Wi-Fi 8 explained: Features, release date, and more

Everyone expects a moment Internet access, in part because Wi-Fi standards have advanced so far in the past few years. Wi-Fi 8 is next, but it’s a little different from its predecessors. No speed increase was deemed necessary this time around, but what you can expect is increased reliability, seamless handover between different devices and routers, and lower latency.

With Wi-Fi problems declining, many people are still making do with Wi-Fi 6, even though most homes will have Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 devices now. If you’re in the market for an upgrade, go for it Best routers or Networked systems I now recommend support Wi-Fi 7. You don’t need to think about Wi-Fi 8 for a long time yet (the standard isn’t finalized yet), but we can still take a peek at what Wi-Fi 8 has in store to see what’s to come.

What is WiFi 8?

The eighth generation of Wi-Fi represents a change in focus. While previous incarnations of the Wi-Fi standard promised faster connection speeds, Wi-Fi 8 seems to be more focused on improving the basics: reliability, stability, and lower latency. Wi-Fi 8 also promises seamless roaming, keeping devices connected while you’re on the move and reducing dropped connections and dead zones.

Photo: Simon Hill

For those keeping score at home, Wi-Fi 8 is IEEE 802.11bn using the old naming convention, where Wi-Fi 7 was IEEE 802.11be and Wi-Fi 6 was IEEE 802.11ax. In case you were wondering, the IEEE It’s the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and they’re the guys responsible for these new standards (and yes, they love acronyms). As with all previous standards, Wi-Fi 8 will be backward compatible, meaning that if you purchase a Wi-Fi 8 router, it will still work well with devices with older standards. But to take advantage of the new features and performance improvements promised, you’ll also need to upgrade your hardware. That means buying new routers and networking systems, yes, but also new smartphones, laptops, TVs, and other gadgets.

What benefits does Wi-Fi 8 bring?

There’s an impressive list of improvements we can expect from Wi-Fi 8, but the headliner is Ultra High Reliability (UHR). Wi-Fi 7 focused on Extremely High Throughput (EHT), but now that speeds are generally great, the focus has shifted to ensuring connections are more reliable. This is not a complete list, but here are some of the features that UHR will enable:

• Multiple Access Point Coordination (MAPC): There are a set of features designed to help access points cooperate rather than interfere with each other. This should improve performance, expand coverage, and reduce power requirements.
• Smooth Roaming Domain (SRD): Many Wi-Fi outages, which may translate as video buffering or dropped calls, are caused by your device switching its connection from one access point to another. SRD is designed to reduce latency and packet loss that occur during handovers.
• Low Latency Index (LLI): This allows devices to share their latency requirements, so game streaming (where latency is critical) can keep up and take priority. Combined with things like TXOP Preemption and High Priority EDCA, we can expect better prioritization and more effective Quality of Service (QoS) functionality, so you can make sure those Netflix-streaming kids don’t interrupt your work video call.
• Intra-device coexistence (IDC): Although it’s not talked about much, it’s annoyingly common for other connectivity features like Bluetooth, Thread, or Zigbee to affect Wi-Fi performance in devices like smartphones. This feature reduces interference between different radios and helps them coordinate.
• Extended Long Range (ELR): This feature allows devices to connect and stay connected more reliably remotely without having to add more access points. Combined with the Distributed Radio Resource Unit (DRU), which spreads the device’s signal across a wider range, your Wi-Fi signal should be more reliable at the edges of your home.

How does Wi-Fi 8 compare to Wi-Fi 7?

Photo: Simon Hill

With the same theoretical maximum speed of 46Gbps and Wi-Fi on the same three bands (2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz) with a maximum channel width of 320MHz, Wi-Fi 8 may not seem like a huge improvement over Wi-Fi 7 to most people.

Some of the features I mentioned in the Wi-Fi 8 benefits section above could bring tangible improvements, especially for anyone living in a high-interference area like a city apartment building, but it remains to be seen how much better reliability will be. Chances are, if Wi-Fi 7 is working well for you now, Wi-Fi 8 will be a tough sell.

When will Wi-Fi 8 arrive?

It usually takes four or five years for a new Wi-Fi standard to be fully rolled out. This may seem like a long time, but it takes time for chip, router and device manufacturers to implement it into new products. since Wi-Fi Alliance Wi-Fi 7 certification was officially released in January 2024, and we can reasonably expect Wi-Fi 8 certification sometime in 2028. But chipmakers are already producing Wi-Fi 8 chips, and router manufacturers like TP-Link have Already announced Wi-Fi 8 routers and mesh systems, the first version is scheduled to launch before the end of 2026.

The same thing happened with Wi-Fi 7, and that’s because the IEEE already has a working draft that allows manufacturers to take an educated guess about what certification requires. Early adopters of Wi-Fi 8 systems can expect to pay a premium, as always, and the benefits probably won’t be as compelling as jumping from Wi-Fi 6 to Wi-Fi 7. That’s why I recommend waiting until official certification and perhaps longer until prices come down.

To anyone in the United States, Ban on foreign-made routers imposed by the FCC. This is another complication that will likely limit your options.