PCs that ship with Wi-Fi 6 support currently use Intel AX200/201 or Intel Killer Wi-FI AX1650 adapters (this includes AMD Ryzen laptops). The same is true of most laptops and desktop PCs sold on Amazon for $500 or less. If you buy a new Dell Inspiron 3000 laptop, for example, you could end up with an older Wi-Fi 5 wireless adapter. Wi-Fi 6 support is common among modern PCs but not guaranteed among budget systems. Connect a Wi-Fi 5 laptop to a Wi-Fi 6E router, for example, and you’ll still be seeing Wi-Fi 5 speeds. However, performance will be constrained to the slowest standard between the two. This means a Wi-Fi 6E router can connect to devices that only support older standards and vice-versa. Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E are backwards compatible. $249.99 at Amazon How to get great Wi-Fi on your PC Prices have come down and routers, unlike some consumer electronics, are not difficult to find in stock. What router do you need?Ģ021 is an excellent time to buy a new Wi-Fi router. A Wi-Fi connection of 827Mbps is extremely close. I have a Gigabit internet connection which, in practice, tends to achieve about 900Mbps when connected to a PC over Ethernet. Speeds this high can replace Ethernet in most homes. In a detached office, however, the 6GHz band was slightly slower than 2.4GHz. This has proven true in my testing.Ī Netgear RAXE500 router connected to a Samsung S21 Ultra hit Wi-Fi speeds up to 827Mbps, and exceeded 780Mbps several rooms away. This new band has a very high frequency that provides very high bandwidth, but can have trouble at long range. If you buy a router with Wi-Fi 6E, and you’re using a Wi-Fi 6E-compatible device, it will appear in the list of available Wi-Fi networks alongside the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands you’re used to seeing. Wi-Fi 6E is mostly the same as Wi-Fi 6 but adds a new, 6GHz wireless band. Wi-Fi 6 recently received an upgrade, Wi-Fi 6E, that can deliver even better performance. I mentioned that Wi-Fi 6 is the latest Wi-Fi standard. None of the Wi-Fi 6 routers I’ve tested had trouble providing a strong signal to devices in every room of my house or in the detached office. Speeds several rooms away from the router top 300Mbps with all Wi-Fi 6 routers I’ve tested. All delivered remarkably consistent performance. I’ve tested a number of additional Wi-Fi 6 routers, including models from Linksys, Netgear, and TP-Link. In fact, I’d say reliability is where Wi-Fi 6 truly shines. The Wi-Fi 6 router had no trouble reaching these spots. The Wi-Fi 5 router failed to deliver acceptable Wi-Fi at the far corner of my home and didn’t provide an acceptable signal to a detached office in my backyard. Range anxietyĮven this understates the Wi-Fi 6 router’s advantage because it retains an advantage at range and in trouble spots. A direct upgrade from Wi-Fi 4 to Wi-Fi 6 is like upgrading from Intel integrated graphics to an Nvidia RTX 3060. Wi-Fi 4’s maximum theoretical bandwidth to a single device is 300Mbps, but in real-world use, PCs connected over Wi-Fi 4 are lucky to beat 100Mbps. If you happen to have an even older Wi-Fi 4 (aka 802.11n) router, well, you’re going to be amazed at the improvement. Luckily, choosing a budget Wi-Fi 6 model over a budget Wi-Fi 5 model still nets a big gain in Wi-Fi performance. These figures are nowhere near the maximum potential performance of Wi-Fi 6, but it’s a far more useful comparison than quoting theoretical bandwidth.
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