Seeking WiFi 6E Adapter Recommendations for Mac

<< Please don't talk about wifi frequencies if you do not fully understand them. >>

Accusing others of not understanding is a great way to start a fight, and nothing more.

Rather than accuse, I recommend you use your energy to EXPLAIN, so everyone will be smarter going forward.

phoneeeii wrote:

Hello everyone,

I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for a WiFi 6E adapter that is compatible with a MacBook Pro m2(13inch). Any suggestions or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for your help!

from your reference link above: Use Wi-Fi 6E networks with Apple devices - Apple Support

To join a Wi-Fi 6E network, you need one of these Apple devices:

• MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2023) or MacBook Pro (16-inch, 2023)

reference your Mac—

What are you asking about Ethernet?

Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter

Connect your Mac to the internet using Ethernet

Please don't talk about wifi frequencies if you do not fully understand them. Wifi 6E provides 6Ghz band access. When paired with a 6E wifi access point (or wifi router), you will get much faster speeds to the wired network (keep in mind your internet speed is governed by our ISP connection, and faster wifi will not mean faster internet [e.g. if your ISP is 700Mbps down, even though your 6Ghz connection can provide 2Gbps down, you are still limited by that 700Mbps down bottleneck of your internet connection!]). The faster speed to the wired network is due to two main reasons:

1. 6Ghz is 802.11AX (or better, thinking ahead to WiFi 7) only. There is no need to support older non-AX devices on this frequency. This provides the client with access to the full AX feature set without the access point (or wifi router) having to downgrade its service to deal with 802.11AC or 802.11N (or even older) devices.
2. 6Ghz is clean spectrum with many more bands (in the USA at least). This allows you to realistically use wider channels even in a home or business where multiple access points are required. In a big home you might only be able to use 80Mhz wide channels on the 5Ghz band, but you could use 160Mhz wide channels on 6Ghz without co-channel interference. The wider the channel, the faster the throughput.

Wi-Fi 6e is NOT magic! It does not run faster, better, or cheaper.

Wi-Fi 6e simply enlarges the potential number of channels from regular 5 GHz Wi-Fi to to include the 6 GHz range as well. If you already can make a viable WI-fI connection in the 5 GHz band, then Wi-Fi 6e offer you NOTHING additional. And 6 GHz does not carry quite as well as 5 GHz.

To make really fast connections, use Ethernet.

Do not confuse Wi-Fi 6, which is already built-in to All apple-silicon MacBook Pro models, with Wi-Fi 6e, an extremely minor extension that simply enlarges the frequencies available. When you have Wi-Fi 6 already, Wi-Fi 6e is a barely noticeable extension.

"Wi-Fi 6, or IEEE 802.11ax, is an IEEE standard from the Wi-Fi Alliance, for wireless networks (WLANs). It operates in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands,[9] with an extended version, Wi-Fi 6E, that adds the 6 GHz band."

-- from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_6

Wi-Fi 6, aka 802.11ax, is already built-in to All apple-silicon MacBook Pro models.

Older models may have only had Wi-Fi 5 aka 802.11ac, which is already pretty good.

Wifi 6E is barely noticeable??? Apparently you haven't used it. With my iPhone 15 Pro and fast internet service, I routinely max out my service with 1.3-1.4Gbps speed. Thats 1400 mbps. I've never seen anywhere near that even with WiFi 6 on 5ghz. Best I've ever temporarily seen was 900mbps which was very impressive, but far short of 1400mbps. Usually I get around 700mbps using WiFi 6 on 5ghz. Pretty much double the speed on 6ghz. That is extremely noticeable.

This thread is about WiFi 6E. Answers about WiFi 6 are off topic.

<<. I've never seen anywhere near that even with WiFi 6 on 5ghz. >>

Then that 5GHz network is not set up for maximum speed, or there are too many different Routers on it.

There are three things that drive speed on a 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6 or 6E) network. NONE are directly tied to using 6 GHz band. They are:

Channel width: The width of the data channel selected allows a maximum of around 150 M biits/sec per 20 MHz channel width.

20 can yield UP TO around 150,

40 300

80 600

160 1200

in addition, the number of active Antennas can multiply the above numbers

1 *1 so best case on widest channel is 1200

2 *2 so best case on widest channel is 2400 (MacBook Pro M-series has two antennas, so this is its upper limit

4 *4 so best case on widest channel is 4800

These are the Potential fastest speeds. They can only be achieved when the channel widths are set to Very Wide, there is no interferences from neighbors' Routers, you are VERY close to the Router, with no substantial signal-damping building materials intervening.

In many network neighborhoods, you may find neighbor's Routers on every available 5 GHz channel, limiting the channel width you can give yourself without being clobbered by your neighbors' data. In that case, the use of 6 GHZ, sprawled over a 160 MHz channel all for you, may seem luxurious. But it is NOT inherently different from Wi-Fi 6.

Use Ethernet:

With an add-on device on my old Mac, I run a copper Ethernet connection to my Server and the faster devices on my home Network. it runs at 10 G Bits/sec, way faster than even possible over Wi-Fi. The Mac studio has a built-in 10 G Ethernet-over-copper connection.

It looks like apple doesn't support any WiFI 6E adapter. There are several available with Windows 11 support. It's not supported on Windows 10. But I can't find any adapter supported by Apple.

My cable connection into a Motorola 2.5 GHz MB8611 router, a 2.5 GHz Synology RT6600ax router, and a 2.5 GHz StarTech switch with Cat7 usually peaks just under 300 MB/s on a good Speedtest day. Twenty feet away, using Wi-Fi 6, my M2 Mac mini Pro has seen peak connections to the router at around 1200 Mbps.

I purchased a Netgear Nighthawk M6 (MR6550) Pro hotspot that is capable of WI-FI 6 and 6E. Connected to a T-Mobile 5G UC cellular network, it provides a 6E signal to my M2 Mac Mini Pro that has peaked at 2700 Mbps. That with only 2 - 3 bars of Cellular service. It is my solution to the occasional power outage.

A peak in these contexts is between the Mac and the relevant router. Interactively, access to these discussion communities seems just as fast whether through my cable connection, or the Netgear device using T-Mobile's infrastructure.