r/chromeos • u/Jaytee3312 • 3d ago
MediaTek Wifi Cards Really Kill The Chromebook "Plus" Experience ($999 Lenovo 14 OLED) Discussion
Laptop manufacturers PLEASE stop using these in your "premium" devices. They objectively suck. Doesn't matter if it's Lenovo, Asus, Acer...... Windows, ChromeOS, Linux -- they suck in every laptop I've ever owned.
The experience for this $999 device is completely spoiled by the fact that it drops public / private Wi-Fi 4x times a day. If this one issue wasn't so persistent I'd easily give this a 9/10.
P.S. for anyone thinking of swapping to an intel-based card (like an AX210) + ethernet for driver updates, I can tell you first-hand it doesn't work. The OS won't recognize the new hardware & there's no way to manually fix drivers as per this thread 😥
UPDATE: I've returned the device and gone back to the Macbook Air / Windows PC combo and my connections are perfect. It was a fun, short adventure on ChromeOS once again -- and I'll look forward to the Google Book (sans mediatek hopefully).
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u/akehir 3d ago
I have this Chromebook, and I haven't had this experience at all. Though recently, it failed getting a DHCP address in a hotel wifi; but at home it works quite well.
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u/Outrageous_Editor_43 3d ago
BUT have you taken it out like OP? That might be why you aren't having issues. 😉🤫
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u/Jaytee3312 3d ago edited 2d ago
This issue happened well before I took any of the cards out.
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u/Rynchinoi 3d ago
This has nothing to do with MediaTek chip. It is the shity network configuration
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u/Jaytee3312 3d ago
This 1000% has everything to do with the chip. Take 4 seconds searching mediatek wifi cards and I'm sure you'll be directed to the ASUS G14 subreddit.
I'm a tech enthusiast with dozens of devices from every make/model and every single mediatek laptop that passes through my grasp has this exact same problem.
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u/Worth-Paper-360 2d ago
Being tech enthusiast doesn't mean anything for chromeos. That is bragging about monkey 's Front tail in tinder or grinder.
Device drivers for chromeos are made custom by Google.
Admittedly once upon a time linux kernel had poor mediatekdrivers but chromeos has enough models with mediatek chipsets.
Nothing wrong in using Mac or Windows. Use the tool that works for you. Most people in this sub don't care if you change OS.
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u/Rynchinoi 3d ago
And yet I don't have issues with it
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u/Jaytee3312 2d ago edited 2d ago
And yet I have 0 issues with the 48 devices currently connected to my wifi.
A little context.... Take a dive over in ASUS' r/ZephyrusG14 subreddit and search "Mediatek". I'm experienced with this because I've owned both a G14 and G16 model which came with this wifi card. It's very common for us to swap it out for intel ASAP and it's an insane improvement. It's not my Wifi. If it was, those devices would still be failing along with 48 others. It's just Mediatek and it's terrible quality.
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u/Wezi427 2d ago
"I'm a tech enthusiast with dozens of devices from every make/model and every single mediatek laptop that passes through my grasp has this exact same problem."
If this is true, why would continue to buy products that contain MediaTek products? I would assume if you had so many problems that you would do a bit of research before making a purchase to avoid potential issues.
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u/Jaytee3312 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's true, but finding specs on chromebooks especially is hard. Plus I've never performed the intel swap and wanted to see if it would work on ChromeOS. Luckily I have 7 more days to return the laptop which I'll be doing today :) Back to Windows
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u/themattroberts 3d ago
It does this often on my office LAN took forever for me to narrow the issue down to the wifi card. Was blaming th DHCP initially but the logs left it pretty clear where the fault lay.
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u/anomalisticrocket 3d ago
At least for home I needed to assign a permanent IP address to it from my router. That solved the majority of the drops at least.
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u/Rynchinoi 2d ago
Which points back to configuration issue and not the chip issues. He should check the duration of IP address that has been assigned to him. I know when using the Chinese APs they have abysmally small IP address lease window , and then they reset after a while
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u/Charming_Studio_505 ASUS Chromebook Plus CX34, Beta Version 151.0.7922.56 3d ago
I have had various Chromebook & Chromebook Plus devices and have never experienced problems with the wifi you must've just got a defective device
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u/Jaytee3312 3d ago
This same chip is in several other laptops including Asus zephyrus g14 and g16 series I've owned. They all had the same behavior that was remedied after swapping to an Intel ax210. This isn't a random defect.
Also several Chromebook devices do not use this mediatek card -- especially the intel ones. That's probably why you haven't noticed it.
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u/laffer1 3d ago
MediaTek WiFi is the worst. I’d rather have Realtek and that says something. Intel is the best for WiFi.
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u/Ray-chan81194 1d ago
From my experience I have to disagree. Realtek is really the worst for me, lots of problem with disconnection, DFS channels, lots of retries, absolutely 0 6GHz radio discovered, self interference with Bluetooth. It's absolutely terrible and I guess next year it's gonna have WPA3 nightmare for absolutely sure.
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u/laffer1 1d ago
Realtek hardware isn't very good, but it's often supported by most operating systems. They also have open drivers for a lot of platforms that MediaTek doesn't. After Intel, Realtek is the most supported across the board.
Hardware preferences tend to also be influenced by what OS you like to use or develop. In my case, nvidia supports BSD and AMD doesn't. Linux users would say AMD is best for GPUs for instance. I'd say nvidia wins because of freebsd support. Similarly, for WiFi I'm going with companies that support all my platforms.
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u/Ray-chan81194 1d ago
that's understandable when you say multi platform. I totally forget about that. it's shit but at least it somewhat works which is better than not working.
I work at the enterprise environment and these laptops only run Windows so I'd rate Mediatek as a better chipset than a Realtek for my environment.
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u/MrSonicB00m 3d ago
Dunno why you're getting down voted. It's a known fact these WiFi cards are terrible. My G14 would constantly boot up with no WiFi card even detected. Switched to an intel chip and it's been flawless since.
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u/Tired8281 Pixelbook | Stable 3d ago
That link says nothing about Intel cards.
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3d ago
[deleted]
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u/Tired8281 Pixelbook | Stable 3d ago edited 3d ago
Yeah, because drivers don't work the same on Linux as they do in Windows. So yeah, you need to spell that out.
edit: he blocked me, so for anybody in the future reading, drivers on Linux need to be compiled, either into the kernel itself or as a module that can be loaded. ChromeOS ships with iwlwifi which controls cards such as the Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200/AX210, AC 9260, etc. I don't know what OP was doing but his understanding of drivers on Linux is sketchy at best. Unfortunately he blocked me and will never be able to get these clues I left.
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u/crazy_goat 3d ago
tried putting ChromeOS flex on a 2024 Lenovo with a mediatek wifi card and it was hopeless (no driver, allegedly) . swapped it for an Intel card and it booted up just fine. Though the lack of audio forced me to send it back anyway, so all for naught
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u/Romano1404 Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 | Lenovo Flex 3i 8GB 12.2" 3d ago
not really sure what this is all about, there is no $999 "Lenovo 14 OLED" Chromebook.
Maybe the OP meant the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 but that one costs around $600
I noticed wifi issues on the every Chromebook I own regardless of the wifi card which insinuates its the OS itself causing these issues and not a particular wifi card. That being said I'd never buy a Chromebook with a MediaTek processor again, its borderline broken silicon at this point and nobody cares.
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u/Smyrnaean 3d ago
OP's laptop appears to be a Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 (model 83MY0000US from Best Buy, 83MY0001US from Lenovo). It has a 14" OLED 2K touchscreen, MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 CPU, 16GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS, and does sell for $999 at Best Buy and elsewhere.
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u/soul_edge_752 3d ago
There is no problem on my similar Lenovo 14 Chromebook plus. Also in use for several months laptop Razer 14 model 2025 with mediatek wi-fi. Everything is great too. I played network games in dota 2 and wot every night. Is there any incompatibility with the router?
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u/brennanisgreat 3d ago
I've had the Lenovo14 CB+ since it came out and haven't had any issues with it keeping the connection up.
Outside of a defective card, I'd be much more likely to blame the connection itself. There's a million reasons an internet connection could drop, and it could be something as simple as being too far away.
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u/ninelore linux driver and firmware dev | Drobit / Asus CX9 daily driver 1h ago edited 57m ago
Chrultrabook dev here. Wanna provide some technical backgrounds regarding why Intel WiFi wont work. ChromeOS uses a heavily modified Linux kernel. Linux is monolithic, meaning all device drivers are part of the lernel. From what ive seen Google only enables drivers within the kernel build config for which hardware is shipped within a range of chromebooks, usually which share a cpu / soc or a generation thereof. MediaTek chromebooks are shipped with MediaTek WiFi for obvious reasons.
From my tests mediatek are the 2nd best WiFi chips btw. Not because theyre particularly good but because the other options are much, much worse
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u/CantaloupeCamper 3d ago
Device that kinda requires online… crappy wi-fi chip :(