On the eve of the 2024 US Consumer Electronics Show (CES2024), the long-awaited Wi-Fi 7 standard has finally been officially released. The Wi-Fi Alliance industry group confirmed today that the standard has been locked in and that it has begun certifying Wi-Fi 7-capable devices.
A press release issued by the Wi-Fi Alliance today stated that by the end of 2024, more than 233 million devices will be Wi-Fi 7 certified. Of course, some Wi-Fi router companies such as Amazon's Eero and NETGEAR began selling Wi-Fi 7 products without official certification a few months ago. If you see the Wi-Fi7 certification mark on a product, it means that the product has passed the standard requirements of the Wi-Fi Alliance.
The press release adds: The latest generation of Wi-Fi will enable new use cases, including multi-user AR/VR/XR, immersive 3D training, video games, hybrid work, industrial IoT and automotive. Wi-FiCERTIFIED7 is the culmination of extensive collaboration and innovation within the Wi-Fi Alliance, promoting global product interoperability and a robust, advanced device ecosystem.
The biggest new feature of Wi-Fi7 devices is so-called multi-link operation (Multi-linkOperation or MLO). It allows these devices to download or upload data using two or more linked wireless bands. According to the Wi-Fi Alliance, this will provide "higher throughput, lower latency and improved reliability" for Wi-Fi 7 connections.
Other features of the Wi-Fi 7 specification include support for 320MHz channels (6GHz band), which is twice the maximum 160MHz bandwidth of older Wi-Fi devices. Speaking of which, Wi-Fi 7 products are backwards compatible with other devices using older versions of the Wi-Fi standard. While these connections aren't the fastest, they still work fine.
Next year, you'll see Wi-Fi 7 hardware in a slew of new laptops, smartphones, tablets, and VR/AR headsets. The Wi-Fi Alliance claims that by the end of 2024, there will be 233 million Wi-Fi 7-based devices. This number is expected to expand to 2.1 billion by 2028.