My current setup consists of a UniFi U6-Pro connected to a 1GbE broadband connection. The connected devices are mainly wireless clients—laptops, smartphones, and a few IoT devices. Although I haven’t encountered any major issues, I’ve noticed that the prices of Wi-Fi 7 access points are dropping, so I’m wondering if it’s worth upgrading.
I know the main selling points are lower latency and higher throughput, but to be honest, most of the devices I own don’t even support Wi-Fi 7 yet.
Is anyone using Wi-Fi 7 at home? What’s the actual user experience like? Is there a noticeable difference, or is it mostly just a psychological effect?
Unless you’re also moving everything to 2.5gbps and have >gig internet I’d say doubtful. There are also a ton of issues with MLO implementations and many consumer devices don’t support it.
Can’t say I’ve noticed much of a difference unless actually measuring it
For me it was 100% worth it. But I am 2.5g and have kids who write to the house NAS with Wifi 7 USB3 adapters in their PCs. Going from Wi-Fi 6 and only being able to do 500 to 600 megabits to the nas, to now being able to write at 1.2 gigabit on 5ghz alone, without Milo, I would say it was worth it.
Not really worth if you are on 1GbE. The U6-Pro does pretty well at saturating 1GbE. And it has 4x4 MIMO on 5GHz. So it can support a lot of 5ghz clients. A lot of the newer AP’s only have 2x2 MIMO. So unless you have a bunch of wifi 6e/7 clients it’s not really worth the upgrade. We will probably see wifi 8 in 2028. So maybe wait for 8. Unless you plan to get faster internet.
I upgraded recently but I upgrade my router because I was using an ISP provided router that thing sucked so I kind of just got one that has features I wanted and future proof it for the time being, Wi-Fi seven isn’t that great MLO causes some issues at least some devices in my household special phones. It causes them to connect and disconnect from the Wi-Fi constantly clearly some device manufacturers have not tested it well enough it has the capability, but it is not will tested and functional for daily use but every other device that supports it works fine. Then again I have 2.5 so I feel like I’m benefitting from having a Wi-Fi 7 but if you’re not on 2.5 it’s not worth it you’ll see any of the benefits of it in any way shape or form.
Thanks—that’s pretty much what I’d guessed. From the reviews I’ve read, implementation issues with MLO seem to be a recurring topic.
I’m still on 1GbE broadband, so you’re right—there probably isn’t much practical benefit right now. Maybe I’ll wait until more devices actually support this technology and the standard matures a bit more before considering it.
Going from 500–600 Mbps to 1.2 Gbps is indeed a significant leap. I can see how much of a difference this makes in practice, especially when multiple users are accessing the NAS at the same time.
I’m still on a 1 GbE broadband connection, so I might not see the same improvement, but it’s good to know that, with the right setup, the difference is truly noticeable. Thanks for sharing.
Upgrading wifi to the latest is usually just crap unless you have devices that benefit from using the new tech or you implement bridge connections. I guess in terms of mesh, you could benefit from a physical connection to one of the nodes, but generally wireless endpoints will not benefit at all from the improved technology. The best upgrade you can do for wireless is go to a mesh network. I prefer systems that have dedicated backhauls in their mesh systems.
As for waiting, a new standard will be out that touts better wireless, so just buy what works best for you which isn’t always the latest.
You could justify a new router for a wan port upgrade for fast internet if your service supports the speeds, but even so, it would be more for any devices hard wired to the router.
That does make sense, especially regarding the 4x4 MIMO on the U6-Pro. To be honest, I hadn’t even considered that some newer access points have actually been downgraded to 2x2. In some ways, it does feel like a downgrade.
It suddenly occurred to me that it might be worth keeping an eye out for Wi-Fi 8, which is set to launch in 2028.
I strongly agree with the idea of buying practical items rather than the latest ones. I’ve fallen into that trap before, and ended up with a bunch of features I’ve never even used.
That answers your own question. Wifi 7 isn’t going to make your life better through its radio vibes alone. Unless you own clients for it and these clients actually need the bandwith, you can just save the money to upgrade something more important.
As an example, my home network is still Wifi N or AC because the only clients are a couple phones and a tablet. I don’t have fast internet anyway.
Haha, I think I already knew the answer before I posted this. Anyway, I don’t have any clients that support Wi-Fi 7, so this is just a classic case of upgrading for the sake of upgrading. That money could definitely be put to better use.
Wi-Fi 7 is overkill for 99% of home users. Your U6-Pro is fine. Unless you have Wi-Fi 7 devices and a multi-gig connection, you’re wasting money. Wait a few years. Prices will drop. Devices will catch up. Don’t upgrade just because it’s new
The biggest improvements to wireless were in 802.11ax which is Wi-Fi 6, things like OFDMA really improved things for networks with several users. 802.11be(Wi-Fi 7) MLO in theory could be nice but basically no devices actually implement it in the consumer space and experiments with it at work haven’t been all that interesting. A lot of devices don’t even have proper Wi-Fi 7 certification. A lot of the really interesting stuff didn’t make it in anyway and probably will be the next wifi standard.
I can’t really justify Wi-Fi 7 being an improvement at work at all we have a few APs with it mostly because they were just what the highend APs run.
Even with clients having some level of support there is no real performance improvement on a home network. The crazy high max speeds advertised require multi antenna setups no devices really have in practice for consumer electronics and probably never will.
Mesh was the biggest improvement for wifi imo. It addressed the wireless saturation issues & ranges for wifi. During family get togethers, I used to have a lot of issues with congestion on the wireless with 20+ people in the house. Netgear Orb RBR20 AC mesh router setup fixed it all for me. The system is still in use & works great at the in-laws, & it gave me an excuse to upgrade to a newer system that supported WiFi6/AX. My wireless only acts in bridge mode these days on an isolated subnet.
Also Wi-Fi 7 is kind of bottlenecked by a 2.5GbE. It doesn’t really make sense to get a 2.5GbE AP that is Wi-Fi 7. If you are chasing maximum speed. Sure there are other parts of the standard that improve on the older versions. But it kind of seems like a waste to pay for Wi-Fi 7 if you are just going to be limited by a 2.5Gb port. However i guess even with the u-airwire and STR MLO you only hit about 5Gb or so.
So maybe 10Gb switches will be more affordable by the time Wi-Fi 8 arrives.
Has anyone noticed whether the newer kernels have improved MT7925 stability yet? I’m especially curious about suspend/resume issues, since that seems to be where a lot of the problems show up.