Fttp speed test - wired vs cabled

[Ferret1]

I now have FTTP fully installed and am currently enjoying the free one month  boost offered under my new contract. However, I am a little concerned regarding the speed differences between a shortish wired connection from my BT Router to my laptop, compared with wifi on an ipad. Using one of the recommended sites - Fast.com, it is showing a speed of 400 Mbps for the ipad on wifi, but only around 42 Mbps for the laptop, using both the cat5e patch lead and the separate wifi link. Could this perhaps be down to the limits on the laptop, running Windows 8, as it is around 7 years old now? Ultimately my intention is to run a cat5e from the router to a smart tv located around 30 mtrs from the router to try and maximise the download speed, rather than rely on the wifi, but with these speed differences I am wondering if it will be a worthwhile exercise!
Any comments gratefully received, even if I am called a numpty. Lol. 

[NigelB72]

It sounds like the laptop isn't up to the job. You're not only reliant on the ethernet card being up to spec but all the other components. If the memory speed or size , hard drive, processor etc isn't up to he job you won't ever see the full speed. There are many things that can  cause bottlenecks which will drag down speed. This is why ISP's will only quote and guarantee the speed to the hub and not beyond.

[Ferret1]

Thanks mate - that was my initial thought too. Its way overdue for an upgrade but cash is a little tight! One day maybe.

[NigelB72 · Accepted solution]

It's probably only 100mbps ethernet card and other bottlenecks are dragging it down. My wife old laptop was the same. It had an absolutely awful WiFi adapter, it'd probably get 10% of 150mbps connection at best. I bought a USB WiFi dongle and dragged it to around 30% but was still awful... I bit the bullet this year and replaced it for not a lot of money... 

[RobinP]

I had an ethernet cable (no, don't remember which 'cat#') about same distance your planning, to my humax. Just had F/Fibre installed and switched it to wireless WLAN when I noticed how much faster our smart tv connected via WLAN. My 'tv' ethernet cable is temporarily redundant until I decided what to use it for 😉

[WSH]

Just a couple of observations:

Are sure it is a 5e cable, as the old cat 5 cables were only 4 wire and consequently 100Mb/s max?

Secondly, my Humax box is an old one.  A 2100.  It only has a 100Mb/s network card.  Not sure what the more up to date ones are but, as TV doesn’t really need a lot of speed, they may still be 100Mb/s.