Wi-Fi 7 Is the Best Yet, and Here’s Why

What makes Wi-Fi 7 better?

Glad you asked! That’s why we’re here, of course. In a nutshell, Wi-Fi 7 is a huge improvement over Wi-Fi 6, adding wider bonded channels, better interference management, and more. Here’s the list:

• 6 GHz
• 10Gbps Ethernet
• Higher modulation
• Extra 5 GHz channels
• Increased channel bonding
• Reduced interference
• Multi-Link Operation
• More spatial streams
• Other callouts

Keep in mind that some of these explanations get a little technical. I simplified them as best as possible, but feel free to skip them if your eyes start rolling in your head. I won’t be offended. Promise.

Okay, maybe a little.

6 GHz Wi-Fi band

Technically, this isn’t new, but I’m throwing it in here anyway in case you missed Wi-Fi 6E—which builds upon Wi-Fi 6 by adding this third connection.

The 6 GHz spectrum is a whole new wireless frontier with more than double the space of the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz connections. It’s also free of pesky radar that can thwart your wireless speeds in the 5 GHz space.

For kicks, here’s the total amount of spectrum provided on the 6 GHz band compared to the other two.

I discuss the 6 GHz band more in our Wi-Fi 6 vs. Wi-Fi 6E article, but needless to say, if speed is what you need, then 6 GHz is the connection to use … for now, anyway.

10Gbps wired connections

All but one of the Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E routers I’ve tested to date use Gigabit Ethernet or 2.5Gbps Ethernet for internet (WAN). The Linksys Hydra Pro 6E is the only router I’ve tested with a 5Gbps Ethernet connection used for the internet.

So, while 10Gbps Ethernet isn’t exclusive to Wi-Fi 7, you’ll see this superfast port on Wi-Fi 7 routers for internet and wired connections. Given the speeds you can squeeze out of Wi-Fi 7, I honestly can’t imagine routers using anything slower for your internet tether.

Higher modulation

Buckle up, people: this is gonna get geeky.

Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM, pronounced “quam”) changes the properties of a radio frequency carrier wave to deliver digital information in an analog form, whether it’s over a copper wire or through the air.

As we know, data is nothing but ones and zeroes. These bits are grouped into symbols and separated into two streams to speed up data transfers. So, you can have two streams with 4-bit symbols containing four bits or two streams with 10-bit symbols containing 10 bits.

Modems and routers modulate (modify) the amplitude (power) of two carrier waves to match the symbols they receive from the two digital input streams. They also change each carrier wave’s phase (position in degrees) to distinguish one symbol from the other since they’re transmitted through the same channel.

The symbol size and the number of different states determine the amount of data transmitted per hertz (cycle). The size and states also depend on the limits set by the Wi-Fi specification. For example, Wi-Fi 5 introduced 256-QAM, which translates to 256 possible states of 8-bit symbols. 1024-QAM arrived with Wi-Fi 6 and translates to 1,024 different states of 10-bit symbols.

Wi-Fi 7 now adds 4096-QAM to push even more data through the air. In this case, there are 4,096 possible states of 12-bit symbols, but you’ll see the benefits of this extra speed only if you’re using a Wi-Fi 7 smartphone, laptop, desktop add-in card, and so on. Wi-Fi 6E devices and older remain locked at 1024-QAM and lower.

I show how the different modulation types affect your speed in the performance section further down the page.

Extra channels on the 5 GHz band

With Wi-Fi 6, 28 single usable channels are available on the 5 GHz band. Channel bonding combines up to eight channels to make wider ones. For example, routers can create six 80 MHz bonded channels using four single channels each and two 160 MHz bonded channels containing eight channels each.

Are you with me so far?

However, radar systems use 18 out of the 28 available channels on the 5 GHz band, making it difficult to use bonded channels without suffering slow speeds due to interference. Some 80 MHz and 160 MHz bonded channels may be unusable where you live, limiting your options for squeezing the most speed from your router.

Wi-Fi 7 increases your 5 GHz channel count to 31 by adding channels 169, 173, and 177. These enable one extra 80 MHz bonded channel and one additional 160 MHz bonded channel—both radar-free.

Note that channel 165 is already available on some Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E routers, but my test devices either can’t connect to it or use it as a single, slow-as-snails 20 MHz channel. Yay.

Increased channel bonding

You may read that Wi-Fi 7 has wider channels. In one sense, that is correct, but only when talking about channels created through channel bonding. Each individual channel is still 20 MHz wide, but Wi-Fi 7 routers can bond multiple channels together to make one large channel for transmitting more data (thus allowing for faster speeds).

For example, channel 42 is an 80 MHz-wide bonded channel combining channels 36–48, but you’ll never see channel 42 listed on your router’s list, just the smaller ones.

The big deal with Wi-Fi 7 is routers can now group 16 channels into one 320 MHz-wide one, giving you the fastest Wi-Fi speeds to date. By comparison, Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6, and Wi-Fi 6E combine only eight channels into a single 160 MHz-wide one, so Wi-Fi 7 is a significant uptick in how many channels a router can bond into one superwide one.

However, the new 320 MHz width only applies to the 6 GHz band, so you need a Wi-Fi 7 device or newer to see the speed benefits of the new channel bonding width. Here are a few more examples of channel bonding.

So, while individual channels are not wider with Wi-Fi 7, channel bonding has doubled on the 6 GHz band.

Reduced interference

To see how Wi-Fi 7 reduces interference, you must first understand how wide Wi-Fi channels work.

When your router selects channel 36 and sets it to 80 MHz, you’re actually using four channels bonded into one:

36 + 40 + 44 + 48

This multi-channel use is why the suggestion to change channels to improve your speed is obsolete now—especially if you selected channel 36 and your neighbor selected channel 40. You’re both using the same channel group.

In this scenario, the routers may downshift to 40 MHz (two bonded channels) or maybe even 20 MHz (a single channel) due to puncturing interference, decreasing your throughput (speed).

Wi-Fi 7 solves this downshifting issue by removing the punctured portion of a single channel rather than dropping the offending channel altogether. In other words, instead of the router downshifting from 80 MHz to 40 MHz due to interference, the bonded channel group may be 60 MHz-wide instead with a slightly reduced throughput—which is far better than the slow speeds associated with 40 MHz and 20 MHz-wide channels.

That said, if you have issues using a 160 MHz-wide channel on the 5 GHz band due to radar interference like I do, this should help improve your speeds.

Multi-Link Operation

Before Wi-Fi 7, a client device (phone, tablet, laptop, etc.) could connect to only one Wi-Fi band at a time. With Wi-Fi 7, a client device can connect to all three bands on a Wi-Fi 7 router or mesh system simultaneously.

However, not all Wi-Fi 7 routers and client devices will support three simultaneous connections due to power consumption. For example, the more Wi-Fi radios and streams a mobile device uses, the faster its battery drains. So, you’ll most likely see support for two simultaneous connections, like 6 GHz + 5 GHz, although I assume desktops support up to three.

MLO mainly works in two ways. With Simultaneous Transmit and Receive Operation (STR Mode), one link is used for upload and one for download. This is what I experienced with the NETGEAR Orbi 970 system: the 5 GHz radio was used for the downlink, and the 6 GHz radio was used for the uplink. All links work separately and simultaneously.

NETGEAR’s Nighthawk RS700S router didn’t support MLO when it was tested and reviewed. NETGEAR said that MLO will be added later in a firmware update.

Nonsimultaneous Transmit and Receive Operation (NSTR mode) is different. As shown below, all links transfer in one direction simultaneously: Up or down.

TP-Link provides a great explanation of how MLO works and points out that other MLO modes can be applied to different scenarios, like mesh networking.

More spatial streams

Wi-Fi 7 increases the spatial stream count from eight per radio in Wi-Fi 6 to 16 per radio. Think of these streams as wireless data lines transmitted between routers and client devices.

Most modern devices support two transmitting and two receiving streams (2×2:2) to reduce power consumption, so a single Wi-Fi radio with 16 streams can handle eight devices simultaneously at full speed or 16 devices at half speed.

Most of the routers I’ve tested to date broadcast up to four streams per radio but you could see up to eight per radio with Wi-Fi 7, depending on the router model.

That said, Wi-Fi 7’s 46Gbps maximum theoretical speed is based on using all 16 streams simultaneously on the 6 GHz band and a 320 MHz channel. In the real world, you’ll never hit that maximum.

Other Wi-Fi 7 callouts