Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)

What It Means

Wi-Fi 7 (IEEE 802.11be, marketed as Wi-Fi 7 by the Wi-Fi Alliance) was formally certified in January 2024 and began shipping in consumer routers from Netgear, TP-Link, Asus, and Eero throughout 2024. It introduces three major technical improvements over Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Wi-Fi 6E: Multi-Link Operation (MLO), which allows a single device connection to simultaneously transmit across 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands, dramatically improving both throughput and latency reliability, 320 MHz channel widths in the 6 GHz band (double the 160 MHz of Wi-Fi 6E), and 4096-QAM modulation (a 20% throughput improvement over the 1024-QAM used in Wi-Fi 6). Theoretical maximum throughput is 46 Gbps aggregate across all bands, real-world single-device throughput tops out at 3 to 5 Gbps on current hardware. Wi-Fi 7 is most relevant for customers subscribing to multi-gig fiber plans (2 Gbps and above), previous Wi-Fi generations bottlenecked real-world wireless speeds well below plan speed. For speed testing on the Broadband Grade download test, Wi-Fi 7 eliminates most of the wireless overhead that caused Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 tests to show 20 to 40% lower numbers than wired ethernet. However, Wi-Fi 7 routers currently cost $400 to $1,200, and Wi-Fi 7 client devices (phones and laptops) are still rare, most households will not fully benefit until 2026 or later.

Frequently Asked Questions