Upgraded to WiFi 7 and somehow my old 6E router was faster? 

Wi-Fi Standards
1

Finally replaced my old WiFi 6E router with a new WiFi 7 setup. The old one had some annoying firmware issues, but the actual WiFi performance was great.

Wasn’t expecting some magical 3 Gbps or anything, but I figured I’d at least get the same speeds I had before. Nope. Old router was consistently pulling around 850–900 Mbps on 6 GHz. New one struggles to get past 600 in the exact same spot. Sometimes it drops below 300.

I’m literally sitting about 8 feet away from the AP. Same laptop, same apartment, same internet connection.

I know WiFi 7 isn’t automatically faster for every device, but losing a few hundred Mbps after spending more money feels pretty stupid lol. Am I missing some obvious setting here or did I just downgrade my WiFi?

2

What WiFi card is in your laptop? Just because your AP supports WiFi 7 doesn’t mean your laptop does.

3

@Byte_Glitch Intel AX210. So WiFi 6E. But that’s kind of my point. I was getting 900 on the old router with the same laptop.

4

Then I’d expect comparable performance too, assuming everything else is equal. Which it probably isn’t.

5

Check your channel width. Is the new AP actually running 160 MHz on 6 GHz?

6

I’d compare what both routers are actually doing. NetSpot is decent for this. Check the channel, width and signal level in the same spot with each AP. See what other networks are around on 6 GHz too. At least then you’re comparing the actual connections instead of just the WiFi 6E vs WiFi 7 labels on the boxes.

7

@SilverFox Yeah, I assumed Auto would just pick whatever gave me the best speed. Apparently that was optimistic.

8

Auto doesn’t know you’re sitting there trying to win a speedtest competition lol.