All of you should brace your browsers since Wi-Fi will soon receive another upgrade. Yes, Wi-Fi 7 is taking over the reins approximately four years after Wi-Fi 6 launched and two years after Wi-Fi 6E followed it. I am so exhausted, and I started off reviewing routers.
Okay, but honestly — in part due to the broad open regions of the 6GHz band that 6E unleashed, Wi-Fi 7 may offer an even greater speed improvement than Wi-Fi 6E did. It should also employ additional techniques for accelerating processes and introduce fresh approaches for reducing network latency and cutting through interference.
Does anything in there ring a bell? Most likely because interference-busting capabilities and, especially in the case of Wi-Fi 6E, enhanced speed (provided you have a compatible device) have been the main highlights of both Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E.
The good news is that Wi-Fi 7 will still function properly with your older equipment if you’re not keen on the concept of changing all of your devices in exchange for the promise of a steady network. Additionally, as you switch over to devices that support the new standard for your phones, PCs, and other wireless accessories in the future, these issues ought to significantly improve. Another consideration is whether you should purchase a Wi-Fi 7 router right away or wait.
What is Wi-Fi 7?
Wi-Fi 7 can be compared to Wi-Fi 6E as Wi-Fi 6 was to Wi-Fi 5. Like Wi-Fi 6E, it continues to function on the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands, but it enhances performance by providing greater potential capacity (faster downloads), bundling connections across bands (faster downloads and better stability), and employing more signal modulation techniques for congestion management.
Wi-Fi 7’s advertising emphasizes its ability to deliver 8K video, however… I’m not sure about this. Even if 8K streaming were widespread, a compressed 8K broadcast would be light enough for the majority of contemporary routers to readily handle.
Wi-Fi 7’s first advantage is actually its speed.
So Wi-Fi 7 will actually be faster?
It will, indeed. According to Intel, a “typical” Wi-Fi 7 laptop could theoretically reach a “potential maximum” of around 5.8Gbps; nevertheless, for most people, even attaining half that amount would be expensive.
Channel bandwidth, or the size of the conduit that data is forced through, is mostly what makes it faster. The maximum channel bandwidth in Wi-Fi 7 is doubled to 320MHz from 160MHz, which is what you might receive on fancier Wi-Fi 5, 6, and 6E routers. The pipe is bigger and can accommodate more data. It’s really simple, however only the 6GHz band can accommodate those large channels because the 5GHz band has insufficient space.
The new specification now enables the Multi-Link Operation (MLO) function, which allows bands to be combined into a single link. As a rough calculation, it implies if you can download a file at, say, 1Gbps on the 6GHz frequency and at 700Mbps on the 5GHz band, you could obtain up to 1.7Gbps by combining the two. Additionally, it implies that your device may simply switch to the other connection if one of those connections fails for some reason. When we test Wi-Fi 7 routers and devices together, it will be clear how well this actually functions.
Additionally, Wi-Fi 7 increases the quantity of MU-MIMO spatial streams—concurrent streams to and from other gadgets. A router with eight antennae can communicate with eight devices (or one device with eight antennas) using Wi-Fi 6, which allows for the transmission of up to eight simultaneous streams to each device. It’s 16 x 16 for Wi-Fi 7, but don’t get too enthusiastic. Although the 6E standard is capable of more, consumer-grade Wi-Fi 6E routers, even expensive ones like Netgear’s Nighthawk RAXE500, often deliver 4 x 4 MU-MIMO. Additionally, it is challenging to locate smartphones, laptops, and other Wi-Fi capable devices that perform better than 2 x 2 MU-MIMO.
Will Wi-Fi 7 make my smart home reliable?
The smart home has improved with time, but in a busy wifi environment, certain gadgets can still be slow or even unresponsive. The Wi-Fi 7 specification has certain features that could be useful in the future for this.
Airtime is one of the major bottlenecks in wireless transmission; if the router is too busy communicating with one or more devices (depending on the wireless standard being used), other devices vying for attention must wait for it to complete. It takes place over very brief intervals of time, but with enough network talk, that time can lengthen. One possible explanation for why your smart home gadgets are slow is that they are just waiting their turn.
Wi-Fi 7 uses a method known as OFDMA to compress more data into what is referred to as a carrier wave in an effort to make up for this. Wi-Fi 6E also achieves this, but interference—even if it just takes up a small portion of the wave—can prevent it from exploiting the entire spectrum. Like a river circling a boulder and coming together on the other side, Wi-Fi 7 essentially ignores the interference and places the remaining data on the clean bits.
Unfortunately, OFDMA isn’t backward-compatible with earlier devices, so when a Wi-Fi 7 router, for example, comes into contact with a smart home device that only utilizes Wi-Fi 4, it does so on that device’s terms, using the capabilities of that standard, leaving everyone else back in line. Wi-Fi 7 can therefore improve your smart home, but it won’t do so until you’ve upgraded everything, providing it hasn’t all switched to Matter-over-Thread by then, if that ever happens.
What other uses will Wi-Fi 7 have?
A wonderful approach to ensure Wi-Fi coverage all over your house is with mesh systems. However, they currently rely on solitary wireless connections for backhaul, the wireless or wired connection between mesh nodes, which can be problematic when that band becomes congested, forcing the router to switch to another band, which can then have an impact on throughput while the system rebuilds its backhaul connection. On the Asus website, it is said that a Wi-Fi 7 mesh system will be able to “switch freely between bands” without experiencing any apparent connection loss.
Due to MLO and OFDMA in Wi-Fi 7, your network may also experience less lag. Because of advanced signal modulation techniques and the ability to connect to many bands simultaneously, there may be fewer instances where your devices have to wait for other network requests to finish processing before they can use the network.
When will my devices support Wi-Fi 7?
You may now purchase Wi-Fi 7 routers, as I mentioned above. The standard, which is, once more, not even formally finished yet, can only be supported by a small number of devices, so you shouldn’t run out and get one right away.
However, the chips are already on the table. Although Samsung would need to enable Wi-Fi 7 for those phones to use it, Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800 mobile wireless chipset was announced in 2022 and is even present in some devices, such the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.
Additionally, the 16-inch Acer Swift Edge laptop supports Wi-Fi 7, and Intel’s BE200 Wi-Fi 7 network card will be available by the end of 2023. The other big manufacturers should start releasing additional computers that meet the standard during the course of the following year.
The warnings
The majority of Wi-Fi 7’s advantages won’t be felt until manufacturers start using it by default, which could take some time as it is still in its early stages. After all, there are still many items available that are Wi-Fi 5 or higher. There simply aren’t any practical reasons to upgrade your router to the revised spec unless you’re obsessive about being cutting edge.
This is especially important given that the Wi-Fi 7 standard hasn’t been adopted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) as of the time of this writing, meaning that routers that were in use prior to that time may not have all of the necessary features or improvements. Some of the features have demonstrable, tangible advantages, such as the doubled channel width. Others, like MLO, are new and haven’t really undergone independent testing but are also promising.
Last but not least, early routers will undoubtedly be among the most expensive products ever made. When it becomes available, the Eero Max 7 mesh system, for instance, is anticipated to cost slightly under $1,700 for a three-pack.
So should I get a Wi-Fi 7 router right away or hold off?
Wait if you’re counting on Wi-Fi 7 to fix your entire network. You wouldn’t get the benefit from it for months or perhaps years because there aren’t enough devices that enable it.
Hold off until the specification is complete and the Wi-Fi Alliance begins certifying Wi-Fi 7 routers so you can be sure it complies with the finalised standard. Since there aren’t enough wireless devices that enable those fancy capabilities yet, those routers are probably too pricey to be worthwhile.
