Can Wi-Fi 5 clients perform better with a Wi-Fi 6 Access Point?

With many Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) AP’s being released and relatively few Wi-Fi 6 clients in the wild I wanted to do some throughput testing on a non Wi-Fi 6 client device the iPhone Xs.

Like all current iPhones the top of the line Xs has a 2×2 Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) radio. I used the iperf app and put it in server mode and then ran the jperf on my desktop. I made sure the spectrum was clear with my WiPry 2500x, Wi-Fi Spectrum Analyzer and put both AP’s in 80Mhz mode at a 5 foot range.

First I tested against a 4×4 Wi-Fi 5 AP these are the results I got around 375Mbps

Next I tested against the EnGenius EWS377AP and I got the results below averaging about 610Mbps.

So this shows that a Wi-Fi 5 client device can get a performance benefit from a using the latest Wi-Fi 6 Access Point. Since the EWS377AP is using the latest Wi-Fi chipset with faster CPU and more memory many existing Wi-Fi devices will get a throughput increase. The 4×4 radio chains also allow for better range and speed at range.

As more Wi-Fi 6 devices are released later this year like the Intel 10th generation ice lake laptop processors and possibly the iPhone 11 we will see even more performance benefits especially in high density situations.

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