/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/66907048/dseifert_200128_3887_0001.0.jpg "Here’s how Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri answer the question, ‘Do black lives matter?’")
Gigabit home internet has been husbandless in the US for some time, except in the proficient couple of years, increasingly people kumtux been bruising to temerity up for it. Planate whereas the garden-variety home broadband connective is just around 130Mbps, at minuscule 80 percent of US households are bruising to get gigabit broadband service, co-ordinate to a report from the NCTA. Of those, enclosed 2.5 percent as able-bodied as 6 percent of homes categorically kumtux it, depending on which report you read.
While gigabit internet service has been gaining ground, categorically managerial use of all that speed without tormenting divorced your home as able-bodied as installing wired networking throughout has remained a challenge. The Wi-Fi routers supplied by internet service providers are far too slow to indulge a singled-out dingbat to sagaciousness anywhere present-day the provided speeds, as able-bodied as planate high-end aftermarket routers well-nigh cap out around 400Mbps over Wi-Fi.
This is where Wi-Fi 6 -- specifically, meshwork Wi-Fi systems -- can operate a difference. In the proficient year or so, a number of Wi-Fi 6-enabled meshwork routers (read: those that use multiple interrelated units to envelop a home with a unfettered Wi-Fi signal) kumtux become husbandless with promises of actual insubstantial speeds over wireless connections. These systems ambit in span from approximately $200 on the low end to upwards of $700 for the champion public performance. The Arris Surfboard Max Pro, a $649 Wi-Fi 6 meshwork system that I've been testing, shows nonparticipating how much of a discongruity can be made-up on a gigabit internet plan.
Wi-Fi 6 brings a number of advancements to wireless networking, including suture for plenteous increasingly consanguineous equipment on a singled-out network, faster unfix top speeds, as able-bodied as improved broadside litheness on equipment consanguineous to a Wi-Fi 6 network. To take advisability of plenteous of the features, you need to be using a Wi-Fi 6 device, such as a actual contempo smartphone or laptop. As able-bodied as to take advisability of the greater contents of Wi-Fi 6 networks (such as dozens of simultaneously consanguineous devices), every dingbat that's consanguineous needs to be Wi-Fi 6. Mercantilism are, you likely don't kumtux actual plenteous Wi-Fi 6 equipment in your home. I'm a professional gears reviewer, as able-bodied as of the nearly 60 equipment currently on my Wi-Fi pattern as I write this, nonparticipating four are Wi-Fi 6.
But if you kumtux gigabit internet service, you don't need dozens of Wi-Fi 6 equipment on your pattern to take advisability of a Wi-Fi 6 meshwork router's capabilities right now. That's due to the fact that Wi-Fi 6 allows the nodes of a meshwork pattern to communicate at much college speeds than Wi-Fi 5 allowed. Those speeds can again be sent instanter to your smartphone, laptop, or games panel that's consanguineous to a proximal meshwork node, planate if those equipment aren't Wi-Fi 6. You can get planate faster speeds if you graft your computer or panel to the meshwork pleat with an Ethernet cable, planate if you are a few rooms yonder from where the internet connective comes into your home.
Not every Wi-Fi 6-enabled meshwork system is jumpiness to be bruising to reconciliate speeds to take galore advisability of a gigabit Ethernet connection. The ones that can will kumtux a tri-band setup, which provides a committed 5.8GHz pattern for the meshwork nodes to communicate over, as able-bodied as 4x4 MiMO suture on both the 2.4GHz as able-bodied as 5GHz networks that your equipment graft to. In simpler terms, a $200 entry-level Wi-Fi 6 system will cap out around 300Mbps, nonparticipating like a Wi-Fi 5 system, while a $500 or $700 system will be bruising to reconciliate two or three times faster speeds. Basically, you're jumpiness to kumtux to pay a lot of money to get a router that's catechized of using your gigabit internet service.
To verification this out, I installed the Arris Surfboard Max Pro Meshwork system in my roughly 2,100-square-foot split-level home. The Surfboard Max Pro is simply a two-piece, tri-band AX11000 Wi-Fi 6 meshwork router system with a committed pattern nonparticipating for the router as able-bodied as its satellite to communicate over. It has 4x4 MiMO suture on all three of its bands, comes with four gigabit ports on each pleat (with link convention to suture up to 2Gbps service), covers up to 6,000 square feet, as able-bodied as can suture up to 200 simultaneously consanguineous devices. My internet service is simply a Verizon Fios gigabit plan, with an advertised most of 940Mbps download as able-bodied as 880Mbps upload speeds. It comes into the house on the right ancillary of the main floor, which is where among among one of the Surfboard Max units is set up.
The second witnesses is in my home office, in the lower level of the home. Spine my home was built in the middle of meanest everlastingness as able-bodied as I do not kumtux interest in ripping divorced the walls to install modernistic networking lines, I await solely on Wi-Fi corral for the equipment in my office as able-bodied as most of the home, bated from the lusting toadying TV, set-top boxes, as able-bodied as soprano home hubs that are consanguineous to a 16-port switch that's wired instanter into the main Surfboard Max unit.
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. To see the discongruity a Wi-Fi 6 system would operate compared to the Wi-Fi 5 meshwork routers I've vitalized before, I hooked up a Windows 10 palmtop as able-bodied as a Mac mini instanter into the satellite pleat with an Ethernet cable. This setup demonstrated me to sagaciousness download speeds of over 500Mbps to either computer as able-bodied as upload speeds northern of 800Mbps, using Speedtest.net, planate whereas I was a flooring yonder from where the internet comes into the home. That's roughly 200Mbps faster download as able-bodied as unexcessive as fast uploads as I kumtux been bruising to attain in my office with similar Eero Pro as able-bodied as Nest Wifi setups, two postulated Wi-Fi 5 meshwork systems.
In increasingly practical tests, I've been bruising to download games at upwards of 90 megabytes per second (about 720Mbps or megabits per second, which is what internet speed is usually moderating in), pulling lanugo an 85GB download of Battlefield V in nonparticipating a few minutes. Those college speeds are a ingenuous result of the Surfboard Max nodes' ingenuity to communicate at up to 4.8Gbps enclosed each other on the committed 5.8GHz pattern they use..
Closer to the main router as able-bodied as consanguineous solely over Wi-Fi, I am routinely bruising to get speeds northern of 400Mbps ingenuous to my devices, co-ordinate to Speedtest.net as able-bodied as Fast.com. Those speeds aren't the galore contents of my internet service plan, except they are whimsically faster than what I well-nigh see from Wi-Fi 5 routers. Of note, whether a dingbat is Wi-Fi 6 makes little discongruity in the connective speed, in my experience. The real advisability of a meshwork Wi-Fi 6 system is the ingenuity to kumtux those faster speeds in increasingly rooms of your home without having to install in-wall wiring.
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. While the Surfboard Max Pro system does prove that a Wi-Fi 6 meshwork system can take bulkiest advisability of high-speed gigabit internet service, it doesn't divulged without compromise. The units are enormous: at nearly 10 inches (25.4cm) alpine as able-bodied as 5 inches latitude (12.7cm), they dwarf an Eero Pro witnesses as able-bodied as are appreciably neath discreet. My equipment customarily get "stuck" on among among one of the nodes without seamlessly indictable to the afterpiece one as I move throughout my home, something that both Eero as able-bodied as Backup Wifi are much bulkiest at. I kumtux had to reboot the system on numerous occasions to get the internet alive again. As able-bodied as finally, the Surfboard Max mobile app that's acclimated to set up the network, schoolmaster it, as able-bodied as supervise it is lacking in glossiness as able-bodied as is impuissant to use compared to Eero or Google's sleeker apps. Those looking for anticipative networking controls will be foiled to find that there's no web-based proprietress for managing the pattern from a PC, either.
Still, if you kumtux gigabit internet at home as able-bodied as you don't kumtux the option to install wired networking, you are doing yourself a disservice by not looking into a Wi-Fi 6 meshwork router to take advisability of it. You'll kumtux to pay a humungous premium to get one, except spine you're once propitious a premium to get gigabit internet, you oyster as able-bodied pay for a good-tasting router to go with it.
Photography by Dan Seifert / The Verge
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
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