Look But Don’t Buy In 2023

If you’ve only just upgraded your gear to Wi-Fi 6, take a deep breath – Wi-Fi 7 will burst on to the scene in 2023 and it promises to deliver a massive boost to Wi-Fi speeds.

Wi-Fi standards have arrived like buses in recent years. Wi-Fi 6 was finalized in 2019, some five years after the launch of Wi-Fi 5, and it provided a huge boost to both Wi-Fi speeds and range.

That was given a further kick by the arrival of Wi-Fi 6E in 2020, which added support for the much wider 6GHz band, helping to improve throughput once more, especially in busy places where the traditional 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands may already be congested .

Now, router manufacturers are already beginning to show off Wi-Fi 7 kits, even before the standard has been finalized. So what benefits will this new standard bring?

What is Wi-Fi 7?

Wi-Fi 7 has several key benefits. First, it uses 320MHz channels, which are twice the size of the channels used by Wi-Fi 6E. (Each band has many channels available for data transmission, for those struggling to keep up with the terminology).

The wider the channel, the more data it can transmit. Think of it as a highway with four lanes instead of two.

Wi-Fi 7 also introduces a technology called Multi-Link Operation. Previous Wi-Fi generations have only been able to connect with a device such as a laptop or smartphone over a single band. On today’s Wi-Fi kit, for example, we’re often advised to connect low-bandwidth devices such as smart thermostats or Kindle ebook readers to the 2.4GHz band, and save the fatter 5GHz band for devices such as laptops or set-top boxes streaming 4K content.

Multi-Link Operation will let Wi-Fi 7 devices connect to two or more channels in different bands at the same time. This not only increases the bandwidth available, but could also help with signal reliability, allowing devices to fall back on the slower 2.4GHz band when the chunkier 6GHz band is dipping in and out of range.

In addition, Wi-Fi 7 offers a higher Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), which will again boost the amount of data that can be transmitted with a strong signal.

How fast is Wi-Fi 7?

The combination of all the different Wi-Fi 7 technologies could give speeds a huge boost. The theoretical maximum data rate of Wi-Fi leaps to 5.8Gbits/sec, which is more than twice as fast as the top speed of Wi-Fi 6E.

However, these figures must be taken with a pinch of salt. Real-life speeds will likely be nowhere near that theoretical maximum. But if Wi-Fi 7 only delivers a quarter of the promised maximum, that will be more than fast enough to give you the full benefit of a gigabit broadband connection anywhere in the home.

It could also pave the way for new in-home technologies that require stupendous bandwidth, such as 8K streaming or the much-hyped metaverse.

Should I buy a Wi-Fi 7 router now?

In a word, no. We’re starting to see manufacturers announce Wi-Fi 7 routers, such as TP-Link’s Deco BE95, and next week’s CES will likely bring a flood of fresh Wi-Fi 7 kits from TP-Link’s rivals.

However, early iterations of new Wi-Fi routers are painfully expensive. It’s not uncommon to see routers or mesh systems with four-figure price tags, which is a big investment.

However, you won’t really feel the benefit of Wi-Fi 7 until client devices – laptops, smartphones, tablets etc – are fitted with Wi-Fi 7 radios. That’s unlikely to happen until the standard is finally nailed down, and likely won’t be mainstream until 2024. Apple, in particular, usually takes its own sweet time when adopting new Wi-Fi standards.

That means there’s little benefit to jumping in early with Wi-Fi 7. Wait until it starts to appear in client devices, by which time Wi-Fi 7 router prices should begin to tumble.

Wi-Fi 7 is a technology to watch in 2023, but probably not to buy. Besides, it’s not as if Wi-Fi 6 is slow…