WiFi 6 is actually 802.11ax, an upgrade of 802.11ac. However, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) calls it a more memorable name: 6th generation WiFi technology. The corresponding previous generations such as 802.11ac/n have also been renamed to WI-FI 5/4. The renamed WI-FI standard icon style will appear on your mobile phone, computer, and other terminal devices. It's like upgrading the mobile network to 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G. The higher the number, the faster the speed and the better the performance. Therefore, when choosing a router, you don't need to look up what the letters n/ac/ax mean, just compare the numbers.
The upgrade is mainly threefold:
As we all know, WiFi 5 can theoretically support speeds of up to 3.5Gbps. With the introduction and upgrade of technologies such as MU-MIMO, 160MHz channel bandwidth, and 8*8 MIMO, the maximum speed of WiFi 6 can reach 9.6Gbps.
The most important improvement of WiFi 6 is its support for OFDMA technology. This allows data to be transmitted to multiple devices simultaneously. WiFi 5's OFDM technology only supports the transmission of one order at a time, while OFDMA technology allows multiple orders to be transmitted simultaneously. In a real network environment, this means that the router can connect more devices to the network at the same time. If you connect the same number of devices, the speed is about four times faster than WiFi 5. If you connect the same number of devices, the speed is about four times faster than WiFi 5.
WIiFi 6 adopts a function called TWT (Target Wake Time), which allows terminal devices to enter a sleep state when they are not transmitting data, thereby shortening the time required for continuous transmission and signal search, and reducing battery consumption.
WiFi 6 has many excellent features, so do you really need to switch to a WiFi 6 router? There are four areas to consider.
First of all, if the supported bandwidth is larger, it will definitely be better. However, according to the bucket effect, in this era, the speed of a family's external Internet access will first depend on the broadband of that family. At present, not many users have deployed gigabit bandwidth. Moreover, the bandwidth is less than 500 megabytes. Therefore, in reality, the speed of the external network will not be significantly improved. For internal LANs, the elimination of the external broadband limit will theoretically significantly improve the transmission speed of the intranet.
This is the most important improvement. Nowadays, many homes are equipped with IoT devices. Personally, I have more than 30 devices connected to Mi Home. Table lamps, TVs, mobile phones, laptops, tablets, air purifiers, vacuum cleaners, etc. in the home are everywhere, and they are all connected to the Internet. This is a test of the router. WiFi6 solves this problem very well with multiple terminals and low latency.
To be honest, the latency was 30ms before, but now it is 20ms. For ordinary users, the perception is not very obvious. Maybe I have feelings for e-sports players. I am a player like Xingyao Wang, who only hates to have his hand broken. It is really embarrassing to blame the network, but if you are playing with others and the performance is bad, it must be because the network is too slow.
It is better than nothing, and it will certainly increase the standby time and usage time of the device. However, the largest power consumption in most terminal devices today comes from the screen and processor. It's not something we're very aware of. Therefore, if you have a lot of IoT devices or frequently upgrade your smart home or devices, we recommend that you consider replacing your router. There are still many users who are using routers that are years old. It's time to replace your router.
