Streaming barely needs bandwidth
A 4K HDR stream from a major service runs at roughly 15 to 25 Mbps. Wi-Fi 5 manages that comfortably. So does Wi-Fi 4, in a quiet flat, on a good day. If bandwidth were the whole story, nobody would need a new router.
It changes what happens when the network is busy
Wi-Fi 6 is about efficiency under load. Two features do most of the work: OFDMA, which lets the router serve several devices inside one transmission instead of queueing them, and target wake time, which stops idle devices from talking over the ones that are working.
In an empty house, none of that matters. In a flat with two phones, a laptop on a video call, a games console updating and a doorbell camera uploading, it is the difference between a clean stream and a picture that drops to 480p every few minutes.
- Dense housing where twenty neighbouring networks share the same channels.
- Households with more than about a dozen connected devices.
- Anyone streaming while somebody else is on a video call.
The honest recommendation
If you live alone in a house with a modern router, Wi-Fi 6 on the box will not change your evening. If you live in a block of flats, it very well might.
And if you can run a cable, run a cable. The 10/100 LAN port carries a 4K stream with room to spare and it never negotiates with anybody.
Written by Jonas Halvorsen, Hardware at OSM.
All posts