Wi-Fi 7 to the rescue?

For most of its existence, Wi-Fi has been fast enough to easily keep pace with consumer internet services, but broadband speeds have recently been shooting up, and the latest Wi-Fi 6 and 6E routers can struggle to deliver the full performance of your internet line.

Things are looking up. We’ve already tested the first Wi-Fi 7 router and mesh systems – including the Netgear Nighthawk RS700S ( pictured right; see issue 353, p76), the Amazon Eero Max 7 ( see issue 352, p68) and, this month, the . Netgear Orbi 970 ( see p62). All three promise multi-gigabit wireless for compatible client devices, and they also both come with 10Gbits/sec Ethernet for ultra-fast wired networking.

If that sounds good, though, be warned that the Nighthawk costs £700, while the Amazon Eero is £975 for two mesh stations. What’s more, we’ve yet to see any Wi-Fi 7-compatible laptops. They’re expected to arrive later this year.

For now we recommend you hold fire on Wi-Fi 7. Even if your current router can’t fully handle a gigabit internet connection, upgrading now will be very expensive, and won’t immediately get you the benefit of the latest wireless technology. In the meantime, you can probably get along without gigabit speeds anyway (see “Who needs a gigabit?” on p41).