The hype around 5G may have died down, but the world of home networking is ready to undergo a revolution. We've known about Wi-Fi 7 for a while, but the Wi-Fi Alliance hasn't said much about when it will be released. Now it has been announced that the new Wi-Fi 7 standard will complete its final stages of preparation in early 2024.

Wi-Fi 7 finally gets a release date

As reported on Tom's Hardware, Wi-Fi 7 will be finalized and pushed out the door within the first quarter of 2024. Devices supporting Wi-Fi 7 have been sold for a few months now, but once the technology is officially released, users can finally tap into the unused power within their Wi-Fi adapters. As the Wi-Fi Alliance states:

"Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7, based on IEEE 802.11be technology, will be available before the end of Q1 2024. Wi-Fi 7 devices are entering the market today, and Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7 will facilitate worldwide interoperability and bring advanced Wi-Fi performance to the next era of connected devices."

So how good is Wi-Fi 7? For a start, it can reach a top speed of 40Gbps, much faster than Wi-Fi 6's max speed of 9.6Gbps. This is achieved by a new 6 GHz frequency band that will join the more familiar 2.4 GHz and 5GHz bands. Wi-Fi 7 also improves some of the connection speed technologies that Wi-Fi 6 introduced, producing speeds that are reportedly 4.8 times faster than Wi-Fi 6.

If you own a device that supports Wi-Fi 7, it is currently using a "draft" version of the standard. If you're using it for home use, you shouldn't notice any performance difference over a device that uses a "finalized" version of the standard, and your device should receive a firmware update to bring it up to speed. So, if you can't wait to give the new generation Wi-Fi a shot, why not grab a Wi-Fi 7 router and get ready for its release?