Recently, investing in a router meant choosing between your older Wi-Fi 5 standard and the newer Wi-Fi 6, with reasonable arguments for choosing each one. However now, those two existing standards are contending with a third option, called Wi-Fi 6E, that your industry has been hyping as Wi-Fis biggest upgrade in 2 decades.
Which complicates whats already a reasonably agonizing decision, with companies such as for example TP-Link, Netgear, and Asus selling routers across all three Wi-Fi generations. If youre attempting to expand your wireless coverage or eliminate dead zones, heres what you ought to know:
Why Wi-Fi 5 still matters
The Wi-Fi 5 standardknown as 802.11ac prior to the industry started branding its standards exactly the same way Apple names its iPhoneslaunched in 2013, nonetheless it remains on the market in lower-cost routers. Its also still an excellent option for a few reasons:
First, theres no inherent difference in reception range between Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6, so you might be capable of geting comparable coverage with a much cheaper router.
Amazons Eero three-pack with Wi-Fi 5, for example, costs $169, that is $30 significantly less than the Wi-Fi 6 version with exactly the same advertised 5,000 square feet of coverage. The $200 Google Wi-Fi three-pack and $269 Google Nest Wifi two-pack still use Wi-Fi 5 as wellGoogle doesnt even offer Wi-Fi 6 versionsand you can also purchase a Wi-Fi 5 mesh system from Vilo for $100. If youre just attempting to extend coverage or eliminate dead zones, purchasing the best Wi-Fi 5 system it is possible to makes more sense than getting a substandard Wi-Fi 6 system in exactly the same cost range.
Vilo
Also, the majority of your devices probably still use Wi-Fi 5 anyway.
Youll still find this older standard in the entry-level iPad, almost all Roku players (except a couple of that still use Wi-Fi 4), all Intel-based Macs, all PCs from ahead of mid-2019, and all Fire TV devices except the brand new Fire TV Stick 4K Max. While these Wi-Fi 5 devices may also use newer Wi-Fi 6 routers, they wont get any advantages from the newer standard.
One related note: If youre investing in a mesh router, you may see them advertised as either dual-band or tri-band. With tri-band systems, the mesh points have their very own dedicated type of communication, separate from those that feed data to your devices, and that results in less congestion and better speeds. Still, this feature isnt exclusive to Wi-Fi 6 either. A tri-band Wi-Fi 5 system with an increase of robust backhaul might be a better usage of your cash when compared to a dual-band system with Wi-Fi 6.
Where Wi-Fi 6 is practical
Wi-Fi 6 has some advantages over Wi-Fi 5, nevertheless, you might be able to manage without them.
If youre splurging on gigabit interneteven though its overkill for many peopleyoull likely want a Wi-Fi 6 router to go along with it. Because the networking expert Dong Ngo has noted, Wi-Fi 6 can hit speeds of around 1,000 Mbps in real life with most devices, while Wi-Fi 5 could easily get to around half those speeds at best.
That extra speed wont matter for services like Netflixwhich consumes around 25 Mbps for 4K videobut could can be found in handy if youre downloading torrent files from the web, moving large sums of data between networked storage drives, or streaming from the local media server at extremely high bandwidths.
Wi-Fi 6s other big advantage is that it could better handle plenty of connections simultaneously. One new technology, called OFDMA, is aimed toward smart home devices, and could be helpful in the event that you intend to connect a lot of Wi-Fi-enabled lights and switches to your network. Wi-Fi 6 also extends an attribute called MU-MIMO to uploads, which may be useful during simultaneous Zoom calls or online gaming sessions.
Router makers also declare that phones and laptops progress battery life when using Wi-Fi 6, though Ive yet to see any independent tests that quantify this. They support a stronger from of network security aswell, but unless all of your devices support Wi-Fi 6, you wont reap the advantages of that extra protection.
Granted, some Wi-Fi 6 routers reap the benefits of additional features that arent directly linked to the typical itself, such as for example better-designed antennas or even more powerful processors. (Weve found, for example, that TP-Links Archer AX50 Wi-Fi 6 router has better performance and range compared to the Archer A7 with Wi-Fi 5.) Still, Wi-Fi 6 alone doesnt guarantee better reception, and its own speed gains wont be noticed for some internet use cases.
Wi-Fi 6E: Still early
Wi-Fi 6E is theoretically a problem since it adds a fresh frequency band to home routers for the very first time in greater than a decade.
Todays Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 routers offer two bands to reduce congestion, with the two 2.4 GHz band offering slower speeds at longer range, and the 5 GHz band offering faster speeds at somewhat shorter range. Your router may automatically divvy up connections between both of these bands, or it could display them as separate networks, permitting you to manually assign devices to each one of these. (Merely to add more confusion, 5 GHz bands tend to be called 5G out from the box, despite having nothing in connection with your phones 5G network.)
Wi-Fi 6E adds a 6 GHz band to the mix, further reducing congestion and enabling speeds which were seldom possible on the 5 GHz band. But there’s one major drawback: Its range is even shorter than that of the 5 GHz band. This tends to improve as time passes through better hardware and also newer Wi-Fi standards, but also for now studies by CNET found no noticeable speed gains for Wi-Fi 6E at close range, and huge drop-offs at further distances.
Meanwhile, current Wi-Fi 6E hardware is expensiveNetgears new Wi-Fi 6E mesh system costs $1,500, and also TP-Links most elementary Wi-Fi 6E router lists for $200, money that might be far better allocated to a mesh system with Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6.
Netgear
Besides, device support for Wi-Fi 6E happens to be limited by Samsungs Galaxy S21 Ultra and S22 Ultra, a small number of lesser-known phones, and a few of laptops. (Rumors of Wi-Fi 6E in the iPhone 13 didn’t pan out.) While other devices it’s still able to hook up to Wi-Fi 6E routers, they cant utilize the extra band thats costing you all that extra cash.
None of meaning that you need to skimp on quality when replacing a vintage routerIve discovered that old or cut-rate routers tend of bring on most Wi-Fi problemsbut make certain youre buying the features that basically matter, not those that benefit from the most hype.
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