Question Tri-Band WiFi 6E Router versus Dual-Band WiFi 7 Router ?

[general_kenobi]

Hi guys, I want to upgrade from my old ISP-provided router, it's a TP-Link Archer C2 with Wi-Fi 5.
I know that Wi-Fi 7 is the latest standard now, but none of my mobile devices have WiFi 7 support, and my main device is my custom desktop PC that uses an ethernet connection anyways.

So I'm wondering if it's even worth going for a Wi-Fi 7 router. For what it's worth, I'll be upgrading my phone soon and I'm pretty sure my next phone will have WiFi 7 support. My budget is under $200 and my one floor apartment is around 2,000 sq ft. Right now I'm looking at these two routers:

• TP-Link AXE75 - WiFI 6E with Tri-Band support
• TP-Link BE3600 - WiFi 7, but only supports dual band

Which one would be better for my use case? Are there any other similarly-priced options from other brands that I should be considering?

 

[cruisetung]

Why the upgrade? Your existing router can handle Netflix/Youtube 4K videos easily since it only consumes 30Mbps per stream.

 

[bill001g]

I always laugh where I see the "dual" band wifi 7 or even wifi6e.

There are 2 main features that make these technology faster. The first is that they use a more dense data encoding. What they fail to tell you is that this very dense data encoding requires almost perfect signal. QAM1024 you pretty much have to be in the same room. QAM4096 is even more sensitive you almost have to be on the same table as the router. These are good for advertising high speed numbers but seldom do much in real life.

The second and much more important reason wifi6e and wifi7 are faster is because they can run on 6ghz. Now if the dual band router could do say 2.4 and 6 of maybe 5 and 6 the it would not be so silly. The 6ghz is what makes those technology so fast. Mostly it is there is a lot more bandwidth on the 6ghz frequencies so you can actually run the 160mhz and 320 mhz radio bands. There is also for now less interference on 6ghz radio from your neighbors wifi. As everyone upgrades that likely will change.

BUT all the above is just nice information to know.

Mostly these new technologies are a way for the router companies to get you to replace equipment that works perfectly fine. A bigger number...ie bandwidth...only really matters if you are downloading large files. Things like youtube and netflix only use a fixed amount of bandwidth. Netflix for example only uses 30mbps, even if you have 100mbps it will leave the other 70mbps unused. Most people on this forum are only downloading large games from say steam. How much extra do you want to pay to save a couple minutes a month downloading say microsoft flight simulator. Things like phones and tablets do not have large disk spaces to receive large downloads so more bandwidth tends to have little use.

The main thing people think, and marketing people lie about, is that wifi that has bigger numbers has better coveage. The marketing guys are being very deceptive on what they mean by this term. The technical details are the radio transmit power is all the determines how far the signals go. The laws regulating this have not changed since wifi was introduced. If anything they have been slightly reduced when you are using very wide radio bands.

 

[LordVile]

I always laugh where I see the "dual" band wifi 7 or even wifi6e.

There are 2 main features that make these technology faster. The first is that they use a more dense data encoding. What they fail to tell you is that this very dense data encoding requires almost perfect signal. QAM1024 you pretty much have to be in the same room. QAM4096 is even more sensitive you almost have to be on the same table as the router. These are good for advertising high speed numbers but seldom do much in real life.

The second and much more important reason wifi6e and wifi7 are faster is because they can run on 6ghz. Now if the dual band router could do say 2.4 and 6 of maybe 5 and 6 the it would not be so silly. The 6ghz is what makes those technology so fast. Mostly it is there is a lot more bandwidth on the 6ghz frequencies so you can actually run the 160mhz and 320 mhz radio bands. There is also for now less interference on 6ghz radio from your neighbors wifi. As everyone upgrades that likely will change.

BUT all the above is just nice information to know.

Mostly these new technologies are a way for the router companies to get you to replace equipment that works perfectly fine. A bigger number...ie bandwidth...only really matters if you are downloading large files. Things like youtube and netflix only use a fixed amount of bandwidth. Netflix for example only uses 30mbps, even if you have 100mbps it will leave the other 70mbps unused. Most people on this forum are only downloading large games from say steam. How much extra do you want to pay to save a couple minutes a month downloading say microsoft flight simulator. Things like phones and tablets do not have large disk spaces to receive large downloads so more bandwidth tends to have little use.

The main thing people think, and marketing people lie about, is that wifi that has bigger numbers has better coveage. The marketing guys are being very deceptive on what they mean by this term. The technical details are the radio transmit power is all the determines how far the signals go. The laws regulating this have not changed since wifi was introduced. If anything they have been slightly reduced when you are using very wide radio bands.

You’re a bit wrong there. Power matters but so does frequency. If you can fit 5 datapoints in the same space as 4 you’re getting faster speeds. Also newer standards have improve latency and reliability with less jitter.

 

[Ralston18]

"If you can fit 5 datapoints in the same space as 4 you’re getting faster speeds."

Only if those datapoints remain discrete without being disrupted by interference of some sort.

And overall performance will be only as fast as the slowest device anyway.

Interference will corrupt packets and then require resending the packets - all slows down.

Not uncommon for all types of manufacturers to tout any given product's benefits based on ideal circumstances and environment.

The truth of the matter is often presented in small, difficult font buried in some EUA or other legalease not easy to find and/or read.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

 

[bill001g]

You’re a bit wrong there. Power matters but so does frequency. If you can fit 5 datapoints in the same space as 4 you’re getting faster speeds. Also newer standards have improve latency and reliability with less jitter.

That is all true but it has nothing to do with "coverage". If a wall absorbs 100% of the radio power it doesn't matter how you encode the data. This is also true if 100 meters of air absorbs the power. Talking about "faster" speeds at the same time taking about how far the signal goes at those speeds is the deceptive part. They can cherry pick data for very narrow conditions like it has more coverage at 99.02mbps but not at 99.01.

 

[LordVile]

That is all true but it has nothing to do with "coverage". If a wall absorbs 100% of the radio power it doesn't matter how you encode the data. This is also true if 100 meters of air absorbs the power. Talking about "faster" speeds at the same time taking about how far the signal goes at those speeds is the deceptive part. They can cherry pick data for very narrow conditions like it has more coverage at 99.02mbps but not at 99.01.

Kinda does because signals do in fact bounce and different bands reach different places.

 

[Flayed]

Going from a single core soc to quad core may have some benefit if you have multiple devices streaming from the router.

 

[bill001g]

Kinda does because signals do in fact bounce and different bands reach different places.

This is why no 2 houses are the same and interference patterns from the reflected radio signals are different in every house and why slight difference in antenna orientations on a router can change the coverage in a particular house. This is why any reviews of routers you see, even very well done ones, mean nothing. The environment they operate in make far more difference then the tiny difference in the actual routers. No way to predict anything since house are different. In addition the receiving device is 1/2 the connection which just adds to the variables.

All this is why wifi "coverage" claims are snake oil from marketing and not from the engineering side.

When they test using the FCC rules they use chambers that absorb reflected signals. This is why you need to read the fcc reports. Nobody does because pretty much every router is transmitting at the legal maximum and it is boring.

The science on how far signals go when transmitted on certain frequencies at fixed power, ie DB level, is not new. This has been known since before wifi even existed.

The way the data is encoded has nothing to do with how far the radio engery actually reaches.

Now if you are talking about the frequency, ie what is commonly called radio band or channel, that does of course make a difference. The funny thing is if you talk about how much signal is absorbed by air, or technically water vapor, 2.4 signals can go farther than 5 and both go farther than 6. There are massive headache inducing papers on the topic how you can calculate this.

So very technically any router running on 6ghz goes LESS distance than the same router running on 5ghz.