While many individuals solely lately upgraded to Wi-Fi 6, and a few could also be contemplating a leap to Wi-Fi 6E, their successor is already on the horizon. Wi-Fi 7 is the subsequent vital advance, and, similar to its predecessors, the brand new normal guarantees sooner connections, decrease latency, and the flexibility to gracefully handle extra connections than ever earlier than.

If you want to improve your Wi-Fi at this time, Wi-Fi 7 isn’t the reply, as a result of assist will likely be scarce for a while to come back. But early adopters will likely be excited by the information that the primary batch of Wi-Fi 7 routers is about to land in early 2023. Realistically, it will likely be a very good whereas earlier than most of us ought to think about switching. If it’s essential improve pronto, first think about delving into how to buy a router earlier than you try our picks of the best Wi-Fi routers and the best mesh Wi-Fi systems.

Updated November 2022: We adjusted the timeline as Wi-Fi 7 attracts nearer and added information about TP-Link’s Wi-Fi 7 router lineup.

What is Wi-Fi 7?

The seventh era of Wi-Fi guarantees main enhancements over Wi-Fi 6 and 6E and will provide speeds as much as 4 occasions sooner. It additionally consists of intelligent advances to cut back latency, improve capability, and enhance stability and effectivity.

Wi-Fi 7 is IEEE 802.11be within the previous naming conference, the place Wi-Fi 6 was IEEE 802.11ax, and Wi-Fi 5 was IEEE 802.11ac. Like earlier requirements, Wi-Fi 7 will likely be backward appropriate. But to make the most of the brand new options and improved efficiency it guarantees, you will have to improve your units. That means shopping for new routers and entry factors, to not point out new smartphones, laptops, TVs, and so forth.

What Benefits Will Wi-Fi 7 Bring?

Wi-Fi 7 will likely be sooner, assist extra connections, and be extra adaptive to take care of dependable low latency efficiency.

These advantages will assist ship high-quality video and higher cloud gaming, and they’ll serve AR and VR functions that require excessive throughput and low latency. Wi-Fi 7 additionally tackles congestion and interference, bringing tangible advantages to areas with densely packed units or neighboring networks that overlap. The latter is most important for the enterprise and bigger venues.

How Does Wi-Fi 7 Compare to Wi-Fi 6E?

You might, understandably, surprise what distinguishes Wi-Fi 7 from Wi-Fi 6E, which broadly guarantees the identical benefits over earlier requirements by opening up the 6-GHz band. Especially since Wi-Fi 7 will use the identical three 2.4-GHz, 5 -GHz, and 6-GHz bands. Here are some notable upgrades.

Wider Channels

Each band is damaged into channels. The 2.4-GHz band includes 11 channels of 20 megahertz (MHz) every. The 5-GHz band has 45 channels, however as an alternative of being restricted to a width of 20 MHz, they will mix to create 40-MHz or 80-MHz channels. The 6-GHz band helps 60 channels, and with Wi-Fi 6E they are often as vast as 160 MHz. Wi-Fi 7 helps channels which are as much as 320 MHz vast. The wider the channel, the extra knowledge it may well transmit.

A easy analogy is to think about how a lot visitors a single-lane highway can deal with in comparison with a three-lane freeway or a six-lane superhighway.

Higher QAM

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM) is a technique to transmit and obtain knowledge in radio-frequency waves. The greater it’s, the extra data you possibly can pack in. Wi-Fi 7 helps 4K-QAM, Wi-Fi 6 supported 1024-QAM, and Wi-Fi 5 was restricted to 256-QAM.

The potential advantages are difficult by sign power, background noise, and interference. Consequently, as QAM goes up, the vary drops, and also you want a stronger sign. So, the leap to 1024-QAM in Wi-Fi 6 provided round a 25 % knowledge fee improve over Wi-Fi 5. The leap to 4K-QAM in Wi-Fi 7 interprets to a 20 % improve in peak efficiency.

Multi-Link Operation

Perhaps essentially the most thrilling advance in Wi-Fi 7 is Multi-Link Operation (MLO). Every earlier Wi-Fi normal establishes a connection between two units on a single band. Even a tri-band Wi-Fi 6E router connects two units on a single band on a hard and fast channel (the router decides whether or not to attach on the two.4-GHz, 5-GHz, or 6-GHz band).

MLO can mix a number of frequencies throughout bands right into a single connection. A Wi-Fi 7 router can connect with a Wi-Fi 7 gadget throughout two or extra channels in several bands concurrently. MLO probably allows wider channels able to transmitting extra knowledge—going again to our freeway analogy, you possibly can ship visitors on the freeway and the superhighway directly.

Speed isn’t at all times the precedence, however MLO additionally permits for extra environment friendly efficiency. A Wi-Fi 7 router can take congestion and different interference into consideration and transmit on the very best channel to bypass it, switching to take care of a secure connection and low latency. MLO may assist mitigate the comparatively quick vary of the 6-GHz band.