It can be somewhat confusing if you’re in the market to replace an old wireless router or add a new one in your home or office. Currently, three wireless standards are prevalent in the marketplace: Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, and Wi-Fi 7.

The first Wi-Fi 6 devices arrived in 2019, while the first Wi-Fi 6E devices didn’t arrive until 2021. Wi-Fi 7, the most recent standard, started creeping into the market in late 2023 with a limited number of routers. You’ll want to research the newest high-performance Wi-Fi 7 routers for the fastest possible wireless speeds in your home. However, older routers that use the Wi-Fi 6E standard aren’t exactly slouches when it comes to transfer speeds, and in many instances, you could save some money by staying away from the bleeding edge of router technology.

While Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 both support the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands, Wi-Fi 7 implements some performance-boost improvements to the last band. Wi-Fi 7 doubles the channel bandwidth from 160 Hz to 320 Hz and boosts the maximum number of spatial streams from 8 to 16.

Coupling those advances with a maximum bandwidth of 2,400 Mbps per stream gives you a theoretical data rate ceiling of 46 Gbps in flagship Wi-Fi 7 routers. That is a massive increase in throughput compared to Wi-Fi 6E routers, which top out at 9.6 Gbps.