At the Computex show in Taipei, Realtek demonstrated its wifi 7 chips, which should land in our laptops by the end of the year. If the actual speeds are below what the name of the standard suggests, they remain higher than Gigabit.
The first 7 Mesh wifi routers and kit have just appeared at French retailers, in particular the Deco BE85 from TP-Link. However, no device is currently compatible, whether on the side of smartphones, in which the option is not activated, or laptops since Intel, Mediatek or Realtek have not yet delivered compatible chips.
Far from the speeds displayed by routers, Realtek has just demonstrated the speeds achieved on its wifi 7 chip, which could be integrated by laptop manufacturers into their various models. A demonstration that is interesting to say the least, since it was carried out in real conditions with an everyday product, therefore as close as possible to the speeds you will obtain at home.
With its RTL8922AE available in M.2 2230 version (to update a PC) or 1620 (to be soldered directly to the motherboard), Realtek announces actual speeds oscillating between 1750 and 1950 Mb/s, i.e. a maximum of 205 MB/s. By way of comparison, we had obtained a maximum of 1650 Mb/s on the Asus ZenWiFi Pro ET12 in wifi 6E, which uses blocks of 160 MHz.
If the speeds are not as high as expected, it is because the 320 MHz blocks are not managed by the Realtek chip, although this is one of the great novelties of wifi 7.
Realtek announces the availability of its wifi 7 chips by the end of the year. We should therefore find the first laptops equipped in early 2024, probably coupled with the arrival of 14th generation Intel Core processors.