Wi‑Fi 7 routers are here. Do you actually need one?

Wi‑Fi 7 is the biggest jump in home networking in years: wider channels, the ability to use several bands at once and dramatically lower lag when your network is busy. Routers that support it are now cheap enough to be tempting.

What’s actually new

• Multi-link operation lets devices use two bands at once for speed and reliability.
• 320MHz channels on the 6GHz band double peak throughput.
• Smarter handling of crowded networks cuts lag spikes during calls and games.

In our apartment test, a Wi‑Fi 7 laptop pulled files from a network drive nearly twice as fast as it did on Wi‑Fi 6E — but only in the same room as the router. Two walls away, the advantage shrank to about 20 percent.

Who should upgrade

If your internet plan is faster than 1Gbps, you own several devices that support Wi‑Fi 7, or your home is full of people gaming and streaming at once, upgrade. Everyone else can wait a year: prices are falling fast, and your current router is probably not your bottleneck.