Question Should I replace my wireless router

[miker1]

I currently have a Netgear Nighthawk R7000. It is not wifi 6
https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-Nighthawk-Smart-Wi-Fi-Router/dp/B00F0DD0I6

I'm thinking about replacing it with this wifi 6 Lenovo router (I have points to spend)
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/acce...eless-and-networking/wireless-router/78017534

What's throwing me off is that the Nighthawk more expensive than the Lenovo router despite being wifi 5. Any thoughts on this?

 

[Deleted member 2962262]

Do you have (or are you planning on buying soon) any devices with wifi 6 that you use ?
Pixel 8 seems to eat faster on wifi 6 v 5, but not a big deal really.
Much prefer having devices wired.

 

[dwd999]

Its my personal opinion that the term "wifi 6" is deceptive. The specs for "wifi 6" are clear in that it still relies on the 5Ghz band; its just a higher portion of that band; its not using the true 6Ghz band which is wifi 6E. For example, if you use one the the free wifi analyzers from the windows store, you will see that "normal wifi 5" signals transmit in the lower part of the band around 5.2Ghz. "wifi 6" signals only transmit in the upper part of the band around 5.8Ghz.

Anyway, the important thing is that you first examine the specs for all of your equipment to determine what signals they will receive. There's no immediate advantage to obtaining a wifi 6 router if none of your current devices will receive its signal and you have no plans to upgrade your devices. Secondly, you could analyze the wifi traffic in your neighborhood to see which channels are most used and should be avoided. For example, in my congested neighborhood I can see that there are 26 neighbors signals in the wifi 5 part of the band and 38 in the wifi 6 part of the 5Ghz band so I try to avoid the channels that they are using.

 

[bill001g]

The wifi5 router might actually be faster depending on your end devices. Likely though they run exactly the same speed.

Wifi6 is almost a scam and most people saw no performance increase. The key problem is there are all kinds of regulations about using the radio bands on the 5g radio channels.
The key reason wifi6 in theory would be faster is it can use 160mhz radio bands but to do this is overlap licensed radio bands like those used by weather radar. The devices must detect these other signals and not interfere. Many end devices and the lenovo router you link only support 80mhz to avoid this issue. 80mhz is exactly the same as the older wifi5 (802.11ac). The other feature like QAM1024 only works very close to the router so you end up with a box that says wifi6 but it works exactly like a wifi5 box.

The wifi5 router you list has 3 antenna/feeds so in theory it can send three overlapping signals rather than 2 like the other router. Problem is most end devices only have 2 antenna so can't use the feature anyway.

I would agree with the above post you want to go to wifi6e if you are looking to upgrade. There is lots of bandwidth on the 6g radio to use 160mhz. For a while at least there is enough so you do not overlap your neighbors. Now wifi7 comes out in early 2024 and unfortunately that again allows a single house to attempt to use every possible radio channel.