Acer Swift X SFX16-61G: Poor performing Wifi

tgab

The Wifi adaptor RZ616 performance is very bad. While signal is 80-90%, the web pages take long to load and adaptor totally loses connection in areas wifi signal strength is lower than 72db. This does not seem alright as all other devices keep strongly working in same location.

Here are results:

>>>>>> 2 Meter away from router (same room):


Description            : RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E 160MHz

Interface type         : Primary

State                  : connected

SSID                   : MyXRoute

Network type           : Infrastructure

Radio type             : 802.11ax

Authentication         : WPA2-Personal

Cipher                 : CCMP

Connection mode        : Auto Connect

Band                   : 5 GHz

Channel                : 36

Receive rate (Mbps)    : 2402

Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 2402

Signal                 : 85%

Profile                : MyXRoute


Hosted network status  : Not available

3 Meter away from router (same room):

netsh>wlan show interfaces

There is 1 interface on the system:

Name                   : Wi-Fi

Description            : RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E 160MHz

Interface type         : Primary

State                  : connected

SSID                   : MyXRoute

Network type           : Infrastructure

Radio type             : 802.11ax

Authentication         : WPA2-Personal

Cipher                 : CCMP

Connection mode        : Auto Connect

Band                   : 5 GHz

Channel                : 36

Receive rate (Mbps)    : 2402

Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 2402

Signal                 : 82%

Profile                : MyXRoute


Hosted network status  : Not available

6 Meter away from router (adjacent room):

netsh>wlan show interfaces

There is 1 interface on the system:

Name                   : Wi-Fi

Description            : RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E 160MHz

Interface type         : Primary

State                  : connected

SSID                   : MyXRoute

Network type           : Infrastructure

Radio type             : 802.11ax

Authentication         : WPA2-Personal

Cipher                 : CCMP

Connection mode        : Auto Connect

Band                   : 5 GHz

Channel                : 36

Receive rate (Mbps)    : 136.1

Transmit rate (Mbps)   : 72

Signal                 : 72%

Profile                : MyXRoute


Hosted network status  : Not available

6 Meter away from router (adjacent room), connection LOST

netsh>wlan show interfaces

There is 1 interface on the system:

Name                   : Wi-Fi

Description            : RZ616 Wi-Fi 6E 160MHz

GUID                   : bc8043aa-5a70-42ef-b42f-04eddd360b95

Physical address       : 74:97:79:5d:24:13

Interface type         : Primary

State                  : associating

Radio status           : Hardware On

                         Software On


Hosted network status  : Not available

Puraw

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/690818/acer-swift-x-sfx16-61g-poor-performing-wifi

Check the latency of your WIFI link, the problem may be your ISP, you cannot compare Androids with Windows network (Other devices?)

Run these 2 commands to check Timeouts and Packet loss (both should be zero on a well maintained 4-5G WIFI network)
ping -n 10 community.acer.com and tracert community.acer.com

Athwart

@tgab The fact that your signal strength drops from 85% at 2m to 82% at 3m and drops even further or drops out in an adjacent room suggests to me that the problem is with the wi-fi adapter aerial. By way of comparison, my connection sits at 90% anywhere up to 6m away in the same room and only drops to 87% in an adjacent room with an intervening brick wall. Maybe it's just a loose connection on the aerial. I don't know the details of how the aerial is connected so can't help there. Maybe someone more knowledgeable or with access to the service manual can chime in.

However, before trouble shooting the aerial, I'd try a few other things.

Try changing the connection from 5GHz to 2.4Ghz. 2.4GHz provides a stronger signal albeit with possibly more traffic.

The other thing to check is whether your modem supports 802.11ax. If your modem is older, it may not and that can cause connection issues in some cases. If your modem doesn't support 802.11ax, try changing your adapter interface setting to use 802.11ac instead. That helped in my case when I had an older modem.

tgab

Thanks for your replies. It seems there is issue with wifi card and I will be heading to ACER service center next week. Could not open back cover myself as it could void warranty.

billsey

Yeah, warranty changes based on your country, so we can't guess whether it would be affected or not. It sounds more like one of the antennas isn't physically connected to the WLAN card rather than an issue with the card itself, but Acer will get it fixed for you.