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What Wi-Fi 6E means for Apple's new Macs and the iPhone 15
Macworld
|March 2023
New frequency spectrum means ter speed and better reliability.
It was just a few short years ago when we told you about a then-upcoming wireless technology called Wi-Fi 6 (fave.co/3jFUzJn). At the time, what was once known as 802.11ax was henceforth given a much more consumer-friendly name, and previous convoluted Wi-Fi standards got similar names: 802.11ac became Wi-Fi 5, 802.11n became Wi-Fi 4, and so on.
And now we have an even newer name: Wi-Fi 6E. In short, it's an updated version of Wi-Fi 6 that includes access to the new 6GHz frequency band. But while it doesn't introduce new features over Wi-Fi 6, this new frequency band could be a big deal and will make a major impact on the future of wireless networking. Wi-Fi 6E is starting to show up in Apple products already; it's not in any iPhone yet, but you'll find it in the latest iPad Pros, the Mac mini, and the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros. We'll likely find it in more Apple products released throughout 2023, including the iPhone 15.
WHAT'S UP WITH THAT E?
It's hard to believe, but the Wi-Fi standard has been using the same chunks of the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands for over 20 years! Wi-Fi 6 is just the latest attempt to use more advanced processing to wring more bandwidth out of it and make it more reliable.
This story is from the March 2023 edition of Macworld.
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