After a 7-year corporate stint, Tanveer found his love for writing and tech too much to resist. An MBA in Marketing and the owner of a PC building business, he writes on PC hardware, technology, and Windows. When not scouring the web for ideas, he can be found building PCs, watching anime, or playing Smash Karts on his RTX 3080 (sigh).
Buying a Wi-Fi 7 router is often the home networking upgrade many households default to. It has been marketed as the one-stop solution to all your Wi-Fi woes, and the newest standard ought to improve your Wi-Fi, right? Well, it turns out most people can't really make use of a Wi-Fi 7 router. Whether it's their house's Ethernet infrastructure, internet plan speed, or device compatibility, most of Wi-Fi 7's promises simply fall flat.
Instead of buying an expensive Wi-Fi 7 router that does nothing for your home network, I suggest buying one or more Wi-Fi 6 routers on the used market. By repurposing them as wired access points or for short Ethernet runs, you can improve your home network without wasting money.
Extend your wireless coverage without extenders or a mesh network
Wi-Fi 6 routers make great access points
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Besides an increase in the theoretical bandwidth, a Wi-Fi 7 router can bring improved coverage, latency, and congestion management to a home network. The great thing is that most homes can achieve the same thing by adding a used Wi-Fi 6 router to their existing network. No matter how good your router is, you probably have one or more dead zones in the house. And with too many smart devices on the network, latency is unavoidable.
A Wi-Fi 6 router repurposed as a wired access point can instantly eliminate chronic dead zones in your house. As long as you can connect its WAN port to your main router's LAN port with, say, a Cat6 cable, you can create a strong, secondary access point for your wireless devices. You just need to factory reset the used router, put it into bridge mode, disable DHCP to avoid conflicts, assign it an IP address outside your DHCP pool, and use the same SSID and password as your main router.
By hardwiring your main router to the used router, you turn the latter into a wireless broadcaster that doesn't have the downsides of a wireless extender. Plus, you don't need to buy an expensive mesh network just for a single dead zone; one or two used routers are enough. You can find pre-owned Asus, MSI, and TP-Link Wi-Fi 6 routers on eBay for as low as $10–$15, whereas a decent mesh system will cost around $100.
Alternatively, you can reserve the used Wi-Fi 6 router for your smart home network, keeping it 2.4GHz–only. This will prevent your smart home from dragging down your main network. If the Wi-Fi 6 model you're buying is no longer supported by the manufacturer, you can flash it with custom firmware to continue receiving security updates.
Bring Ethernet closer to your high-performance devices
Easier to manage and a godsend for reliability
If you've been struggling with Wi-Fi latency or coverage issues on your smart TV, streaming box, or gaming console, a used Wi-Fi 6 router can be just what you need. Instead of routing a long Ethernet cable from your main router to your latency-sensitive devices, you can hardwire it to a Wi-Fi 6 router sitting close by, and then add another wired link to your TV or console.
By doing so, you avoid the hassle and cost associated with long Ethernet runs, and replace them with short, manageable runs that are easier to hide along the floor or ceiling — no routing through walls. Your TV, console, or other devices get a reliable wired connection, and your wireless devices get to enjoy a cleaner, congestion-free Wi-Fi network. You can even bring secondary desktop PCs to the LAN using your newly acquired access point.
Used Wi-Fi 6 routers are way cheaper than Wi-Fi 7 models
It's not comparable at all
I touched upon the affordability of pre-owned Wi-Fi 6 routers in contrast to expensive mesh systems, but what about a new Wi-Fi 7 router? While a used Wi-Fi 6 router may cost you up to $25, a proper tri-band Wi-Fi 7 model will typically sit close to $200. Occasional deals can drop the investment to around $170, but that's still way more expensive than a Wi-Fi 6 model sourced from eBay.
Wi-Fi 7 models haven't been on the pre-owned market long enough, so you'll still have to shell out around $100 for a used model. It makes no sense to invest in a Wi-Fi 7 router simply for extra coverage and modern features that your devices can't even use. Wi-Fi 7 made a lot of noise about MLO and 320 MHz channels, but neither enjoys widespread support. Besides, wider channels only help you close to the router; they increase interference away from it.
Eventually, your devices will start leveraging Wi-Fi 7 features fully, but it may be time for Wi-Fi 8 by then. In any case, you don't need to worry about missing out on Wi-Fi 7 for a few more years. Most households aren't subscribed to multi-gig plans or have home servers that demand a high-end Wi-Fi 7 router. A used Wi-Fi 6 router could be enough to patch the holes in your Wi-Fi network.
Buying used routers may not be your first instinct, but it's worth it
For many people, buying a router is a one-time expense that lasts for years with no additional cost. That said, spending $200 on a Wi-Fi 7 router still doesn't make sense if it makes no improvement to your network. If a used Wi-Fi 6 router can significantly boost your Wi-Fi and wired networks for under $25, it deserves to be considered.