WiFi 6 vs WiFi 7: is the upgrade worth it for a home?
4 min read
Every couple of years a new WiFi standard arrives with a bigger number attached. Most of the improvement matters far more to offices and high-density buildings than to a typical home, but a few changes are worth knowing before you upgrade.
What WiFi 6 already solved
WiFi 6 was mainly about handling many connected devices at once without everything slowing down, which matters in homes full of phones, laptops, smart lights, cameras, and TVs all connected simultaneously. Most homes upgrading from an older router to WiFi 6 already feel a real difference.
What WiFi 7 adds on top
WiFi 7 pushes maximum speeds higher and reduces latency further, which mainly benefits very high-bandwidth uses like 8K streaming, competitive gaming, or homes with 15+ demanding devices on the network at once. It also needs WiFi 7-capable devices to see the benefit, older phones and laptops won't notice a difference.
Our honest recommendation
If your current setup is WiFi 5 or older, jumping to WiFi 6 is usually the better value upgrade. If you're already on WiFi 6 and coverage is the issue rather than speed, more or better-placed access points will do more for you than a WiFi 7 upgrade will.