Does WiFi 6 matter to the average consumer?

If your tech enthusiast probably were wondering about upgrading to WIF 6 router. So before upgrade to WIFI 6, we also need the clients to support wifi6 to take advantage of the features.

Now we shall dive deeper into what WIFI 6 offers.

1) The WIFI 6  router offers higher bandwidth starting from 1.5Gbps to 9.6 Gbps, And we can identify the bandwidth by the name. i.e. my router name contains AX 1500, So AX represents the alliance standard and the numeric  1500 represents the total bandwidth, so my router has 1.5 Gbps of bandwidth

2) Improved MU-MIMO, typical WIFI 5 router could connect with 2 to 4 streams and WIFI 6 routers could have 4-8 streams, So even the legacy devices could make use of this.

3)  Improved frequency modulation from OFDM(Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) to OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access).

So in plain simple English. The 5 GHz spectrum divided into multiple channels and further shared between multiple users as sub-channels so the single link can be used by multiple users,

This process is referred to as FDM(frequency division multiplexing).

So in OFDM Orthogonal signal is used to achieve higher bandwidth and less interference, OFDMA extends to communicate with multiple clients at the same time so theoretically more client at a given time. but again needs wifi 6 client.

4) Improved power efficiency on the clients by using target wake time TWT (wifi6 client needed)

5) Higher data bandwidth using new 1024-QAM modulation (wifi6 client needed)

These seem like a lot of improvements but how does it work for an average user.

Frankly speaking, I have almost 15+ devices in my network and 8+ devices are constantly active, out of 15+ devices only 2 devices are WIFI 6 devices.

So these are the improvements I was able to notice after upgrading my router.

1) Saw almost 10% of battery improvement on my phone which is on WIFI 6, And I was able to notice this improvement when the phone is idle and has an active WIFI connection.

2) Due to improved hardware, connections on the legacy device were stable. not just because of wifi6

3) On WIFI 6 devices, I was could notice very low latency, and higher bandwidth especially sharing files over WIFI. And more stable internet speeds.

4) On my TVs I was able to see less buffering during streaming,

maybe because of improved bandwidth or because of MU-MIMO (not a WIFI 6 device).

So  to conclude upgrading to WIFI 6 router is worth when:

1)  when the internet speed is more than 500 Mbps and has a client to make use of the bandwidth.

2) Huge benefit when the connected client is WIFI 6 compatible

3) useful for small offices when the laptops are WIFI 6 compatible

4) will help if you are into gaming coz of lower latency during the multiplayer gaming session.

wait till you have at least 5 or 6 devices are wifi6 compatible, or when there are 15+ devices, WIFI  6 devices will be benefited from a stable connection

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