Wi-Fi 5 vs. Wi-Fi 6 vs. Wi-Fi 6E: Which router need to you decide?

Not lengthy ago, getting a router intended picking among the more mature Wi-Fi 5 typical and the much more current Wi-Fi 6, with fair arguments for deciding upon either one. But now, people two present criteria are contending with a 3rd possibility, known as Wi-Fi 6E, which the business has been hyping as Wi-Fi’s most significant upgrade in two decades.

All of which complicates what’s previously a quite agonizing decision, with providers these types of as TP-Website link, Netgear, and Asus advertising routers throughout all three Wi-Fi generations. If you are attempting to develop your wireless coverage or eradicate lifeless zones, here’s what you require to know:

Why Wi-Fi 5 however matters

The Wi-Fi 5 standard—known as 802.11ac ahead of the industry started off branding its criteria the similar way Apple names its iPhones—launched in 2013, but it remains offered these days in reduce-value routers. It’s also still a wonderful option for a couple of motives:

Initial, there is no inherent variation in reception vary concerning Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6, so you may well be capable to get comparable coverage with a a lot less expensive router.

Amazon’s Eero a few-pack with Wi-Fi 5, for instance, fees $169, which is $30 considerably less than the Wi-Fi 6 variation with the identical marketed 5,000 sq. feet of coverage. The $200 Google Wi-Fi 3-pack and $269 Google Nest Wifi two-pack even now use Wi-Fi 5 as well—Google doesn’t even provide Wi-Fi 6 versions—and you can even get a Wi-Fi 5 mesh procedure from Vilo for $100. If you are just making an attempt to extend coverage or get rid of dead zones, obtaining the most effective Wi-Fi 5 procedure you can tends to make much more sense than receiving an inferior Wi-Fi 6 process in the exact rate assortment.

Vilo

Also, most of your units likely however use Wi-Fi 5 anyway.

You are going to still find this more mature standard in the entry-degree iPad, practically all Roku gamers (other than a few that however use Wi-Fi 4), all Intel-dependent Macs, all PCs from prior to mid-2019, and all Hearth Television gadgets other than the new Hearth Tv Adhere 4K Max. Whilst these Wi-Fi 5 products will also work with newer Wi-Fi 6 routers, they won’t get any advantages from the newer common.

One particular linked take note: If you’re purchasing a mesh router, you may see them marketed as either “dual-band” or “tri-band.” With tri-band units, the mesh factors have their individual committed line of conversation, separate from the kinds that feed knowledge to your equipment, and that results in fewer congestion and far better speeds. Nevertheless, this characteristic isn’t special to Wi-Fi 6 either. A tri-band Wi-Fi 5 process with much more robust backhaul may be a much better use of your income than a twin-band technique with Wi-Fi 6.

Where Wi-Fi 6 will make sense

Wi-Fi 6 does have some pros above Wi-Fi 5, but you may perhaps be ready to get by devoid of them.

If you are splurging on gigabit internet—even nevertheless it’s overkill for most people—you’ll possible want a Wi-Fi 6 router to go with it. As the networking qualified Dong Ngo has pointed out, Wi-Fi 6 can strike speeds of close to 1,000 Mbps in the genuine entire world with most devices, though Wi-Fi 5 could get to all over half individuals speeds at ideal.

That extra speed will not issue for expert services like Netflix—which consumes around 25 Mbps for 4K video—but could arrive in helpful if you are downloading torrent information from the internet, going big quantities of data among networked storage drives, or streaming from a community media server at exceptionally substantial bandwidths.

Wi-Fi 6’s other massive edge is that it can additional successfully take care of a lot of connections at the exact same time. A person new technology, referred to as OFDMA, is geared towards wise house units, and may perhaps be valuable if you prepare to connect a bunch of Wi-Fi-enabled gentle bulbs and switches to your network. Wi-Fi 6 also extends a feature named MU-MIMO to uploads, which can be useful during simultaneous Zoom calls or online gaming periods.

Router makers also claim that phones and laptops get better battery lifetime while employing Wi-Fi 6, even though I have but to see any unbiased checks that quantify this. They aid a stronger from of network security as perfectly, but except all your equipment support Wi-Fi 6, you won’t experience the advantages of that excess security.

Granted, some Wi-Fi 6 routers benefit from supplemental attributes that aren’t instantly associated to the normal itself, these types of as improved-developed antennas or a lot more impressive processors. (We’ve discovered, for occasion, that TP-Link’s Archer AX50 Wi-Fi 6 router has superior functionality and vary than the Archer A7 with Wi-Fi 5.) However, Wi-Fi 6 on your own does not assurance better reception, and its pace gains won’t be visible for most internet use circumstances.

Wi-Fi 6E: Even now early

Wi-Fi 6E is theoretically a big offer because it adds a new frequency band to household routers for the 1st time in a lot more than a decade.

Today’s Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 routers offer two bands to reduce congestion, with the 2.4 GHz band featuring slower speeds at more time vary, and the 5 GHz band supplying faster speeds at considerably shorter selection. Your router may well routinely divvy up connections concerning these two bands, or it may well display them as independent networks, letting you manually assign equipment to every single 1. (Just to increase more confusion, 5 GHz bands are often labeled as “5G” out of the box, irrespective of possessing nothing to do with your phone’s 5G network.)

Wi-Fi 6E adds a 6 GHz band to the combine, more lowering congestion and permitting for speeds that had been rarely possible on the 5 GHz band. But there is just one major disadvantage: Its vary is even shorter than that of the 5 GHz band. This will probably increase around time by means of much better components and even more recent Wi-Fi expectations, but for now exams by CNET discovered no visible pace gains for Wi-Fi 6E at close selection, and huge drop-offs at even more distances.

In the meantime, present Wi-Fi 6E components is expensive—Netgear’s new Wi-Fi 6E mesh method charges $1,500, and even TP-Link’s most primary Wi-Fi 6E router lists for $200, revenue that would be much far better expended on a mesh procedure with Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6.

Netgear

In addition to, gadget support for Wi-Fi 6E is presently constrained to Samsung’s Galaxy S21 Ultra and S22 Extremely, a handful of lesser-recognised telephones, and a small range of laptops. (Rumors of Wi-Fi 6E in the Apple iphone 13 did not pan out.) While other equipment will nonetheless be ready to join to Wi-Fi 6E routers, they just cannot make use of the extra band that’s costing you all that further dollars.

None of which suggests that you need to skimp on high quality when changing an aged router—I’ve discovered that outdated or lower-level routers have a tendency of be the resource of most Wi-Fi problems—but make absolutely sure you’re investing in the capabilities that actually issue, not the types that delight in the most hype.

For extra tech advice like this, signal up for my Advisorator e-newsletter, where by a version of this story initial appeared.