Linksys has announced a new wireless router, Velop Pro 7, featuring Wi-Fi 7 support for mesh networks. Linksys offers what the company calls “Cognitive Mesh” technology, which allows for very easy and quick setup times. This new router is also one of the cheapest Wi-Fi 7 mesh-enabled systems ever, but at $399.99 for a standalone router, $749.99 for one repeater, and $999.99 for two repeaters, it’s a hefty price. It is not.
Velop Pro 7 features all the enhancements added in WiFi 7, including up to 320 MHz channel bandwidth and 4K QAM with 6 GHz range. It also has a channel bandwidth of 240 MHz in the 5GHz range. Powering the new router is Qualcomm’s cutting-edge Wi-Fi 7 processor, the Networking Pro 620, which provides multi-user traffic management, MU-MIMO, and OFDMA to keep wireless traffic smooth and lag-free. .
The Velop Pro 7’s main feature is Wi-Fi 7 mesh functionality, which is a significant enhancement over previous wireless standards. Wi-Fi 7 enables wireless repeaters to connect to host routers at speeds of up to 10 Gbps by more efficiently using the wireless bands that Wi-Fi 7 has access to. With previous Wi-Fi 6E routers, repeaters could only connect to the host router using a simple backhaul system that could only use specific radio frequencies at a time, such as 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, or 6 GHz.
Wi-Fi 7 allows repeaters to combine 5 GHz and 6 GHz channels for significantly more bandwidth. Even when your Wi-Fi 7 mesh network is fully saturated, you can enjoy faster connection speeds and lower latency. Linksys also leverages new Cognitive Mesh technology, allowing users to easily set up his Velop Pro 7 with virtually no manual configuration required.
Linksys has priced the Velop Pro 7 considerably lower than its competitors. The first generation of his Wi-Fi 7 routers cost between $1,500 and $2,300, making them prohibitively expensive for early adopters. Linksys’ new solution costs less than $1,000, significantly lowering the barrier to entry for WiFi 7 mesh networks, but it’s still not mainstream.
