Is Wi-Fi 7 worth upgrading to yet?

The short version: buy Wi-Fi 7 if you are buying anyway, do not rip out working Wi-Fi 6E to get it, and understand that the feature worth paying for is not the one on the box.

The feature that matters is MLO

Not 320 MHz channels — those need spectrum most regulatory domains have not allocated. Not 4096-QAM — it needs about 40 dB SNR, which exists a few metres from the access point.

Multi-Link Operation is the real change. A client maintains simultaneous links on more than one band under a single association. If one link degrades, traffic continues on the other without a roam, a reassociation or a DHCP renewal.

For a video call that is the difference between a moment of degraded audio and a visible freeze.

Three situations

Refreshing a five-year-old estate. Buy Wi-Fi 7. Budget properly for 802.3bt power and multi-gigabit switching, which is where the real cost sits.

Running healthy Wi-Fi 6E. Do not rip it out. Add Wi-Fi 7 selectively where latency consistency matters — conference rooms, clinical areas — and let the rest age out.

Home user with a working system. Almost certainly not. Your clients are mostly Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6. A well-placed Wi-Fi 6 access point beats a badly placed Wi-Fi 7 one by a wide margin, and placement is free.

What to check before you commit

• Switching. 2.5 GbE minimum to each access point.
• Power. Check the full functionality figure and the switch's total budget.
• Client mix. If Wi-Fi 7 clients are under 10 percent, say so in the business case rather than promising performance gains.
• Controller support for MLO. Aggressive band steering works directly against multi-link operation.
• Regulatory reality. If your region only opened lower 6 GHz, plan around 80 and 160 MHz.

The procurement line that works

"We are buying Wi-Fi 7 for multi-link reliability and a longer refresh horizon, not for peak throughput. The peak throughput numbers on the data sheet are not achievable in our environment and we have not built the business case on them."

Put that in writing early. It sets an expectation you can meet.