I got fed up with fast Wi-Fi transition not working and bought an AX210 (No vPro) for my Framework 13 AMD.
Compared to the RZ616:
- 802.11k / 802.11r fast transition between APs now works perfectly (my main reason for the switch).
- Overall Wi-Fi speed in the exact same spot is higher and more stable (although I am not sure there is any difference in practice).
However, Bluetooth… it became much worse. My specific issue is that I have a Bluetooth keyboard and a Bluetooth trackpad, which all work great, but once I connect Bluetooth headphones and start watching a video, the trackpad begins to lag occasionally (the keyboard too, but much more rarely). There is nothing in the logs, so I am not even sure where to start to troubleshoot this. Also, subjectively, the audio lag when watching a video is less noticeable with AMD.
Overall, it seems like I can get either stable Wi-Fi (with Intel) or stable Bluetooth (with AMD), which is quite disappointing. Intel AX210 seems to have pretty good reviews and I did not see any other similar complaints elsewhere, so this makes me wonder whether there is some sort of incompatibility with the AMD platform, which prompted Framework to pick the AMD module in the first place?
Have any of you, who replaced RZ616 with AX210, experienced issues like this?
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Great comparison and one of the concerns I had when considering the AX210. I’m curious if anyone else has evidence like this. I will say that I am not having significant enough problems with wifi to make me disregard the possible bluetooth problems.
I’ve had a good experience with both, however the AX210 definitely consumed a lot of power during idle.
The RZ616 did as well. However on Linux 6.8 it’s calm down and runs very efficiently now.
Bluetooth has been acceptable on both however I’ve only used them for Teams calls.
Weird, mine use barely any power at idle even when connected. During iperf the ax210 seems to use quite a bit less power but also did perform a bit worse on 80mhz wifi6, on 160mhz both saturate the gigabit uplink of the accesspoint.
As a brief update, I did a couple of experiments but the situation is still the same – horrible random lagging of wireless touchpad/keyboard when headphones are playing audio, and I don’t understand what is causing it and how to debug it.
On a related note, I have replaced PulseAudio with PipeWire (should have been using it from the beginning, not sure why NixOS doesn’t enable it by default) and this solved all the video/audio sync issues with both adapters.
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I just swapped over to the AX210 and speeds are slower than the MediaTek - both the down and up link.
However, it did fix the issue I was experiencing with the MediaTek where it was knocking out my 5GHz radio on the AP (which drops all of my devices that was on that radio). With the Intel, this doesn’t happen.
This is very useful. I really want the RZ616 to work. But without any more useful information, I’ll be installing the AX210. I would love someone to talk me off that cliff. I see @Techie_Zeddie and several others went to the AX210 after having serious inconvenience and pain, which I can’t afford.
I’ll be on Arch with an entirely Ubiquiti Unifi WiFi network, with 5 access points of different types throughout my house, running in 2 Ghz and 5 Ghz mode on different channels, all on the same SSID. Can we say that RZ616 is probably going to give me pain?
I have both WiFi adapers and about a week before I’ll be assembling it. Really don’t want to go through pain and have to make time to break the system back down and replace the RZ616 with the AX210.
Matt’s directions in his replies in this thread may be helpful: [TRACKING] WiFi drops out (especially when downloading a lot) but fixes instantly by reconnecting (AMD) - #22
For reference, I have both cards - ax210 (oops! not ax201, ax210) and rx616 on 13" 11th gen Intel, and rz616 on 16" AMD, with an Asus router and mesh access points, running the merlin firmware, and all is well here. Yay me. Best of luck.
Super useful, @lbkNhubert , thanks. This makes me think I should keep the MediaTek. 
Please don’t make me hate my life, gods
Happy to help (I hope!) if and when I can. I have gotten and continue to get so much more from this community than I can give back, but I have to try to balance things out when I can. Have a great day!
Based on my experience, yes, absolutely. My setup is a two-level apartment with one 5Ghz AP on each of the floors. The TX powers on both are experimentally tuned so that one becomes stronger than the other as walk up/down the stairs, so the net result is that the devices that I have smoothly transfer in the middle of the staircase. The RZ616 though just refused to transfer and keeps clinging to the barely visible AP from the other floor even as I am at the furthest wall of the room, so I have to manually disconnect/connect the WiFi, which makes it associate to the stronger AP.
I’ve been going back and forth between the two adapters to experiment over the past couple of months. It takes like three minutes after you’ve done it for the second time, although yeah, the part where you disconnect and reconnect the antenna is a bit nerve-wracking, as the connectors are pretty delicate, so I would not recommend switching often, but I would not worry too much about having to do the switch once.
By the way, as far as my experiments go, I’ve started getting bad input lag (with headphones connected and watching a video) with the RZ616 as well, so not really sure what is going on at this point. Due to this I’ve decided to stick with the Intel adapter and just accept that my Bluetooth audio will suck and I would just have to play my background YouTube videos on the phone.
Thanks for chiming in again, @kirelagin. Isn’t the RZ616 the same one they’ve used in the Framework 13 since the beginning? 
The joys of Linux. Either buggy behind the times window managers with NVIDIA or buggy behind the times WiFi with AMD. Pick your poison.
Not kirelagin, but I can answer the question. The AX210 is what came with my 11th gen 13" machines. I swapped it in one of them for the rz616 as the 6e(?) band got disabled with a later kernel and requires a change in the bios to fix. The amd machines come with the rz616.
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Narrowly on the topic of the client selecting the “better” AP on Linux: As I understand it, the default (at least on Fedora) wpa_supplicant will indeed hold on to AP it was connected to for dear life even if a better one is available, whether in the same SSID or not. Hardware probably not playing much of a role here.
iwd can be used as a replacement for wpa_supplicant in OSs that use NetworkManager (e.g. Fedora). It is supposed to be better at band selection with the BandModifier5Ghz config setting allowing for tuning its preferences.
I have very little experience with it myself, just started playing with it as time permits as part of a plan to have an automatic 2.4GHz fallback for the very occasional DFS (radar detection) false positive induced 1-minute drops of my main 5GHz WLAN. So pinch of salt etc.
I have used NetworkManager for a few years, now, so that’s useful confirmation. Hard decision ahead of me. I have both and could go either way, at this point.
Just to be clear, it’s only the wpa_supplicant back end that you’d have to switch to iwd (easy via 2 config lines). NM can stay as the general network config management front end.
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Oh, damn. I’m totally using wpa_supplicant, didn’t realize NM was just a frontend. I will remember to use iwd. Looks like I should consider using it anyway, even on my current laptop. Thanks for the tip.
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No worries. What I’ve found so far (on Fedora anyway) is that you want both of the settings described here In a file like /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/99-use-iwd.conf:
[device]
wifi.backend=iwd
wifi.iwd.autoconnect=yes
i.e. let iwd handle the autoconnect decision (and further configure that in its global and/or network-specific config files if needed). As far as NM is concerned, I’ve left its autoconnect to yes.
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I will definitely do that. Even the laptop I’m upgrading doesn’t pick the better AP sometimes.