Wi-Fi 8 is appearing at CES before most of us have switched to Wi-Fi 7

The first Wi-Fi 8 routers and chips made a astonishment quality astatine CES 2026, and could motorboat this year, only a mates of years aft Wi-Fi 7 debuted. So, if you don’t already person a Wi-Fi 7 router — and galore of america don’t — you mightiness want to see holding disconnected connected upgrading.

Rather than focusing connected velocity upgrades, Wi-Fi 8 promises improved stability. It offers the precocious speeds and bandwidth of Wi-Fi 7, but pinch improved powerfulness efficiency, higher throughput, and amended peer-to-peer connection betwixt devices. Wi-Fi 8 is besides amended astatine maintaining fast, unchangeable connections erstwhile users are moving devices around, aliases moving them further distant from their router. As a result, Wi-Fi 8 users will acquisition little “dropping out” aliases freezing and amended streaming and gaming performance.

If this week’s CES announcements are immoderate indication, we’ll beryllium capable to effort retired Wi-Fi 8 for ourselves wrong the year.

Asus went from last year’s AI spider router covered successful antennas to the ROG NeoCore, a Wi-Fi 8 conception router pinch nary antennas astatine all. The polyhedral mock up The Verge’s Sean Hollister sewage a look astatine this week resembles a 20-sided dice pinch a hollow bottom. According to Asus, the accumulation exemplary will connection the aforesaid information speeds arsenic Wi-Fi 7, but pinch higher throughput and little latency, truthful it tin move much information pinch less bottlenecks and little lag.

“The integrative mockup collapsed erstwhile I picked it up,” reported Hollister from the Asus booth. “Perfect,” responded Nilay Patel, Editor successful Chief of The Verge.

Broadcom besides announced immoderate Wi-Fi 8 cogwheel astatine CES, including the BCM4918 APU and 2 caller dual-band radios, the BCM6714 and BCM6719. All 3 devices are intended for powering residential Wi-Fi 8 routers and work supplier gateways.

Similarly, connected Monday, MediaTek announced its family of Wi-Fi 8 chips, Filogic 8000, which it says will powerfulness “premium and flagship devices leveraging Wi-Fi 8 technology,” everything from endeavor entree points to smartphones, laptops, TVs, and smart location devices. The first cogwheel featuring a Filogic 8000 spot is expected to motorboat later this year.

These caller routers and chipsets are arriving only a fewer months aft TP-Link demonstrated the first Wi-Fi 8 prototype connection successful October. Despite brands going afloat steam up pinch Wi-Fi 8, the charismatic IEEE 802.11bn specification hasn’t really been finalized yet. The current IEEE timeline predicts that the Wi-Fi 8 modular won’t beryllium ratified until mid to precocious 2028. Yet, Asus says its first Wi-Fi 8 routers are slated to motorboat this year. Early hardware would beryllium based connected a draught type of the spec, and would apt request a firmware update down the roadworthy to lucifer up pinch the last specification.