Does the Pro 4 support WiFi-6?

[jwood1]

I am thinking of installing a WiFi 6 mesh system.  With the new direct to WiFi Arlio 4, I'm hoping to get better speed than with a hub.  In theory WiFi 6 should be faster than WiFi 5, although WiFi 5 might still be an improvement over a hub connection.  Does anyone know what WiFi is supported by the Pro 4?  A related question is, does it use 2.4 Ghz or 5 Ghz or either?

[StephenB]

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@jwood1 wrote:

Does anyone know what WiFi is supported by the Pro 4?  A related question is, does it use 2.4 Ghz or 5 Ghz or either?

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It uses 2.4 ghz only, and doesn't use WiFi-6.

Bandwidth requirements are fairly modest (2 megabits of throughput).  So in general, achieving solid connectivity should be the main goal.

[Retired_Member]

I just switched to Wifi-6 and it works great! That’s in terms of a much better abd stronger connection. Not speed. Still have same lag time ... 15”!

[Jerry4u]

you should ready about the WLAN 6 advantages.

one of them is the lower power consumption. this is very important for a battery powered device.

it would be a very disappointment if Arlo didn't use the WLAN ver. 6 chipsets.

[Retired_Member]

I have been using WiFi 6 for about 6 months. Works fine, better, faster more reliable. I dumped the hub but use an extender to get as close to the camera as possible (critical)

[StephenB]

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@Jerry4u wrote:

you should read about the WLAN 6 advantages.

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I have, and certainly it would be good if future cameras used WiFi 6.  But AFAIK, the current ones are using 802.11b/g/n.  That is per the detailed specs here: https://www.arlo.com/en-us/cameras/pro/arlo-pro-4.html

Another aspect here is that more and more devices are moving to 5G (and with WiFi 6e,  6G).  That should reduce the contention on the 2.4 ghz band, so it would be good for all the Arlo cameras.

[jguerdat]

To me the question is whether it's even a useful "solution". Higher frequencies result in shorter connection distances. Higher speeds won't matter if someplace else is slower. The bases/hubs use 100Mbps connections and the USB ports use USB 2.x, both because there's no utility in adding the additional capability.

[StephenB]

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@jguerdat wrote:

To me the question is whether it's even a useful "solution". Higher frequencies result in shorter connection distances.  

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FWIW, the WiFi roadmap isn't just focused on speed.  It's also focused on on power use and deployment density (anticipating that IoT growth will continue)

I agree that a lot of the benefits in WiFi 6 are limited to the 5 ghz and (newly opened) 6 ghz spectrum.  I also agree that 2.4 ghz is the right frequency spectrum for cameras that are far away.

However, the Target Wake Time (TWT) feature in WiFi 6 could be useful in improving battery life in the cameras.  And the newer modulation can improve real-world range (increasing data rate at a given distance). 

In any event, cameras that connect to home wifi directly should be keeping up with current wifi standards.  The fact that the Pro-4 (launched in October 2020) was spec'd at WiFi 4, when other new devices were all WiFi 6 isn't great.  And most of the datasheets for the new cameras (for instance the Indoor Essential) don't say anything about what WiFi version they use - and they really should.