Mercusys Halo Mesh Wi-Fi H47BE

Wi-Fi 7 is the new black. It's not just that it's faster - there are more lanes on the motorway, so to speak - and it allows for many simultaneous channels. This is particularly useful if you have a lot of internal traffic or many devices using a network at the same time.

In theory, Wi-Fi 7 is meant as a way to prepare ordinary users and homes for 10 Gigabit internet. It will seem strange to some, but it's "just" 10x the speed many people already have today, and an incredible amount more than we had 20 years ago. Are you old enough to remember old-fashioned dial-up modems that ran over the telephone connection?

Wi-Fi 7 is theoretically 4.8x faster than Wi-Fi 6E - but then you have to move a lot of large files to realise it. Wi-Fi 7 hits the ceiling at 46 Gbps. That's 5.75 GB per second. That's insane. That's equivalent to downloading most modern games in 11-12 seconds. Or just over 31 seconds if you're downloading the massive Forza Horizon 5 package to your Xbox. If you work professionally, it makes sense, and if you have thick walls that eat up your speed, there's more to take advantage of.

Where Wi-Fi 7 really takes off is with Multi-Link Operation (MLO), which allows your router to connect to your mobile or computer with two bands instead of just one. So, you can have both your 6 GHz and 5 GHz bands switched on at the same time for extreme speed, or always have an underlying 2.4 GHz band to keep you online when you move around a lot. And then there's the bandwidth - it's doubled: 320 MHz versus 160 MHz on the 6E. That leaves room for a lot more traffic and even a future with 8K content.

And then there's amplitude modulation. It sounds like a lot, but it's mostly about how data is transmitted as a radio signal, roughly quadrupling the number of measurable points from 1K to 4K. Since it's 12-bit binary data - so 2^12, or 4096 - hence the name 4096 QAM, and in short it translates to more data.

Wi-Fi 7 also provides more data, faster data, and with very low latency. At least that's the theory, as each device has a higher bandwidth and speed that doesn't have to be shared with other devices. Thus, latency should - theoretically - be less than with Wi-Fi 6E. And then Wi-Fi 7, like its predecessor, can even jump between the different channels on your Wi-Fi if it sees something better.

But let's take a closer look at the H47BE. Mercusys is a sub-brand of TP-Link, which is why the price isn't exactly scary - under £300 for a two-pack if you're lucky. The devices themselves are very discreet: small, white boxes with three 2.5G ports on the back. It would have been nice to have 10G, but there has to be a reason to buy one of the larger models.

The setup requires a phone, and I'm partially against that. On the other hand, it's pretty standard. However, I hate that I have to install another app that I delete a few seconds later. I'm a big fan of browser-based setup, but apps are fine for initial setup, although general management might be too much, especially if you have more complicated setups.

Wi-Fi 7 supports - very theoretically - huge speeds, but the walls of your home and not least your internet speed will probably put a solid stop to that. However, that doesn't mean you can't utilise it - especially if you have a central server with your stuff running on the home network and only that. It could even be something as simple as two computers that have a Steam account. Always, always have Steam network sharing enabled - with a system like this, as you can download over your own network at a rapid pace.

In practical terms, I experienced similar coverage to my existing 6E mesh system, which is quite a bit more expensive than this Mercusys package. I normally experience a loss of about 300 Mbit between floors in my home on the internet. It was now down to 170 Mbit loss - a definite improvement. I didn't keep absurdly close tabs on it during the test period, but I clearly experienced close to 0 drops in speed on mobile devices as I moved around, and the speed on my internal network - especially between multiple machines running Steam - actually increased by around 30%, and mainly limited by the software client. Had I had more time with the system, it might have been fun to look at network noise, because subjectively both noise and ping were pretty consistently better. Not much though - my current system is already pretty good - but we are down to where there's no longer much to gain: 1-2 ms.

It's a pretty solid product with good performance and cheap price and a lovely design, but I am a little concerned about the long-term support as the latest firmware update is six months old. Then again, the setup app was updated as recently as two weeks ago...