There isn’t anyone who won’t jump at the news of faster Wi-Fi. And maybe that’s why researchers are pushing Wi-Fi further than ever. Only recently, Wi-Fi 6 was released, which offers around 9 Gbps of bandwidth. You have a smart home, so you must need Wi-Fi 6E to handle all your devices, right?
Well, we need to understand where we are, to conceptualize where we’re going. Just as device manufacturers were catching up to Wi-Fi 6, the FCC adopted a newer version of Wi-Fi, known as Wi-Fi 6E. What’s the difference between Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E? And, more importantly, is it something you need in the immediate future?
Wi-Fi 6 vs. Wi-Fi 6E
A continually maturing technology, Wi-Fi (which stands for Wireless Fidelity, in case you were wondering) is constantly evolving. Here’s the low down on the newer versus the newest.
Wi-Fi 6
To begin with, Wi-Fi 6 (AKA “IEEE 802.11ax”) is a somewhat new generation of Wi-Fi that offers a bandwidth of 9.6 Gbps. Wi-Fi 6 is getting excellent feedback from users as it’s particularly useful when connecting multiple devices at once. Nowadays, the devices that utilize Wi-Fi are immense in number, and it’s ever-increasing. And it was very hard for Wi-Fi 5 to keep up with the increasing number of devices. This goes double for smart homes!
802.11ax addresses this issue, and quite effectively. With Wi-Fi 6, large office spaces and smart homes can be pushed to the highest limits. If you are using more than ten to fifteen devices in your home, you will definitely see benefits with an upgrade to Wi-Fi 6.
In with the new?
On the other hand, Wi-Fi 6E is the latest Wireless Fidelity technology. Up til now, we used two spectrums, one of which uses chunks of 40MHz at 2.4GHz, and the other uses 80MHz at 5GHz. But a few months back, the FCC adopted new rules – adding an unused spectrum that utilizes 120MHz partitions in the 6GHz range.
Other than a small amount of extra range in the 6GHz band, Wi-Fi 6E is the same as Wi-Fi 6. With this extra band, you can get even better consistency than its 6 counterpart if you’re using multiple devices at once. The extra spectrum keeps the transfer speed to every device more or less equal and keeps it unchanged, even if multiple other devices are connected.
Not only that, but it also seems that Wi-Fi 6E is a lot faster than the previous generations. It’s speed is estimated to be close to the fastest ethernet (wired) connections available right now! It seems that the evolution of Wi-Fi networks is proceeding in the right way, and we might see a wireless connection faster than ethernet very soon!
Is Wi-Fi 6E in a Smart Home Worth Your Money?
It isn’t all gimmick – Wi-Fi 6E is a great technology. If you are able to use these new wavelengths, you’ll see a significant performance increase in your devices. However, does that mean you need Wi-Fi 6E right now? Is it worth your money? Unfortunately, there are still many reasons that you might not want Wi-Fi 6E.
You Need to Purchase New Devices
To use Wi-Fi 6E, you will need devices that come with specific radios built in. If you don’t buy Wi-Fi 6E devices, you won’t be able to utilize any of the advantages mentioned above. And if that’s going to happen, there’s no point in upgrading in the first place.
It’s Going to be Expensive
Undoubtedly, Wi-Fi 6E is going to be expensive. However, that’s not all. If you save up and grab a crazy-expensive Wi-Fi 6E-capable device when it comes out, chances are slim that you’ll actually be able to use them. At this point, there aren’t even that many Wi-Fi 6 supported devices. There won’t be much utility in spending a ton of your hard-earned dollars until the tech matures for a while longer.
Wi-Fi 6E is Overkill, Even for a Smart Home
Ask yourself this, do you need Wi-Fi 6E? The 6E iteration will offer amazing speed, and faster Wi-Fi is never worse. However, at its current state, Wi-Fi 6 is more than capable.
Most people are accustomed to using Wi-Fi 5. The number of people using Wi-Fi 5 is still much lesser than people using Wi-Fi 6. The problem with Wi-Fi 5 is, you can’t use a multitude of devices at once, as the bandwidth needs to get divided between them.
This problem was solved when Wi-Fi 6 was invented. With Wi-Fi 6, people finally started getting similar performances in every connected device, with no to minimal drops in performance. And although the 802.11ax variant itself is a bit of an overkill for many people, there’s ample justification to buy this system due to it’s other benefits.
See our rundown on Wi-Fi 6, and it’s utility in smart homes, here.
Is there anyone that can use Wi-Fi 6E?
6E is faster than 6, and it comes at a higher price. Truth be told, this speed isn’t really usable by most. The only people who might be able to benefit from this technology at this point are developers and large tech systems.
Developers often work with multiple workstations, and they need to transfer terabytes of data from one desktop to another. However, this problem can be solved in much more efficiently by plugging the workstations with our favorite Ethernet cables.
The reason why someone would consider getting Wi-Fi 6E instead of Ethernet cables is that Ethernet cables tend to make the setup a bit messy, and the user has to run and/or manage the cables to make the setup look clean and minimal.
Lack of Appropriate Devices
Even if you can spare the money the money for it, Wi-Fi 6E devices aren’t really being produced yet. It still has a long way to go, and it will take enough time for it to be ready completely.
Devices supporting the 6E variant won’t be coming in a considerable amount of time. So, there’s no point in getting a Wi-Fi 6E router. But be assured that the protocols are backwards compatible. This means 6E-supported devices will still be able to use 6, 5, 4, etc. They just won’t get any significant boost from it.
Conclusion on Wi-Fi 6E for Smart Homes
The bottom line is, you can always go spend your dollars on a Wi-Fi 6E router if you want to. But at this point in time, and for the foreseeable future, it’s nowhere near being worth it. It will take multiple years for 6E to be generally adopted. So it’s not even worth holding out if you think you need a new router soon.
If you are feeling some congestion on you’re network and want the best of both speed and device compatibility, I recommend the Orbi RBK 852 Wi-Fi mesh system. You can check out our full review of this system here.
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