The primary Wi-Fi 8 routers and chips made a shock look at CES 2026, and will launch this 12 months, solely a few years after Wi-Fi 7 debuted. So, in case you don’t have already got a Wi-Fi 7 router — and many people don’t — you may wish to think about holding off on upgrading.
Reasonably than specializing in pace upgrades, Wi-Fi 8 guarantees improved stability. It affords the excessive speeds and bandwidth of Wi-Fi 7, however with improved energy effectivity, increased throughput, and higher peer-to-peer communication between units. Wi-Fi 8 can be higher at sustaining quick, secure connections when customers are transferring units round, or transferring them additional away from their router. In consequence, Wi-Fi 8 customers will expertise much less “dropping out” or freezing and higher streaming and gaming efficiency.
If this week’s CES bulletins are any indication, we’ll have the ability to check out Wi-Fi 8 for ourselves throughout the 12 months.
Asus went from last year’s AI spider router lined in antennas to the ROG NeoCore, a Wi-Fi 8 idea router with no antennas in any respect. The polyhedral mock up The Verge’s Sean Hollister obtained a have a look at this week resembles a 20-sided die with a hole backside. In line with Asus, the manufacturing mannequin will provide the identical knowledge speeds as Wi-Fi 7, however with increased throughput and decrease latency, so it may well transfer extra knowledge with fewer bottlenecks and fewer lag.
“The plastic mockup broke after I picked it up,” reported Hollister from the Asus sales space. “Excellent,” responded Nilay Patel, Editor in Chief of The Verge.
Broadcom additionally announced some Wi-Fi 8 gear at CES, together with the BCM4918 APU and two new dual-band radios, the BCM6714 and BCM6719. All three units are supposed for powering residential Wi-Fi 8 routers and repair supplier gateways.
Equally, on Monday, MediaTek announced its family of Wi-Fi 8 chips, Filogic 8000, which it says will energy “premium and flagship units leveraging Wi-Fi 8 know-how,” all the pieces from enterprise entry factors to smartphones, laptops, TVs, and good residence units. The primary gear that includes a Filogic 8000 chip is predicted to launch later this 12 months.
These new routers and chipsets are arriving just a few months after TP-Hyperlink demonstrated the first Wi-Fi 8 prototype connection in October. Regardless of manufacturers going full steam forward with Wi-Fi 8, the official IEEE 802.11bn specification hasn’t really been finalized but. The current IEEE timeline predicts that the Wi-Fi 8 customary received’t be ratified till mid to late 2028. But, Asus says its first Wi-Fi 8 routers are slated to launch this 12 months. Early {hardware} can be based mostly on a draft model of the spec, and would doubtless want a firmware replace down the street to match up with the ultimate specification.
