Wi-Fi 7 is getting cheaper but you still don’t need it (for now)

Wi-Fi 7 has been out for some time with hardware launching in 2024, but you probably don’t require it in your home. We’ve tested a few routers and access points to see if the claimed speeds hold up (and they do) but even then with the recent price reductions on Wi-Fi 7 hardware, I would still recommend investing in a solid Wi-Fi 6 wireless networking device for your busy household. Unless you’re regularly exceeding the bandwidth of your router or access points, there’s no need to consider Wi-Fi 7 aside from having the next best thing.

Wi-Fi 7 is fantastic … for some

Wi-Fi 7 is fantastically powerful for transferring data without the use of cabling. Wireless connections have always been viewed as inferior to wired links due to packet loss, reliability, signal strength, and speed. Some of these views remain today and are entirely valid, especially for speed. But the Wi-Fi standard has made serious progress with Wi-Fi 6 and now Wi-Fi 7. People are still running with Wi-Fi 5 or older hardware, which makes the jump to Wi-Fi 7 all the more disjointed with incompatibilities and costs.

When recommending new networking equipment, Wi-Fi 6 is where you’ll find the best mix of hardware support, since all your phones, laptops, TVs, consoles, and other devices need to support Wi-Fi 7 to take advantage of all the new features and improvements. When using Wi-Fi 6 hardware on a Wi-Fi 7 router, you’ll notice a slight improvement at best. But for now, most will be perfectly fine running all their devices on previous-gen networking hardware, especially if no issues are encountered.

Data provided in the above table was pulled from our TP-Link Archer BE800 Wi-Fi 7 router review, showing the different speeds possible on 6.0GHz with various generations of the Wi-Fi standard. Even with Wi-Fi 5, it’s still possible to enjoy 500Mbps links with the rest of the LAN, which should be fine for most tasks, including media streaming. Wi-Fi 6 is still enough for most people, though if you’re experiencing drop outs and other limitations caused by the router and standard (outside of purchasing a booster), it may be time to upgrade.

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Wi-Fi 7 will be brilliant for the future

Because I don’t recommend Wi-Fi 7 for every household right now, this doesn’t mean the technology isn’t ready or worth considering if you lean heavily on wireless capabilities. Wi-Fi 7 is excellent with better reliability, faster speeds, and bandwidth for the busier homes with countless wireless hardware. Everything from your fridge and oven to your phone, TV, and alarm system can utilize the home Wi-Fi, which is where some serious bottlenecking can occur with cheaper (or older) network equipment.

Wi-Fi 7 will address this with multi-link operation (MLO), which essentially allows multiple devices to simultaneously use more than one Wi-Fi frequency. This is handy when using multiple frequencies, which modern routers will do through 2.4 GHz, 5.0 GHz, and 6.0 GHz. These different frequencies have their drawbacks and benefits and allowing hardware connected to the network to freely use multiple frequencies without swapping between them speeds things up and results in a more reliable connection.

This is one of those advanced Wi-Fi 7 features that require the connected client to also support Wi-Fi 7, which is why ensuring you have Wi-Fi 7 support across the network is all the more important. Wi-Fi 6 (and Wi-Fi 6E) were no slouches, but Wi-Fi 7 takes things further by offering speeds up to 46Gbps, though you’ll likely see much, much lower than this. Finally, we’ve got support for more wireless streams. Think of a stream as the router or access point’s ability to direct data to specific hardware in the building.

The more streams available, the more devices can be supported simultaneously. Wi-Fi 6 routers typically have up to 4×4 streams. Wi-Fi 7 doubles this to 8×8 and the more streams you have, the more bandwidth is at hand for modern households with increasing data demands. Wi-Fi 7 is certainly the future of wireless connectivity, but whether it makes sense for your home depends on the available budget, the data you (and your family) work with, and what type of hardware you have connected.