Wi-Fi 7 is a great leap forward for wireless connectivity, at least as far as speed is concerned. The latest wireless standard (also called 802.11be EHT, if you prefer the classic Wi-Fi technobabble name) can push up to 40Gbps data speeds, in some cases, compared with around 10Gbps for the preceding Wi-Fi 6 standard. Many routers, mesh systems, and client devices like phones and PCs now support Wi-Fi 7, which makes it a natural choice if you’re looking to upgrade your tech.
But if you’re like most consumers, you probably won’t see that advertised maximum speed in everyday use. Nor do you need every last drop of it—most residential internet plans deliver 1Gbps or less. Still, Wi-Fi 7 offers plenty of other benefits, so if you’re thinking about updating your wireless network or internet-connected devices in the near future, it should be on your radar.
We’ve extensively tested and evaluated the most popular Wi-Fi 7 devices on the market today, from mesh networking kits to tablets. I’ll explain why you should take advantage of the latest wireless standard’s advancements, even if you might not need all of them right away.
What Is Wi-Fi 7? (And Isn’t Wi-Fi 6 Still Good Enough?)
Whereas Wi-Fi 6 offered merely incremental speed increases over Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 7 is mostly about lightning-fast connections. (The “EHT” in the formal name stands for Extremely High Throughput.) A laptop using a common Wi-Fi 7 chipset, like Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800, can experience speeds up to 5.8Gbps. Meanwhile, the aggregate throughput of a typical quad-band Wi-Fi 7 router or mesh system is 33Gbps.
That’s astonishing. To put that in perspective, it is more than three times faster than Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E, which can hit maximum data rates of 9.6Gbps, and five times faster than Wi-Fi 5, which maxes out at 6.9Gbps.
Tested: The Best Wi-Fi 7 Mesh Systems You Can Buy Right Now
In addition to offering previously unattainable data rates, Wi-Fi 7 employs new technologies to reduce latency, increase network capacity, and boost efficiency. These are claims and buzzwords you’re probably familiar with from the rollout of Wi-Fi 6 devices.
The latest standard is backward-compatible with Wi-Fi 6 devices, as well as older Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) ones. If you upgrade your router or mesh system to Wi-Fi 7, your client devices will also require support for Wi-Fi 7 to take full advantage of it. Even if they don’t, they’ll still be able to connect. That’s one of the key reasons we recommend Wi-Fi 7 routers and mesh systems for anyone in the market for a new one, even if you don’t have any or many Wi-Fi 7 client devices.
Wi-Fi 7 Technology Basics, Explained
When Wi-Fi 6 was officially launched, it ushered in several new wireless technologies designed to improve overall performance, including Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA); Multi-User, Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO); and Target Wake Time (TWT). These are still present in Wi-Fi 7 with some slight tweaks, so it’s worth explaining how they work.
Tested: The Best Wi-Fi 7 Routers You Can Buy Right Now
In a nutshell, OFDMA divides channels into resource units (RUs), allowing for smaller data packets that can be transmitted to multiple users simultaneously. This helps reduce latency and makes for a more efficient use of network resources.
With MU-MIMO, wireless routers use different spatial streams to allow simultaneous data transmissions, offering increased performance for applications such as video streaming and online gaming. And TWT helps conserve battery life in client devices by allowing them to remain in a sleep state until they need to access the network. The Wi-Fi 7 standard builds on these (and other) existing Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E technologies, while bringing a few new technologies into the fold.
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Which Bands Does Wi-Fi 7 Operate On?
As with Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7 routers and clients operate on the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz radio bands. The latest standard offers enhanced OFDMA operations that use Multiple Resource Units (MRUs) designed to further reduce latency and interference. The big advance is a doubling of the MU-MIMO streams, to 16. This is a key driver behind the industry’s ability to tout such massive overall throughput gains compared with Wi-Fi 6.
Additionally, Wi-Fi 7 introduces Multi-Link Operation (MLO) technology, which allows devices to simultaneously send and receive data over multiple radio bands to create a single aggregated connection. This not only provides faster throughput performance but also helps reduce latency and allows data to flow unimpeded by network traffic or interference.
Wi-Fi 7 introduces Multi-Link Operation (MLO) technology, which allows devices to simultaneously send and receive data over multiple radio bands. (Credit: Qualcomm)
Moreover, Wi-Fi 7 supports 4K Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), up from 1K QAM in Wi-Fi 6. QAM is a technique for encoding digital information into symbols for wireless transmission. The increased signal modulation alone can deliver a 20% increase in throughput over Wi-Fi 6.
Why Are Wi-Fi 7’s Wider Channels So Important?
There’s one more crucial step on Wi-Fi 7’s quest to increase data rates: The new protocol provides more channel bandwidth than ever before.
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Marquee Wi-Fi advances often increase the number of bands available for communication between routers and all of your devices—Wi-Fi 7 isn’t unique in this improvement. Is the original 2.4GHz band too crowded in your house? You can switch to the 5GHz band, or even the 6GHz band if you have Wi-Fi 6E-enabled devices. But the width of those bands also makes a difference in eliminating interference and increasing speeds.
All things being equal, wider channels allow for faster throughput with less interference. How much wider are we talking about? We saw channel width double from 80MHz in Wi-Fi 5 to 160MHz in Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 7 doubles that again, offering 320MHz channel bandwidth across the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz radio bands. Thanks to this 320MHz bandwidth, Wi-Fi 7 can achieve up to 80% greater throughput in a heavily loaded network compared with previous generations, according to MediaTek, whose Filogic 880 chipset competes with Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800.
With “puncturing,” Wi-Fi 7 can prevent interference on part of a channel from blocking the remainder of a channel. (Credit: Qualcomm)
Wi-Fi 7 also supports a technology called “puncturing,” which prevents interference on a portion of a channel from rendering the rest of the channel unusable. In previous Wi-Fi generations, interference on a given channel prevents transmissions from utilizing the remaining spectrum on that channel. Wi-Fi 7’s puncturing capability is designed to isolate the interference, enabling devices to use the remainder of the channel.
Should I Upgrade to Wi-Fi 7?
Before you can upgrade, you’ll need to make sure that both your Wi-Fi router (or mesh system) and your client devices (like laptops or phones) can support Wi-Fi 7 in order to take advantage of its speed and other advances. But thanks to backward compatibility and the wide availability of Wi-Fi 7 across the price spectrum, you don’t have to upgrade both right away. If you’re due for a phone upgrade from your wireless carrier, for instance, you might as well spring for a Wi-Fi 7-capable model, which will still work on your Wi-Fi 6 (or earlier) home network, to prepare for your eventual network upgrade.
Likewise, if your current router or mesh system is more than a few years old and unable to keep up with the demands of your connected home, it’s worth upgrading to a Wi-Fi 7 replacement, even if you don’t have any Wi-Fi 7 client devices yet. Wi-Fi 7 routers and mesh systems are available to meet every residential use case and every budget, from under-$100 basic routers to multi-node systems that cover 8,000 square feet and cost more than $2,000.
The TP-Link Archer BE230 router lacks support for 320MHz and doesn’t have a 6GHz channel, but it still offers MLO and 4K QAM. (Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
One important caveat worth noting: The cheaper a Wi-Fi 7 router or mesh system is, the less likely it will support all of the technology’s advancements. For example, the reasonably priced TP-Link Archer BE230 (shown above) lacks support for 320MHz and doesn’t have a 6GHz channel, but it still offers MLO and 4K QAM. It could be a worthwhile upgrade from an aging router to power a network with few Wi-Fi 7 client devices.
For more recommendations on improving your Wi-Fi, check out our guides to boosting your Wi-Fi signal and optimizing your network for the best performance.
About Tom Brant
Deputy Managing Editor
