With five times the speed of the current standard and much lower latency, the new Wi-Fi 7 protocol benefits applications like AR/VR, 8K streaming, cloud gaming, etc.
The Wi-Fi Alliance, an international consortium of companies that develop the Wi-Fi wireless protocol, announced the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard earlier this week.
An official successor to Wi-Fi 6E (also known as 802.11ax), the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard is based on 802.11be and was designed to fix common connectivity issues like network congestion, latency contributing to lag, constant buffering, etc.
The benefits of Wi-Fi 7 and how it’s better than Wi-Fi 6E
With twice the Wi-Fi channel bandwidth as Wi-Fi 6, the new Wi-Fi 7 standard performs especially well in dense, congested environments like stadiums and large campuses where wireless reception has traditionally been patchy and unreliable.
According to the announcement on the Wi-Fi Alliance website, Wi-Fi 7 (also known as IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput) boosts performance in the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands. This elevates data rates to a theoretical maximum of up to 46Gbps compared with the five times slower Wi-Fi 6E at around 9Gbps.
Wi-Fi 7 offers these benefits:
- Higher throughput
- Improved support for deterministic latency
- Enhanced efficiency, even in dense networks
- Increased robustness and reliability
- Reduced power consumption
Wi-Fi 7 is designed for these applications:
- Augmented, virtual and extended reality (AR/VR/XR) headsets
- 8K streaming
- Social cloud-based gaming
- Automotive
- Immersive 3D training
To enjoy the benefits of multigigabit wireless connectivity, however, you’ll need to upgrade your home router to a new one that supports Wi-Fi 7 and the 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6Ghz bands. Wi-Fi 7 has just been announced, so it will take a while before manufacturers start churning out compatible equipment.
Because Wi-Fi 7 relies on the 6GHz band, countries where access to 6GHz is limited or non-existent cannot offer support for Wi-Fi 7 devices.
Apple and the Wi-Fi 7 situation
The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, and some Macs and iPads, are equipped with Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, Apple clarifies in a support document.
Of course, no Apple devices currently support Wi-Fi 7. That will surely change as the Cupertino tech giant is expected to adopt Wi-Fi 7 in its devices as the standard becomes more prevalent in the future. Rumor has it that Wi-Fi 7 will appear in the iPhone 16 Pros this year before expanding across iPads and Macs.
Wi-Fi 7 in the context of the Vision Pro
Speedy and reliable wireless connectivity will become especially important when the Vision Pro launches on February 2. We don’t yet know what particular flavor of Wi-Fi Apple’s headset supports, but it’s likely Wi-Fi 6E.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo thinks Wi-Fi 7 will play a central role in enabling “an optimized integration with the Vision Pro headset.”
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States recently approved Apple, Google and Metas to use the 6GHz band for wireless devices. According to the announcement on the FCC website, the commission decided that a “new class of very lower power devices” can now operate in the 6GHz spectrum.