What makes Wi-Fi 7 better than Wi-Fi 6? And should you switch now? What speeds can you expect in practice? c't 3003 tried it out.
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Transcript of the video
(Note: This transcript is intended for people who cannot or do not want to watch the video above. The text does not reflect all of the information in the image track.)
Look here, I'm currently transmitting 3 gigabit via WLAN. So 375 MB per second! Many normal hard drives can't even do that! And neither do most cable LAN connections, which usually only reach a maximum of 1 Gbit/s. This is made possible by Wi-Fi 7, the new hot standard. We tested seven devices that support Wi-Fi 7 and of course found a few snags. In this video we also explain clearly what exactly about Wi-Fi 7 is better than Wi-Fi 6.
Dear hackers. Dear internet surfers, welcome here to…
Here, this is my cell phone, as it bombs through the Google speed test at home. I'm really proud that I got here so quickly. Wow, 800 Mbps! Wi-Fi 6 represent! Yes, ok, it's actually totally 2020, because now there's Wi-Fi 7 or, as we super experts say, IEEE 802.11be. By the way, these tongue-twisting IEEE codes are actually the correct technical names, but the Wi-Fi Alliance came up with these Wi-Fi numbers as marketing terms; So after 6 comes Wi-Fi 7. It's easier to remember and you can pronounce it much better.
Yes, and in theory, on paper, this Wi-Fi 7 is supposed to achieve an incredible 23 Gbit per second. But only with access points with 8 antennas, which is professional hardware for concert halls or something like that, for home there are only devices with 4 antennas, which can theoretically achieve 11.5 Gbit/s, which is still extremely high. But spoiler alert: In our tests with four initial Wi-Fi7 bases and three clients, we measured a maximum of 3.9 gigabits/s; and only under the best conditions and for a short time. More on that in a moment.
First of all, very important: What exactly does Wi-Fi 7 do differently than its predecessors? The most exciting feature is definitely Multi-Link Operation, or MLO for short. You may be familiar with this: Even if your router operates in both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, the clients often connect to the band, which doesn't work best at the time – and then don't like to leave automatically out. Here's a very simple explanation: Since Wi-Fi 6E, there have been three radio bands, which are colloquially called 6 GHz, 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz. And the higher the frequency, the faster the WLAN – but unfortunately this also applies: the higher the frequency, the shorter the range. So if you're close to the router, you should use 5 or 6 GHz. If you're further away, it's better to use 2.4 GHz if you don't want to risk the connection being interrupted.
Unfortunately, until now the rule has been: either or. So your device connected to the router had to choose a band on which it worked. But: Now with MLO, for the first time, two bands can be used at the same time. And this not only enables higher speeds, but also better reliability and lower latency, i.e. less delay. Makes sense, doesn't it? So the more radio channels are available, the higher the probability that one will be free when something needs to be sent. In practice, MLO is quite complex; that still needs to mature a bit; So my colleague Ernst Ahlers has tested several devices on which he has not yet been able to measure an active MLO – so it's really still early, there is little hardware and frequent firmware updates. By the way, if you want to know exactly how MLO and other Wi-Fi 7 features work: There are several very interesting articles about it on heise+, the link is in the description. And for the 3003 community you can even get three months for half the price. Man, that's really something!
So, enough theory here, now some practice here.
We had them in the test
- Base station Amazon eero Max 7,
- an Asus GT-BE98 (hello, I lost my dangerous robot spider, has anyone seen it?)
- a Netgear RS700S
- and a Zyxel WBE660S
Yes, you may have seen the prices shown, between 600 and 900 euros, so really expensive. And although the purchase prices are already so high, you also need a subscription from Amazon and Netgear for up to 115 euros a year in order to use certain functions such as parental controls or dynamic DNS. If I say it quite frankly, I think it's stupid. And what you also have to consider: The four routers all use around 20 watts, for comparison: my Fritzbox 6690 draws 11.7 watts from the socket. That really is a difference.
So, these were the base stations, we tested the WLAN modules Intel BE200 and Qualcomm WCN785 as clients, these are plug-in cards for the M.2 slot, where you normally insert SSDs. As a third client we simply tried out a Google Pixel 8. Surprisingly, there are already quite a few Android phones with Wi-Fi 7 support. By the way, none at Apple yet.
Yes, and then it was tested hard. Question to our network expert Ernst Ahlers, how exactly did you do that?
(Explanation by Ernst Ahlers on how the measuring process works)
Yes, and this is what came out of it:
The combination of Netgear RS700S and Qualcomm WCN7850 client achieved the highest throughput: 2682 Mbit/s from close distance in the 6 GHz band. The pair of Pixel 8 and Asus GT-BE98 performed the worst: only 137 MBit from a distance of 20 meters in the 2.4 GHZ band. Curious: The comparison router with Wi-Fi 6 achieved a better result with 162 MBit/s.
In any case, the measured values are a snapshot, you should really keep that in mind. Shortly before the editorial deadline, an update to the Intel WLAN driver for the BE200 was released. And then in samples at 6 GHz the throughput went up to 3.9 Gbit/s. By the way, we also got the BE200 to run under Linux; we had no problems with kernel 6.5.0-14. The Qualcomm chip, on the other hand, did not run under Linux.
My conclusion
So I have to say that with Wi-Fi 6 I fully utilize both my internet connection and my hard drives in the internal network, i.e. my home server. They are only connected via USB and only manage a little more than 100 MB/s, which corresponds to 800 MBit, which is exactly what I can achieve with Wi-Fi 6 here at home. And my 1 Gbit LAN connection, i.e. via cable, is completely sufficient for my network storage stuff. In any case, everything here is connected with a 1 Gbit LAN, simply because I don't feel like buying new switches etc. – and to be honest, the only device that could do 2.5 Gbit via cable is my new desktop PC.
So I don't need Wi-Fi 7 for a higher speed. But: I do a lot with VR, and when I use PC VR, for example, I connect my Quest 3 via WLAN instead of with a cable; It works pretty well with Wi-Fi 6; but sometimes I see a few artifacts. With Wi-Fi 7 this could be perfect.
And in general, I also find it very promising that I can use the 6 GHz band in addition to 5 GHz with Wi-Fi 7. There's very little going on in my neighborhood, so in the best case scenario I've got it pretty much for me alone. Yes, I could also switch to Wi-Fi 6E for that, but that doesn't have MLO and I would get that on top of that with Wi-Fi 7. And this multi-link operation has the potential to improve stability and latency because several frequency bands can be used at the same time.
But it's clear: the current routers are far too expensive for me and the whole thing isn't fully developed enough for me. In addition, the cell phone I currently use cannot support Wi-Fi 7 at all. But as soon as Wi-Fi 7-capable hardware arrives in the household, I would start to think about it. Maybe in one, two, three years, let's see what's out there and whether I really have any concrete application scenarios up my sleeve. AVM announced four new routers with Wi-Fi 7 at the MWC after the Fritzbox manufacturer simply skipped Wi-Fi 6E. This also shows that Wi-Fi 7 is not the same as Wi-Fi 7: only MLO is mandatory, but not the 6 GHz band, for example. So you can write Wi-Fi 7 on it without the parts being capable of 6 GHz. This is the case with the Fritzbox 5690 XGS, 6670 Cable and 7682, for example: They are all Wi-Fi 7 certified, but cannot support 6 GHz. Only the top model Fritzbox 5690 Pro can handle all three radio bands. The device is scheduled to come onto the market in the summer for 340 euros.
How is it for you? Are you already excited about Wi-Fi 7? Feel free to write in the comments. And subscribe to the 3003 newsletter and of course the channel itself here on YouTube. Bye!
c't 3003 is c't's YouTube channel. The videos on c't 3003 are independent content and independent of the articles in c't magazine. The editors Jan-Keno Janssen and Lukas Rumpler as well as the video producers Şahin Erengil and Pascal Schewe publish a video every week.
(jkj)