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

[mpj88]

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?

 

[Armageus]

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).

Performace seems adequate to me. Do people upgrade just for higher speeds as broadband speeds increase?

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.

 

[kona786]

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.

 

[no_1_dave]

Not sure I even need WiFi 6 to watch TikTok while on the toilet.
Anything important is hardwired

 

[RedMogg]

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.

 

[Steveocee]

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).

 

[Caged]

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.

 

[Ad_Augendae]

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!

 

[tangey]

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.

wow, I date back to the original Demon TAM internet group on CIX, and usenet groups was an active way of getting stuff at the very start of home internet. I didn't realise it still was useful in that regard.

 

[Firegod]

For me, I upgrade to serve what tech I have. So at the moment I am WiFi6 because 90% of the devices in the house support it. I have one WiFi7 device and I think two devices can do 6E. So I'll be sticking with WiFi6 for a good while.

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).

Yeah OFDMA to handle multiple simultaneous requests with lower latency. MU-MIMO on both transmit and receive as well as BSS colouring. Probably the 3 main things.

 

[Rainmaker]

Still rocking an ac wave 2 Ruckus R710 here. It has 8 physical internal antennae (rather than solder traces like some 'prosumer' APs) and 4x4 MU MIMO. It pushes around 550Mbps per client over 5GHz (tested on iPhone 15 Pro Max and MacBook Air 2024). I just don't need anything faster than that over WiFi, but once Alta Labs push a WiFi 6E or 7 AP I'll likely upgrade for the aforementioned concurrency and latency improvements.

 

[DIABLO]

Still rocking an ac wave 2 Ruckus R710 here. It has 8 physical internal antennae (rather than solder traces like some 'prosumer' APs) and 4x4 MU MIMO. It pushes around 550Mbps per client over 5GHz (tested on iPhone 15 Pro Max and MacBook Air 2024). I just don't need anything faster than that over WiFi, but once Alta Labs push a WiFi 6E or 7 AP I'll likely upgrade for the aforementioned concurrency and latency improvements.

I feel the same about my Ubiquiti Nano-HD. I will keep the thing until it dies or WiFi somehow gets massively better penetration through walls.

 

[Ad_Augendae]

I was curious why the cheap package was being put together, it doesn't read well...

Bad batch? Dead AP6 Pro(s)

There should be “zero tolerance” as well in regards to more and more hardware failures. from here: And it would indeed nice to know what the root cause is. Let’s speak open please! A first good step into the right direction would be showing AP’s average temperature (yes, average of the 4...

forum.alta.inc

 

[Rainmaker]

I was curious why the cheap package was being put together, it doesn't read well...

Bad batch? Dead AP6 Pro(s)

There should be “zero tolerance” as well in regards to more and more hardware failures. from here: And it would indeed nice to know what the root cause is. Let’s speak open please! A first good step into the right direction would be showing AP’s average temperature (yes, average of the 4...

forum.alta.inc

Meh. One batch with faulty hardware, replaced quibble free under RMA with functional units. It happens to them all, it's how it's handled that matters in my book. Their APs rate very highly, and the testing I've seen shows significantly better throughput compared to Ubiquiti stuff. Their router (Route10) is a little gem as well, doing bi-di 10Gbps including IPS/IDS for under £200.