I would even say "infamous".

In newer models they stopped doing that (xx50 and up, I thing). Must have been relaxing of some FCC requirements or something.

Previously I've read that this whitelisting was due to the fact FCC would certify the laptop with the particular adapter as a whole, and replacing the wifi/wwan adapter, or adding WWAN where there wasn't one, would make the whole device "uncertified".

i dont think they do it on these models. i have an AMD Ryzen Pro Gen2 P14s and replaced the wifi+bluetooth M2 card with an AX210.

the mediatek card was garbage; not just slow (ping times were 3x normal), but caused my machine to insta-reboot under git clone of a large repo in Windows 10, and simply dropped the wifi link in Manjaro during same op, so it's unlikely to be driver related.

kinda bizarre that they don't offer this card as an option on AMD builds and force mediatek upon you. the AX210 is a great card which supports monitor mode & packet injection.