remove the subset of F6 screws from the underside that secure the keyboard (I forget if you have to remove the three screws from within the RAM / Hard drive compartment), slide out the DVD, pop out the keyboard (finger access to pop it out is from within the DVD space) to reveal the WiFi card slot. Take a lot of care with the ribbon cables and connectors - never pull or push the ribbon with force). It's worthwhile blowing out the dust from the CPU fans while you're at it - full details of removing the case can be found in various forums - recommend perhaps getting some experienced help if you're not familiar with flat ribbon connectors and micro-coax connectors. I did have a little trouble with the Intel driver installation (Windows 7 64-bit). When I installed the "software with drivers" the card did not appear in the Windows Device list, only after installing the "drivers only" then reinstalling "software with drivers" did the card appear but after that I have had no problems at all and I'm very happy with the upgrade.

As fate would have it, the AC 7260 and a D-Link DWA-182 (USB Wireless AC adapter) arrived on the same day, along with a D-Link DIR-868L AC Router. I have been patiently waiting for a Wireless AC adapter upgrade for my Dell Netbook (replacing an Intel 5300) and this was it, especially with the bonus of Bluetooth. As I typically do with all of my network connections, I test the actual throughput speeds using the excellent third-party utility LAN Speed Test (v3.4) with LAN Speed Server running on my main server across a robust Gigabit-802.11ac network. With the new components and some of my existing setup, I did some fairly extensive comparisons in twos: 2 locations (the two ends of my house where I typically use wireless about 20-30 feet from the optimal router), 2 access points (both are upper-end 802.11ac routers - the D-Link DIR-868L and a Netgear R6200, hereafter called WAPs) and the 2 adapters. Some interesting things came out of this testing method... The basement router serves one half of the house better and the upstairs router (acting as an access point) serves the other half better, but it is not split by level (horizontally) like I thought it would be, but split vertically and that surprised me a bit. Not so surprising was that this adapter performed far better on the 5GHz frequency than the 2.4GHz frequency with either router used (I turned one off and left one on then switched them during the testing process). I first tested the AC 7260 at 4 feet from each WAP and on each frequency to get a baseline or "high performance" measurement. On 5GHz, it averaged 130Mbps Write/Upload & 300Mbps Read/Download on both WAPs, hereafter referred to as just the numbers (e.g. 130/300). On the 2.4GHz band, best transfer speeds averaged 70/90 from the remote locations, meeting my expectation that it would be slower. On the 5Ghz frequency, again in the ideal location for each WAP, I was averaging 100/200 actual throughput speeds with one and close to baseline with the other at 125/290. Note: this was when it displayed between 300-480Mbps as the connection speed in Windows (i.e. full strength) and this disparity between rated and actual speeds has been typical, in my experience. Comparing it to the DWA-182, it averaged 50-90% faster speeds consistently over the days of testing. I recognize that they are not fully/directly comparable with one being portable (USB) and this one being semi-permanent with the advantage of a better antenna array, so that must be considered. My rating is based mostly on the expected performance of the adapter (having upgraded through, now 3, excellent Intel adapters) with the secondary consideration of value. Adding to the value is the added Bluetooth option, allowing me to open a much needed USB port. My findings were similar to what other reviewers found: First, that the Bluetooth drivers that auto-installed in Windows 7 work best. Second, when audio was connected (in this case, some LG HBS700 headphones), that there was a lag of a few seconds when sound was initiated. Not so much of a problem with something like music, but kind of a pain with system sounds. Sometimes, I would not even hear the sound because the lag was longer than the actual sound. But because I don't use Bluetooth much, I will not diminish the rating because of this issue.

I bought this adapter because it had a chance to use the high quality APTx bluetooth codec, and I was happy when it worked. I installed it in an Asus V551LB laptop, and after installing the Intel drivers, the wifi and bluetooth were working perfectly. I had a chat with Intel support, and they said that technically, APTx is not supported on on devices that didn't come with this adapter installed (and they're right: the APTx logo is supposed to appear when a device that supports it connects, but nothing happened when I paired my APTx headphones,) but there is definitely some high quality streaming going on here. I compared several songs, listening through my APTx headset, on both my laptop and my phone (which does NOT have the APTx codec,) and the difference is audibly clear. On the phone, the compression is noticeable, with the high frequencies all scratchy and warble-y. The same song on my laptop (with this adapter) has no issues like that (since the APTx codec ups the bitrate to 192kbps, which for most people, is practically to lossless quality.) As far as the wifi features are concerned, they are d just as good as any other adapter. I can see both signals from my dual-band router, and can connect to each easily. I am getting connection drops occasionally, but I'll be going to check the broadcast channels soon to see if there is any interference. I also like the Intel Smart Connect program that is available (when you put the laptop to sleep it wakes it up every 15, 30, or 60 minutes to update your email and social media programs, then put the computer back to sleep,) it makes it so I always know if I have any updates after putting the laptop to rest for a while.

I bought this card to replace the Intel 7260N single band card in my Lenovo Y510P to add 5 GHz AC capabilities to my laptop since the 2.4 GHz band is super crowded at my apartment complex. I mainly use the card on the 5 GHz AC channels for home and school and it works great. When I go back to my parent's house, I use the 2.4 GHz N channels and works just fine. If this was a WiFi only card, then I'd give it five stars. Unfortunately, I have to give it three stars because the bluetooth is terribly spotty. Over the last week, my bluetooth connection has been consistently dropping between my laptop and keyboard/mouse. Rebooting my mouse/keyboard as well as disabling/enabling my laptop's bluetooth restores the connection, but usually for less than an hour before it drops again. These peripherals worked great with my old Intel 7260N and I'm debating going back to my old single band card with working bluetooth over this dual band card. Also, the card came in a little plastic zippy bag rather than an Intel box like I was expecting. It may have been a cheap knock off card with faulty Bluetooth.

Installation I installed the driver for this ahead of time since I didn't want to risk having issues later, so I cannot exactly say it was plug and play, but it was pretty close. Anyway, the physical instillation was slightly stressful since this card was slightly tighter than my last one and I decided it was a great idea to wedge it in with my fingers rather than using tools, but I got it in within a couple of minutes. In my settings on my card, to take advantage of its full speed, I did have enable the WMM mode under QoS, but that was pretty easy following some directions I found in another review. One other annoyance was that I had to reenter my network credentials (apparently the passwords are not saved in Windows, but with the card). Speed and Reliability I have noticed a significant increase in my network connection and reliability. My old card, a Railink (something similar to that in spelling), would drop connections constantly. This card hardly ever looses connection and won't have any weird slow downs. It connects to my Netgear AC router at 234 Mbs from about 40 feet away. About my computer: I have an HP Envy dv6z using an AMD processor and graphics card. When I installed my wireless card, I was running Windows 8.1 and am now running Windows 10 (in case you didn't know, Microsoft skipped Windows 9) with no problems. I am connected to an R6300v2 using the AC connection (my wireless G and N work fine too). Pros: Quick to connect Fast connection Decent range (a bar higher than my last card) Cons: No Bluetooth (the driver installed, but could not find the card) Requiring me to reenter network credentials

I purchased this card in combination with the new ASUS RT-AC66U where I installed DD-WRT. I installed this card on my Lenovo V570 after removing the BIOS blacklist. The Lenovo V570 has two antennas so that worked well with this card. I downloaded the drivers from Intel and installed them on a Windows 7 x64. It works very well, so far I have not experienced any disconnects as other users have, maybe because I used the latest Intel driver. I have not tested bluetooth. I have configured my router for 80Mhz of bandwidth at 5Ghz 802.11ac and 40Mhz for 2.4Ghz. I have also checked the settings for the Intel AC 7260 and changed the following: - 802.11n Channel Width for 2.4Ghz: Auto - 802.11n Channel Width for 5.2Ghz: Auto - Preferred Band: 3. Prefer 5.2Ghz band I also checked multiple channels for the 5Ghz interface. Some channels were pretty bad with connection speeds of 70mbit/sec. I have my router upstairs and use the laptop downstairs. The connection speed at 5GHz shows in DD-WRT and Windows at 585 mbit/sec. My old 802.11n card was connecting at 144 mbit/sec. After testing some file transfers, the effective bandwidth was around 15MB/sec, which is effectively around 120mbit/sec, 10 times the 1MB/sec that I was getting with the 802.11n. In theory I should be seeing transfers of 60-70 MB/sec but I am happy with my 10x improvement. Now if you are testing this card by transferring some files, your storage needs to be able to handle these transfer speeds. I have a 10TB storage array connected to my server via 4Gigabit Fibrechannel that can do more than 300MB/sec (limited by the 1gbit/sec network connection of the router to 120MB/sec) and I use an Intel last generation flash SLC drive on my laptop that will easily do 100MB/sec, so my backend storage can support true 1 gigabit/sec. One last thing, be aware that the seller SPICY BOMB is selling fake cards. These cards are Atheros AR9462/AR5BWB222 with a photocopied sticker from an Intel card. These are not even AC wireless cards. If you purchased this card from SPICY BOMB, please look at the sticker and see if you have WFM: 0C8BFD2C745A and BDM: 0C8BFD2C745E. If you do, you have the fake card. You can also identify the fake because the antenna connectors are marked CH0 and CH1 instead of 1 and 2 like the Intel.

My Dell XPS 17 (Model L1702X) was having problems with it's built-in Intel 6230N wireless card, so I finally decided to replace it. After studying on new cards i wanted to get a card that could use the full potential of my new Router ( NETGEAR Wireless Router - AC1750 Dual Band Gigabit (R6300) - Manufacturer Refurbished . Mine was purchased from Mobile Computing Solutions and shows up as the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260. It connects at 866.7 Mbps to my netgear R6300 version 1 router using the Wireless AC standard which is amazingly fast, it's almost like connecting with a cable. Installation: I downloaded the latest windows 7 drivers previously. You need to first download the Bluetooth drivers which for windows 7 64bit is BT_3.1.1311_s64. Then I had to find the windows drivers. I used the drivers only which is Wireless_16.6.0_Ds64. There is also a newer Wireless_16.7.0_Ds64 that is out as well. I looked up dissassembly instructions online for my Dell XPS 17 Laptop (L1702X). I took apart my case and removed my Wireless card, which had two wires connected but three available (one was wrapped and not used). It replaced an Intel 6230N. I then put in the new card and used the previous screw to screw it in. The antenna wires were popped back on the same sides. I then put my laptop back together which was hard since I had to remove the keyboard and several small screws from throughout the system. I then booted the laptop and installed the bluetooth drivers and network drivers again. I then connected to my wireless network using the new card. Troubleshooting: I was only connecting at 54Mbps at first and I was having connection issues. Here is how I fixed it... For those with wireless-n and wireless-ac routers you may have to troubleshoot your windows settings if you have "upgraded" your card. In the control panel, go to the Device manager, go to network section, and double-click on the Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260. Now clicked on Advance. Under Ad-hoc choose WMM Enabled, under HT mode choose VHT, under preferred band choose 5.2ghz, under transmit power choose 5 highest, and under wireless mode choose 6: 802.11 a/b/g. Press okay to save changes. Inside your router go to the QOS section (in my netgear router it can be found in advanced>Setup>QOS Setup). Make sure WMM is enabled. Save changes. Another thought is to use a program like DNS Bench to find the best DNS server for you. I added my provider's DNS to the generated list and it turned out that Charter's DNS (one of the two provided) was the fastest and a level 3 dns server was second fastest for me. I added both as static dns server's to my router. Final Thoughts: I love this wireless card. You'll have to ignore the Windows 7 bug that claims you are connecting to a Wireless N network and the driver bug that states you only connect to a/b/g networks. The one device bug right now is that your router needs WMM enabled. This does not make sense since my wireless AC usb adapters such as the Edimax AC adapter, did not have this problem. Overall the Intel 7260 connects faster than the Edimax EW-7811UTC AC600 Dual-Band USB Adapter, Mini Size Easy to Carry, Supports Both 11AC ( 5GHz Band ) and 11n ( 2.4GHz Band ) Wi-Fi Connectivity, Upgrades your PC / Laptop for Exceeding Streaming and Faster Download . It actually is twice as fast since its 866.7 Mbps compared to 430Mbps , not to mention it fits inside my laptop so I can't break it. Overall if you don't mind opening your laptop this is a great deal for Wireless AC router owners! If this review was helpful then please click the button! Thanks!

I recently purchased a Toshiba Satellite S855-S5378. It came with a genuinely awful Realtek 8723AE wireless card. Right out of the box I had trouble with the stupid thing. The drivers were hard to find (I wound up using Vista drivers on a Windows 7 Ultimate machine), and this was after Toshiba tech support just told me to buy a USB adapter. So I did some research and decided to go with this wireless card. For $42 and some change, it was delivered the next day. Thirty minutes later (this laptop is crazy easy to disassemble), I had dual band AC access as well as bluetooth. And it works like a champ. I can sit in my driveway (60+ feet away from my router) and still get 3 bars, not to mention the fact that every website ever loads with truly disturbing speed. As a word of caution, though: not all laptops can accept a new wireless card so easily. HPs in particular are pretty bad about it. So, if you have an HP, check out the option of getting a whitelist removal tool so that your computer's BIOS or UEFI will be able to recognize the hardware and boot properly. If you install this card and receive error code 1802, it means it's time to run some whitelist removals. If you have a Toshiba Satellite, though, they tend to accept just about anything you throw at them. Five stars- I'd give more if possible. This is the best wireless connection I've ever had on any laptop, ever.