Wi-Fi 7 Explained: MLO, 320 MHz and What You Actually Need

Wi-Fi 7 is only as good as the weakest part of the chain. Its headline features need a matching router, a matching client, a current version of Windows and a home where 6 GHz actually reaches your desk. Miss one and you have an ordinary fast wireless connection, which may still be all you need.

What Wi-Fi 7 adds

The Wi-Fi Alliance and Intel list these as the main changes:

• 320 MHz channels in the 6 GHz band, double the width of Wi-Fi 6E's maximum, for roughly twice the peak throughput.
• 4K QAM, which packs more data into each transmission for about 20% higher rates than the 1024 QAM of Wi-Fi 6.
• Multi-Link Operation (MLO), which lets a device and router use more than one band together.
• Puncturing, which lets a device use the clean parts of a wide channel instead of giving up the whole thing when part of it is busy.

Wi-Fi 7 works on the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands, but most of the extra speed depends on 6 GHz.

6 GHz and 320 MHz

How much you get depends on where you live. The US opens the full 5925 to 7125 MHz band, while many other countries, including the UK and those across the EU, allow only up to 6425 MHz. A 320 MHz channel takes up most of that smaller allocation, so options are more limited. Our glossary covers these terms if they're unfamiliar.

The 6 GHz band is also the shortest-range of the three. It handles open rooms well and fades through walls, so the speeds you see in a demo at three meters may not reach a bedroom two walls away.

Watch out for routers that claim Wi-Fi 7 but have no 6 GHz radio, since they can't use 320 MHz at all. Check the listed bands on any model in our router catalog before you buy.

What MLO does

A normal connection uses one band at a time. With MLO, a device and router form links across multiple bands, and traffic can use whichever is less congested or move when interference appears. Intel describes that as improving throughput and latency while keeping the connection reliable.

In practice, expect it to help most with consistency, particularly in busy apartment buildings. It's less useful as a speed boost, because implementations differ between devices and some clients switch between links instead of using them at the same time. Both the router and the client must support it, and the feature has to be turned on in the router's settings if it isn't by default.

What speeds to expect

Router boxes add up the theoretical maximum of every radio, which doesn't reflect a single PC's connection. The Intel BE200, a common 2x2 card, is rated at up to 5.8 Gbps with 320 MHz and 4096 QAM. Intel puts the theoretical maximum for this class of device at 5.76 Gbps, with an estimate of 5.19 Gbps over the air in ideal conditions. Real rooms come in well below that.

Not every Wi-Fi 7 adapter gets there, either. Intel's BE202 and BE213 are limited to 160 MHz channels, at 2.4 Gbps and 2.8 Gbps.

Remember what's feeding the connection. If your internet service is 1 Gbps or less, Wi-Fi 6 can often already deliver it at close range. Wi-Fi 7's extra headroom pays off for local transfers, such as moving files to a NAS, and for sharing a very fast connection between devices.

What you need to benefit

Wi-Fi 7 is common on new motherboards. For older PCs, a network adapter works if it's supported on your platform, and some M.2 modules are only validated on specific chipsets, so read the compatibility notes first.

Should you upgrade

If you're buying a new router anyway and you have devices that support 6 GHz, go for it. If your PC is wired or your router already handles your internet speed well, you can wait. A cable still beats any wireless standard for latency and consistency, and a network switch with multi-gig ports may do more for your home network than a new router.