Got a Lenovo Yoga S730 that included an AC-3165 single channel 433Mbs wifi M.2 card on a Whiskey Lake i7 that includes basically an AC-9260 without the PHY on the SoC, because that's €2 cheaper than a matching CNVi adapter...
So I swapped that out first with various intermediate 7xxx, 8xxx and 9xxx AC variants that I have around and finally got an AX-200 non-vPro variant as soon as it sold in August, which puts it on par with what Ice Lakes would have on their SoC: Given a price difference between a naked PHY CNVi and a proper full WiFi M.2 card of €2 in retail after taxes, I can't stop shaking my head at Intel marketing... the whole card retails at €12 including VAT, the CNVi variant perhaps at €10, once it becomes available (since it only makes sense with an Ice Lake SoC), vPro costs an extra €8 or so: Chickenshit compared to the Ultrabook.
Got zero issues on Windows and Linux, didn't manually install any driver or optional software package (mostly crap-/spyware anyway), most importantly no issues with BIOS whitelisting, which I was a bit scared of.
Excellent performance on both bands, but for lack of an AX capable access point, WiFi--4 AC-1200 is all I have used so far with 60MB/s on big sequential file transfers.
What I really liked about the AX card is that Steam remote play finally works over WiFi through the wall. That isn't as much a bandwidth (it works fine on 100Mbit cabled Ethernet), as a latency issue, which the AC or WiFi-4/5 adapters never managed to get low enough to make Steam happy.
China vs. rest-of-the world: China is simply where most things are manufactured these days so seeing things pop up there first, shouldn't be a surprise. I got mine actually from a retailer in Germany, that somehow manages to get things a little earlier than the EU mainstream, yet typically later than in China or the US.
But I'm not surprised few people will pry open their brand new thousand €/$/£ ultrabook to replace one of the few parts that actually can be replaced. For me it was just the fact that even the most ancient Core-2 based notebook that my wife didn't want to reliquish, had better WiFi (AC-7260), than my totally bad-ass brand-new Ultrabook... and then at that price: Who cares if it doesn't work out?
And most of my experience with buying things in China has been surprisingly positive: I've gotten excellent value and even incredible support, especially when I was courtious and patient. I am sure there are more crooks in China than any other place, but that's mostly because they got much more of everything. Blind trust is as misplaced as flat prejudice, everywhere.
So I swapped that out first with various intermediate 7xxx, 8xxx and 9xxx AC variants that I have around and finally got an AX-200 non-vPro variant as soon as it sold in August, which puts it on par with what Ice Lakes would have on their SoC: Given a price difference between a naked PHY CNVi and a proper full WiFi M.2 card of €2 in retail after taxes, I can't stop shaking my head at Intel marketing... the whole card retails at €12 including VAT, the CNVi variant perhaps at €10, once it becomes available (since it only makes sense with an Ice Lake SoC), vPro costs an extra €8 or so: Chickenshit compared to the Ultrabook.
Got zero issues on Windows and Linux, didn't manually install any driver or optional software package (mostly crap-/spyware anyway), most importantly no issues with BIOS whitelisting, which I was a bit scared of.
Excellent performance on both bands, but for lack of an AX capable access point, WiFi--4 AC-1200 is all I have used so far with 60MB/s on big sequential file transfers.
What I really liked about the AX card is that Steam remote play finally works over WiFi through the wall. That isn't as much a bandwidth (it works fine on 100Mbit cabled Ethernet), as a latency issue, which the AC or WiFi-4/5 adapters never managed to get low enough to make Steam happy.
China vs. rest-of-the world: China is simply where most things are manufactured these days so seeing things pop up there first, shouldn't be a surprise. I got mine actually from a retailer in Germany, that somehow manages to get things a little earlier than the EU mainstream, yet typically later than in China or the US.
But I'm not surprised few people will pry open their brand new thousand €/$/£ ultrabook to replace one of the few parts that actually can be replaced. For me it was just the fact that even the most ancient Core-2 based notebook that my wife didn't want to reliquish, had better WiFi (AC-7260), than my totally bad-ass brand-new Ultrabook... and then at that price: Who cares if it doesn't work out?
And most of my experience with buying things in China has been surprisingly positive: I've gotten excellent value and even incredible support, especially when I was courtious and patient. I am sure there are more crooks in China than any other place, but that's mostly because they got much more of everything. Blind trust is as misplaced as flat prejudice, everywhere.