Wi-Fi 7's Best Feature Doesn't Work (Yet)

[0:00]WiFi 7 is the latest generation of WiFi standards, promising massive improvements to latency and speed, thanks to a key feature called Multi-Link Operation. Right now, your router at home likely has two distinct signals: 2.4 GHz for range and 5 GHz for speed. If you have a newer router, you may even have a 6 GHz band, which is even faster, but has the shortest range. Multi-Link Operation, or MLO, allows your device, like a phone or laptop, to make simultaneous use of these different bands. In one unified connection, you get the fastest speeds of 5 and 6 GHz, and the range of 2.4 GHz without the need to manually switch bands. At least, that's what router brands want you to believe. After testing 25 WiFi 7 routers, we found that none of them actually implement the full capabilities their marketing implies. Marketing materials often emphasize what Multi-Link Operation in its broadest and fullest sense is theoretically capable of, rather than what the router in question is capable of. In effect, they're selling you the dream instead of the reality. So, what performance can you actually expect from a WiFi 7 router? And is the upgrade worth your money? Today, we'll share what we found through extensive testing. As mentioned, router marketing is often misleading when it comes to WiFi 7 features, but that obfuscation starts with the naming. Did you know that there's a difference between Wi-Fi 7 and WiFi 7 with no hyphen? And that neither of those is the same as Wi-Fi Certified 7? See, there's the 802.11BE networking standard published by the IEEE. This is the engineering document, the set of protocols that defines the technical specifications of wireless communications. The Wi-Fi Alliance industry group then defines which features in the networking standard are required for devices to be classified as their trademarked WiFi 7. They have their own certification process and certified product database. Products that pass certification end up with the official designation, Wi-Fi Certified 7. Of the 25 routers we bought that were advertised as WiFi 7, only three actually had the Wi-Fi Certified label. But as you'll see, even that doesn't guarantee the full set of features implied by Wi-Fi 7 marketing. This is already confusing enough, but some brands are banking on you being confused. The most egregious case is Netgear branding its Nighthawk RS300 router as WiFi 7, no hyphen. That distinction matters. By avoiding the Wi-Fi Alliance trademark, the branding sidesteps the expectations that many consumers associate with WiFi 7. The result is a router that's widely perceived as offering comprehensive Wi-Fi 7 capabilities, despite supporting its own distinct subset of features from the protocol. Worst of all, it's one of the few routers we tested that doesn't support Multi-Link Operation in any form. So, how can these companies get away with calling a spade a shovel? Well, there are different possible implementations of Multi-Link Operation outlined in the WiFi 7 specification. Simultaneous MLO is the one implied by much of today's marketing. This is the version of MLO that allows multiple bands to be used at once for aggregation and instant fallback. In other words, this is the WiFi 7 that was promised. In reality, today's routers mostly only implement alternating MLO. This is a far more limited fallback mode, in which devices can switch between bands, but not use them simultaneously. Crucially, it's impossible to find any information on the particular implementation of Multi-Link Operation before having the product in your hands. And that's where we come in. Our mission here is to expose that information so you can make a more informed buying decision. We also buy all of our products ourselves, just like you, and never accept sample units or sponsorships. So, if you like what we do and want to support us, give us a like and subscribe. We decided to investigate which Multi-Link Operation features our WiFi 7 routers actually broadcast. Rather than looking at any router's potential to support MLO or its possible performance at the hardware level, we really wanted to focus on which MLO capabilities are actually broadcast to clients. For each of the 25 routers we tested, we used a MacBook in sniffer mode to capture the beacon frames sent by the router using Wireshark. This allowed us to see exactly which features the router broadcasts to clients as available for use. This is done outside of an active connection, meaning the client doesn't impact the features broadcast by the router. What we were looking for was whether a router broadcasts that it's capable of all three pillars of Multi-Link Operation. Those pillars are: one, features required for true Multi-Radio Simultaneous MLO. Two, features associated with the fallback, single-radio, alternating mode. And three, negotiation mechanisms that determine how traffic is distributed across links. Only if these criteria were met could we say that a router delivers true Multi-Radio Multi-Link Operation, as so many routers misleadingly market themselves to. For multiple bands to operate as a single unified connection, true simultaneous MLO requires a feature called enhanced Multi-Link Multi-Radio. This requires precise coordination across radios, keeping them time-aligned so they can transmit and receive concurrently with microsecond-level switching across all links. To further strengthen stability and efficiency, the specification also defines capabilities like the Spectrum Resource Scheduling and Simultaneous Transmit & Receive Multi-Link Multi-Radio, which help multiple radios share spectrum and operate simultaneously without creating self-interference. Here's the thing: None of our tested routers broadcast support for these core features. That means that none of them support true simultaneous Multi-Link Operation. Even the highest-end tri-band systems, like the ASUS ZenWiFi BT10, lack the synchronization and scheduling features needed to use three bands at the same time. In practical terms, this means that none of the popular WiFi 7 routers we tested delivers the form of Multi-Link Operation that their marketing suggests. Without simultaneous multi-band operation, you simply don't get the promised benefits of MLO. But it gets worse. You might be thinking, "Well, at least I'll still see some improvement with the alternating MLO fallback mode. Surely most WiFi 7 routers support that." Not quite. Unlike EMLMR, enhanced Multi-Link single-radio is designed for hardware that can't keep multiple radios synchronized. Rather than multiple radios operating in parallel, this mode lets a single radio rapidly time-slice across different bands with predictable padding and transition delays. Our tests shows that even broadcast support for alternating MLO is incomplete. Most of our routers report zero padding or transition delays for EMLSR. While this is allowed by the standard, it means the router provides no insight to connected devices into how link transitions are actually coordinated. Only one router, the Eero Max 7, exposes realistic non-zero timing parameters, suggesting a more complete implementation. Beyond that, none of the routers reported support for aligned TWT, which allows the router and client to negotiate when to enter power-saving mode. Or Dynamic Reconfig, which helps with Multi-Link management. Finally, looking at support for negotiation features reveals even more gaps. Only eight routers in our test set advertised full router-client negotiation capability, which allows both ends of the connection to agree on how different categories of traffic should be distributed across available links. For instance, assigning high-priority traffic to the 6 GHz band and low-priority traffic to the slower 2.4 GHz band. Another ten routers broadcast TID-to-Link mapping, but without negotiation, meaning the router dictates the mapping unilaterally. In practice, this limits the network's ability to optimize latency-sensitive or high-throughput traffic. This is also where the reported maximum number of MLO links becomes revealing. Several routers broadcast support for two or even three concurrent links, but without the underlying multi-radios or proper negotiation, the client device can't utilize them effectively. Meanwhile, two of our TP-Link routers report a maximum of just one measly MLO link in their beacon frames. Despite the BE550 having three and the BE900 having four physical radios, neither exposes even the possibility of Multi-Link Operation to the client. Last we checked, multi still means more than one, so calling it Multi-Link Operation here feels more than a little misleading. The problem is not that these routers can't do everything outlined in the specification; it's that they're being marketed in a way that makes it seem like they can. In practice, whether through hardware or firmware limitations, we just aren't there yet. To be clear, we carried out this test using the latest firmware available at the time of testing, but this is just one snapshot in time. It's possible that these routers will get firmware updates down the line that could improve their MLO capabilities, but that's not the case right now. In our estimation, buying something now on the promise of a future firmware update is a fool's errand. On top of that, client devices will also need to support Multi-Link Operation to benefit from it, and as far as we know, no client currently supports it. As it stands, WiFi 7 routers aren't worth the price difference over older generation routers. So, if you're looking to buy a new router and your client supports it, opting for a cheaper WiFi 6E or even WiFi 6 router is the way to go for now. We should demand better from manufacturers that make bold claims about what their products are capable of. So now, our watch begins, because if these routers ever do get firmware updates, you bet that we'll be there to test them. In the meantime, we'd love to hear about your experience. Do you have a WiFi 7 router? Have you noticed a significant difference? Leave a comment or hop over to our Discord server, where our testers, writers, and engineers are active in between testing. And if you're interested in networking, you can check out our previous investigation into gaming routers here. Until next time, I'm Ben from ratings.com, where we help you find the best products for your needs. Thanks for watching!