Swapping the Intel 8260ac into a ThinkPad X250

A while back some foreigner said that starting with the ThinkPad X250 and ThinkPad T450 era, the hardware whitelist was dropped.

T450 and X250 no longer have Whitelists

I also found confirmation from an official rep on Lenovo’s overseas blog. Shame is, the rep only said the Wi-Fi whitelist restriction was gone.

Saying it is one thing, but nobody had actually gone and tested it, so I had an itch to scratch and decided to be the guinea pig. On Taobao I ignored the seller’s warning and bought an 8260ac without an FRU:

So does it work or not?

Yes. Flawless, no caveats.

If you upgrade to the latest 4.4 kernel, it gets even better. Ran it all afternoon — Bluetooth and Wi-Fi both fine, not a single annoyance. Bear in mind the original 7265 card would occasionally die from overheating.