Question Connection issues with WiFi 7

[anselmschueler]

When I bought my home router, I considered getting a more expensive one that supports WiFi 7. I am not familiar with networking, so I only considered a FRITZ!Box (very popular brand in Germany; as far as I know, they work well—I don't need most of their features though). However, since I have Ethernet to the home, I don't need a modem, which means the price difference between the WiFi 7 models (which all had modems) was large, and since I don't know how much of a difference WiFi 7 makes, I got the WiFi 6 one (FRITZ!Box 4050). But I have now bought the expensive model (FRITZ!Box 5690 Pro) as well, with the intention of returning whichever I decide against after testing within the fourteen-day returns window. To clarify: I am not asking for advice on whether WiFi 7 is worth it; I’m trying to find that out myself.

I get Internet through an Ethernet jack, at 1Gb/s, and I don't have a landline or so. The apartment is only 50m². It's a multi-tenant building and there are lots of other WiFi networks around.

I use this with a laptop that has WiFi 6E (AMD RZ616) and (at least, I'm not sure if perhaps more) 1Gb/s Ethernet, and a phone with WiFi 7 (Google Pixel 9 Pro).

When testing (sloppily), I found that WiFi speeds didn't drop off nearly as fast with WiFi 7 as with WiFi 6 (which they did noticeably even in a small space, though my router placement isn't ideal, either).

However, I have noticed an issue that doesn't occur with WiFi 6. When I go outside the apartment into the foyer, and when I stand on the balcony near the router but with a water pipe between me and it, the internet connection on my phone stops momentarily. The phone thinks it's connected to WiFi, but all loading stalls for a second or two. Then the phone disconnects from WiFi and reconnects, and everything works again.

Is this an issue that it to be expected with WiFi 7?
If not, is it an issue with the router or the phone?
Is there anything I can do to troubleshoot the issue?

 

[bill001g]

In general wifi7 is all marketing to get you to spend more money. Wifi6e also runs on the 6ghz radio band.

The question is why do you need very fast wifi speed on your phone. Once you get say above 100mbps it makes little to no difference. 4k netlix only uses 30mbps. Web pages use massive amounts of very tiny files and the overhead make it impossible to see any difference in speed. The only thing it would help with is if you were to download some huge files. Something like microsoft flight simulator is 100gbyte and a faster connection can reduce the time to download it. Problem is the phone does not have that much disk space and even if it did it still can not run these large games even if the game vendors supported it.

6ghz has a lot more radio channels so you can use very wide radio bands and there is more room to share, in theroy, with your neighbors. Problem is 6ghz is more easily blocked by walls and goes less distance. It would not be uncommon for the device to say drop down to the 5ghz radio or even the 2.4 if it can not get the 6ghz when you go outside. Be happy it switches your end device must be fairly smart, a lot of devices you must manually reconnect.

 

[anselmschueler]

In general wifi7 is all marketing to get you to spend more money.

Thanks for the cautionary words! That’s exactly why I wanted to test it first. The issue I’m trying to resolve right now, before I can make a decision, is where to attribute that issue to, and whether I can expect that it’s a firmware or software issue somewhere that might get fixed, or if there’s a workaround.

Also, I think the cheap models don’t have 6E either. To get 6E I’d have to shell out more money too. I’m not too pressed for cash at the moment…

As far as I know, WiFi without 6GHz also uses both 2.4 and 5 GHz, and devices can switch between them. So far I had not experienced my phone disconnecting randomly while moving withing a WiFi network, so this is very strange to me.