On paper, Wi-Fi 7 runs about four times faster than Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, and possibly more depending on your circumstances, with some estimates putting its theoretical top speed at about 46 Gbps. Yet many people who bought a new router are getting nowhere near that, and Reddit has a steady supply of posts from new Wi-Fi 7 owners who can't work out why their speeds fall short. According to XDA, a router placed too close to drywall sends out signals that bounce off the walls and back toward its antennae, and that reflected signal degrades the original. The fix might be free: put the router somewhere open, such as a shelf on a media console, or at least three feet out from the corner, then run another speed test and compare the numbers.

On most home networks today, phones and tablets are only a small part of the device count, with wearables and home appliances also connecting. Netgear said most households have at least 20 connected devices. To handle that, you need a router with a fast processor that can manage many devices and offers at least two frequency bands, plus enough bandwidth from your internet service provider—a slow plan is something no router can fix. When the slowdown happens tells you a lot: if speeds drop when the whole household is home and streaming but hold steady the rest of the day, device load is a likely culprit; if they're poor all day, the problem is probably elsewhere.

Wi-Fi 7 was launched by the Wi-Fi Alliance in 2024. Engadget said a new standard comes with enhanced speeds and plenty of back-of-the-box buzzwords. The parts that matter include lower latency and more capacity for congestion and high-density environments, which help most in a smart home where even the light bulbs are connected. Netgear also pointed to multi-link operation (MLO), which arrives with Wi-Fi 7: compatible devices can use the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands at once, which should make connections faster and more reliable, while devices without support for it don't benefit. Because Wi-Fi 7 is backwards compatible, older devices should keep working with it, but they won't get the higher speeds or the new features.

Few people have upgraded so far. Ookla, a connectivity intelligence firm, found that Wi-Fi 7 adoption reached 7.2% of the market as of the beginning of 2026, compared with 1.8% a year earlier. If your phone and laptop belong to the other 92.8%, a new router by itself won't hit the speeds printed on the box.