Is WiFi 6 (and above) pointless for mobile devices at home?

mpj88

mpj88

mpj88

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Been getting the upgrade itch recently and looking at the WiFi APs. I have 2 Ubiquiti WiFi devices; one upstairs (AC Pro), one downstairs (NanoHD).

My TV and Desktop are cabled to my router/NAS etc. SO the only things that really use WiFi are mobiles/tablets.

Performace seems adequate to me. Do people upgrade just for higher speeds as broadband speeds increase?
 
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Unless you're routinely chucking large files around to a laptop, or backing up things like videos or large file format photos from your mobiles/tablets, then yes I'd argue for most homes faster speeds than Wifi6 are largely pointless.

Wifi8 when it is standardised in a couple of years should be more of a benefit, in that a lot of focus is going into lowering latencies, and improving reliability, allowing you to make more use of the faster speeds introduced by Wifi6/6E/7 (and might finally make wifi a viable alternative to cabling for most use cases).

mpj88 said:
Performace seems adequate to me. Do people upgrade just for higher speeds as broadband speeds increase?
Click to expand...
They do, but I have no idea why - even if you have Gigabit or faster internet speed, do you really need every wireless device on your network to be able to saturate that? All it generally does is push more work back to the router to try and manage QoS, to avoid bufferbloat and the like.
 
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I primarily got WiFi 6 for my pc and router for my usenet downloads. Nothing more.

I get the full 930meg over WiFi and I usually change routers every 5 years.

Unless you have an actual use for it, don't bother.
 
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We've only just upgraded our trusty 12 year old TP-Link Archer to a Linksys Hydra Pro (6E, Triband), as we had Toob (950/950) installed.

The Archer would have been fine for just managing our wired devices, but it wasn't playing nicely with the Linksys router Toob supplied (MX4200). Kid's devices were mainly 2.4Ghz, so no need for anything faster.

I wanted the option to stream the downstairs PS5 & my PC to either the bedroom TV or my tablet, but the Archer just wasn't cutting it.

Bought the Hydra Pro, set the Toob router as a child node for upstairs, wired devices run to our Yuanley switch and we now have mesh Wifi6E, which has been brilliant.

All three kids now have decent speeds to their various devices (Xbox/PC/Tablets & phones), so there's almost no squabbling over Lag, Ping or dropouts. And even better since we now have a static IP.
 
802.11ax (Wifi6) is worth the upgrade from 5 for the OFDMA. If you have multiple people on the house all using simultaneously then it’s noticeable.
(We have 8 people - 7 have at least 1 device, most have multiples).
 
If I used Wi-Fi like you do - for the odd phone, tablet, or laptop then I wouldn't put money into upgrading from 802.11ac. You've said the performance seems adequate so don't change anything.

The only time I'd upgrade if everything was working fine would be if my router exposed to the internet fell out of support and wasn't going to get any more firmware updates.
 
It's a hard call and it depends what people have in your house, we have a mix and range of stuff from AX to N WiFi 6 will handle all of that.
As you can see below in the graph when it all works nicely it's great and you don't have to pay the earth either. example we paid £250 for 2 devices which for us is more than enough. Would I think about upgrading to WiFi 7 in the near future... No!

Screenshot-2025-01-06-213943-Copy.png
 
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