Wi-Fi 7 Explained: Everything to Know About Tomorrow’s Fastest Wireless Spec

Just as we are finally seeing a good number of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E devices making their way into homes and offices, a new flavor of Wi-Fi is emerging. It promises to improve on the current standard by bringing higher data rates, lower latency, the ability to handle more connected devices, and more.

We know, we know—you’ve heard this all before. But this time, Wi-Fi’s next step truly is a great leap forward, at least as far as speed is concerned. The new wireless standard is called Wi-Fi 7, or, if you prefer the classic Wi-Fi technobabble name, “802.11be.” Development, on it is still ongoing, but it is sure to spawn a big crowd of new routers, mesh systems, and client devices when it does launch.

Those first appearances will be in early 2023; at this writing, router maker TP-Link had just announced a slate of pricey Archer router and Deco mesh Wi-Fi 7 gear to debut in Q1. Much more is sure to follow. So Wi-Fi 7 should be on your radar if you’re thinking about updating your network in the near future. Here’s what you need to know about the coming successor to Wi-Fi 6.

What Is Wi-Fi 7? (And Isn’t Wi-Fi 6 Still Cutting Edge?)

Whereas Wi-Fi 6 offers merely incremental speed increases over Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 7 is all about lightning-fast connections. For that reason, industry jargon has settled on “802.11be EHT,” for Extremely High Throughput. Here’s why: Although technical specifications are still being worked out, the new standard could deliver nominal peak data rates of more than 40Gbps(Opens in a new window). That’s astonishing. To put that in perspective, Wi-Fi 7 will be more than four times faster than Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E, which can hit maximum data rates of 9.6Gbps, and close to six times faster than Wi-Fi 5, which maxes out at 6.9Gbps.

In addition to offering previously unattainable data rates, Wi-Fi 7 will employ new technologies to reduce latency, increase network capacity, and boost efficiency. These are claims and buzzwords you’re probably familiar with from the rollout of Wi-Fi 6 devices starting in 2019.

Of course, the new standard will be backward-compatible with Wi-Fi 6 devices, as well as older Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) ones. But as with previous Wi-Fi versions, your client devices will require support for the spec (here, 802.11be) in their circuitry to unlock the full potential of Wi-Fi 7.

Wi-Fi 7 Technology Basics, Explained

When Wi-Fi 6 was officially launched two years ago, it ushered in several new wireless technologies designed to improve overall performance, including Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA); Multi-User, Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO); and Target Wake Time (TWT). These will still be present in Wi-Fi 7 with some slight tweaks, so it’s worth explaining how they work in the current Wi-Fi 6 standard.

In a nutshell, OFDMA divides channels into resource units (RUs), allowing for smaller data packets that can be transmitted to multiple users simultaneously. This helps reduce latency and makes for a more efficient use of network resources.

With MU-MIMO, wireless routers use different spatial streams to allow simultaneous data transmissions, offering increased performance for applications such as video streaming and online gaming. And TWT helps conserve battery life in client devices by allowing them to remain in a sleep state until they need to access the network. The Wi-Fi 7 standard will build on these (and other) existing Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E technologies, as well as bring a few new technologies into the fold.

Which Bands Will Wi-Fi 7 Operate On?

As with Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7 routers and clients will operate on the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz radio bands. The new standard will offer enhanced OFDMA operations that use Multiple Resource Units (MRUs) designed to further reduce latency and interference. The big advance is a doubling of the MU-MIMO streams, to 16. This is a key driver behind the industry’s ability to tout such massive overall throughput gains compared with Wi-Fi 6.

Additionally, Wi-Fi 7 will introduce Multi-Link Operation (MLO) technology, which allows devices to simultaneously send and receive data over multiple radio bands to create a single aggregated connection. This will not only provide faster throughput performance, but will also help reduce latency and allow data to flow unimpeded by network traffic or interference.

Wi-Fi 7 will introduce Multi-Link Operation (MLO) technology, which allows devices to simultaneously send and receive data over multiple radio bands.
(Illustration: Qualcomm)

Wi-Fi 7 is also expected to offer a Restricted Target Wake Time feature that allows the router to reserve bandwidth for certain types of data transmissions. The benefits here are to conserve client battery life while optimizing network resources.

How Fast Will Wi-Fi 7 Be?

There’s one more crucial step on Wi-Fi 7’s quest to increase data rates: The new protocol will provide more channel bandwidth than ever before.

In the past, marquee Wi-Fi advances have increased the number of bands available for communication between routers and all of your devices. Is the original 2.4GHz band too crowded in your house? You can switch to the 5GHz band, or even the 6GHz band if you have Wi-Fi 6E-enabled devices. But the width of those bands also makes a difference in eliminating interference and increasing speeds.

All things being equal, wider channels allow for faster throughput with less interference. How much wider are we talking about? We saw channel width double from 80MHz in Wi-Fi 5 to 160MHz in Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 7 will double that again and offer 320MHz channel bandwidth across the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz radio bands. Wi-Fi 7 may also include a concept called “puncturing,” which prevents interference on a portion of a channel from rendering the rest of the channel unusable.

With “puncturing,” Wi-Fi 7 can prevent interference on part of a channel from blocking the remainder of a channel.
(Illustration: Qualcomm)

Moreover, Wi-Fi 7 will support 4096 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), up from 1024 QAM in Wi-Fi 6. The increased signal modulation can deliver a 20% increase in throughput over Wi-Fi 6.

When Will Wi-Fi 7 Be Available?

As mentioned earlier, Wi-Fi 7 is still in development. The spec is not expected to be finalized until sometime in 2024. However, as we saw with Wi-Fi 6, some initial pre-certified routers and client devices will arrive on shelves earlier. The first few months of 2023 should see initial releases by TP-Link, and likely others.

Keep in mind that these early-release products may not offer all of the features that you’ll get with fully certified Wi-Fi 7 devices when they eventually show up. Until Wi-Fi 7 arrives in force, check out our advice on the best Wi-Fi 6 routers you can buy right now.