Wi-Fi 8 is coming, but your older router is probably fine

Wi-Fi 8 is on the horizon, and the pressure to buy a new router is building. But a How-To Geek writer argues that most people can skip the upgrade. A Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 router is likely still fine, because your internet plan and your devices set your real speed, not the router's label.

The numbers

Ookla, a large internet speed testing company, says the median home internet speed in the United States is 314Mb/s down and 72Mb/s up. Mb/s means megabits per second, a measure of how fast data moves. Real-world Wi-Fi 5 speeds run around 360 to 410Mb/s. That is above what most homes pay for.

When an upgrade makes sense

The writer says that if your plan is under 500Mb/s, an older Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6 router is probably enough. He names only two cases for replacing one:

• You have a gigabit or faster internet plan.
• You do a lot of homelab work, meaning large file transfers inside your own home network.

Your devices matter too

A new router cannot make an old device faster. The writer's first-generation Apple TV 4K is stuck on Wi-Fi 5, so it will never connect better than that. Per the article, an iPhone 15 or older, a MacBook with an M5 chip or older, and an iPad Pro older than the M5 model do not have Wi-Fi 7. Moving from Wi-Fi 5 to Wi-Fi 6 or 6E might still help, depending on your devices.

Slow spots and a quick test

Even with a premium Wi-Fi 7 router, the writer had dead zones in his garage and primary bedroom. He blamed walls, not the router. Radio signals at 5GHz and 6GHz do not pass through many walls well. His fix was extra access points connected to the router by Ethernet cable, which keeps their speed up.

To test your own setup, run a speed test on your phone. Then run one on a computer plugged in by Ethernet. If the results are close, your router is fine.

What you actually need

Streaming 4K Netflix needs about 15Mb/s, and 1080p needs about 5Mb/s. Ten 4K streams at once need only around 150Mb/s. Video calls and gaming depend more on a stable, low-delay connection than on raw speed, so a faster router will not necessarily improve them.