What is Wi-Fi 7? Do I need it at all?

Everyone, get your browsers ready. Wi-Fi will be upgraded soon. that’s right. Nearly four years after Wi-Fi 6 was introduced, followed by Wi-Fi 6E and two years later, Wi-Fi 7 will pick up the baton.As someone who started reviewing routers, I So tired.

Okay, but seriously. Wi-Fi 7 could potentially deliver even bigger speed increases than Wi-Fi 6E, thanks to the larger free space in the 6GHz band freed up by 6E. It also deploys other speed-boosting tricks and is said to bring new ways to block interference and reduce network latency.

Does all of this sound familiar? Perhaps it’s because the big highlight features of both Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E are interference cancellation and, especially for 6E, faster speeds (on compatible devices). ).

If you’re not happy with the idea of ​​replacing all your devices for the promise of a stable network, the good news is that Wi-Fi 7 works just fine with older devices. And in the future, replacing mobile phones, computers, and other wireless devices with ones that support the new standard should significantly improve certain aspects. Whether you should buy a Wi-Fi 7 router now or wait is another question.

You can think of Wi-Fi 7 as Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6. Like Wi-Fi 6E, it still operates in the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands, but with improvements. This provides more potential bandwidth (faster downloads), bundles connections across bands (faster downloads and improved stability), and more signals to deal with congestion. This is achieved through the use of modulation tricks.

Some of the marketing around Wi-Fi 7 focuses on delivering 8K video, but I’m a little skeptical here. Even if 8K streaming is commonplace, his compressed 8K feed is lean enough that most modern routers can easily handle it.

The most immediate benefit of Wi-Fi 7 is actually the raw data. speed.

Yes, it will. According to Intel, a “typical” Wi-Fi 7 laptop can reach close to its “potential maximum” of 5.8Gbps. This is theoretical, but even reaching half that value would be a luxury for most people.

The main factor in speedup is the channel bandwidth, or the size of the pipe that the data passes through. Wi-Fi 7 doubles the maximum channel bandwidth to 320 MHz, and better Wi-Fi 5, 6, and 6E routers get 160 MHz. This is a larger pipe and will fit more data. This is very simple, but only the 6 GHz band supports these big old channels. There isn’t enough space in the 5 GHz band.

The new specification also supports combining bands into a single connection using a feature called Multilink Operation (MLO). As a rough exercise, this means that if you can download a file at, say, 1 Gbps on the 6 GHz band and 700 Mbps on the 5 GHz band, the two can combine for up to 1.7 Gbps . It also means that if one of these connections stops working for any reason, the device can fall back to the other connection. We’ll find out how well this works in practice when we test Wi-Fi 7 routers and devices together.

Wi-Fi 7 also doubles the number of MU-MIMO spatial streams, or simultaneous streams to and from other devices. Wi-Fi 6 supports 8 x 8 MU-MIMO. That is, a router with 8 antennas can communicate with 8 devices (or his 1 device with 8 antennas) and send up to 8 streams to each device simultaneously. For Wi-Fi 7 it’s 16 x 16, but don’t get too excited. Consumer Wi-Fi 6E routers, even the more expensive ones like Netgear’s Nighthawk RAXE500, typically offer 4 x 4 MU-MIMO, even though the 6E standard has more features. . And it’s hard to find a phone, laptop, or other Wi-Fi-enabled device that performs better than 2 x 2 MU-MIMO.

Smart homes have improved over the years, but devices can still become slow or unresponsive in crowded wireless environments. The Wi-Fi 7 specification includes features that may be useful in the future.

One of the major bottlenecks of wireless transmission is air time. Once the router is busy communicating with one or more devices (depending on the standard used), other devices trying to get attention will have to wait until it finishes. This happens in just a second, but the time can accumulate if there are enough network conversations. If your smart home devices are slow, one of the reasons may be that they’re just waiting for their turn.

Wi-Fi 7 tries to compensate for this by stuffing extra data onto the so-called carrier wave using a technology called OFDMA. Wi-Fi 6E does this too, but the interference can make all of its waves unusable, even if it doesn’t occupy a portion of its spectrum. Wi-Fi 7 essentially ignores the interference and leaves the remaining data in clear bits, like a river flowing around a rock and returning to the other side.

Unfortunately, OFDMA is not backwards compatible with older devices, so if your Wi-Fi 7 router encounters a smart home device that only uses Wi-Fi 4, for example, it can use its standard features to create its own corresponds to that device under the conditions of — so others are waiting in line again. Yes, Wi-Fi 7 can It can help improve your smart home, but not until you move everything to the new normal. Even if that happens, I’ll assume you’re not all using matter over threads by then.

Mesh systems are a great way to get Wi-Fi coverage throughout your home. However, it currently relies on a single wireless connection for backhaul (either wireless or wired connections between mesh nodes). This can be difficult if that band is congested, requiring the router to switch to a different band, which can impact throughput. The system will rebuild the backhaul connection. According to Asus’ website, the Wi-Fi 7 mesh system can “switch freely between bands” through his MLO without any obvious connection loss.

You may also experience less network latency thanks to Wi-Fi 7’s MLO and OFDMA. The ability to connect to multiple bands at once, combined with advanced signal modulation, can reduce the chances of a device waiting in line for other requests. Process over the network.

As mentioned above, you can buy a Wi-Fi 7 router right now. But there’s no need to rush to get it. Only a handful of devices can support this standard, and again, the standard is not yet officially complete.

However, the chips are already out there. Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800 mobile wireless chipset will be released in 2022 and is already featured in some phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, but for Samsung to support it, these phones will have to Wi-Fi 7 must be enabled in .

The 16-inch Acer Swift Edge laptop is also compatible with Wi-Fi 7, and Intel’s BE200 Wi-Fi 7 network card is expected to be available by the end of 2023. Other computers that support this standard should also start arriving within the next year. Also from other major manufacturers.

It’s still early days, and most of the benefits of Wi-Fi 7 won’t be felt until manufacturers start using Wi-Fi 7 by default, which could take some time. After all, there are still plenty of products out there that make Wi-Fi 5 the best. There’s no practical reason to jump into updated specs on a new router unless you absolutely want to be on the cutting edge.

This is especially true. That’s because, as I write this, the Wi-Fi 7 standard has not yet been adopted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). As a result, routers available before that time may lack key features and optimizations. Some features offer tangible and well-known benefits, such as doubling the channel width. Others, like MLO, while promising, are new and have not really been independently tested.

Finally, the initial routers will be by far the most expensive ever released. For example, the Eero Max 7 mesh system is expected to cost just under $1,700 for a three-pack at launch.

If you were hoping Wi-Fi 7 would fix your entire network, you might want to wait. Because the spec is incomplete and so few devices support it, you won’t see its benefits for months or even years.

We also recommend holding off until the specifications are finalized and the Wi-Fi Alliance begins certifying Wi-Fi 7 routers. That way, you know you’re fully compliant with the finished standard. Until then, these routers are likely too expensive, and there are too few wireless devices that support their advanced features to justify the cost.