MediaTek has announced that it’s already planning the unveiling of Wi-Fi 7, and it’s coming soon.
Wi-Fi 6 — also known as 802.11ax — routers are only starting to trickle into homes today, and the even newer Wi-Fi 6E access points are barely hitting the market. Still, MediaTek is starting to prepare for the launch of Wi-Fi 7.
The company announced that it will begin demoing Wi-Fi 7 at the Consumer Electronics Show in early January. The exciting technology standard promises even faster speeds than Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 5.
Wi-Fi 7 will also be known as 802.11be, and MediaTek stated that the technology is expected to bring 2.4x the speeds and lower latency than its predecessor, according to company documents that were published on PCMag.
When Wi-Fi 6 launched, it was panned as the biggest upgrade to Wi-Fi in a decade. The technology standard, which also underpins the newer Wi-Fi 6E, promised faster speeds, reduced congestion, offered lower latency, and had better security. The standard supported speeds close to 10Gbps speeds, provided that your broadband connection can handle that.
Netgear, for example, claimed that its Wi-Fi 6-powered Orbi mesh networking unit delivers five times faster speeds than the previous 802.11ac Wi-Fi 5 standard. Using Netgear’s calculations, a Wi-Fi 7 router should be capable of 12 times the speed of Wi-Fi 5 by extension.
Though the faster speeds, increased bandwidth, and lower latency may be appealing to homes that stream a lot of 4K video or play action-packed PC or console games, the protocol could come at a hefty cost. Mesh networks that support Wi-Fi 6 are already pricey, and Wi-Fi 6E modems command an even higher premium. Netgear’s Wi-Fi 6E whole-home Orbi mesh network costs $1,500, for reference.
In contrast, the Wi-Fi 5-equipped routers like the Vilo mesh system start at $20 for a single router and $60 for a whole-home network. Wi-Fi 7 routers, mesh networks, and access points could be even more costly to adopt, and most homes in the U.S. will likely not be able to take full advantage of the speeds that the protocol is capable of delivering.
According to Ookla, the company behind the popular Speediest.net app that measures the speed of your Internet connection, the average American home gets speeds slightly faster than 200Mbps on average for the year, with the sample ending in October 2021. Wi-Fi 7, on the other hand, can reach theoretical speeds up to 30Gbps.
Though an early preview of the next generation of Wi-Fi may happen in early 2022, the technology could still take years to reach home routers, PCs, tablets, smartphones, and other connected devices. According to IEEE, the governing body for Wi-Fi standards, the 802.11be amendment will be published in 2024 with commercial deployment occurring shortly after.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Google DeepMind's AI world model Genie 4 can now build interactive worlds that you can explore and reshape as they run. It also generates ambient sounds, music, and dialogue that respond to your actions.
The new world model builds on Genie 3 with improved realism, more natural human movement, and better simulations of real-world physics. It could eventually help with everything from game development to training robots.
Apple has an incredible talent for making me admire its products while simultaneously questioning what on earth it's thinking with the pricing. This isn't even something as bizarre as a monitor stand, but the audacity for starting a new laptop lineup from $2,000 doesn't surprise me.
The newly announced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M6 is just the latest to showcase this. The funny thing is, I already know that it's going to be a reliable workstation. You get a powerful new 2nm M6 processor, a gorgeous Liquid Retina XDR display, and up to 24 hours of battery life. We were impressed by the M5 MacBook Air, so the high-end M6 powered MacBook Pro definitely won't let us down.