Is it worth upgrading from M1 Max to M3 Max for Wifi 6E

[seasurfer]

I have the 16 inch M1 Max, it has been a great laptop for me since then and has not given me any problem.

I am upgrading my internet to fiber optic and getting the Eero Pro 6E.

I wonder if it is worth upgrading my M1 Max to M3 Max to benefit from the Wifi 6E?

What do everyone think?

 

[neo_cs193p]

Nope.

 

[bmcgrath]

No - waste of money.

 

[buran-energia]

For wifi 6E? Absolutely not. Besides there's wifi 7 now which will probably be on the next model.

 

[seasurfer]

Judging from everyone's respond, Wifi 6E is not worth the hype compare to just Wifi 6?

 

[dmccloud]

Judging from everyone's respond, Wifi 6E is not worth the hype compare to just Wifi 6?

Even with just a WiFi 6 router, there was a noticeable speed bump with WiFi 6E when I got my 14" MBP back in February. However, WiFi alone is hardly a reason to upgrade any machine. What I would recommend is to look at some M1 vs M3 comparisons specific to your usage and use that to determine if upgrading is a good option, because faster WiFi will not translate into better performance on benchmarks, encoging/transcoding video, photo editing, etc.

 

[Ma2k5]

No, I’m only upgrading well, technically purchasing, as I’m downsizing to 14”.

 

[ldenning]

Just to add a comment, I just upgraded from Eero Pro 6e to Eero Max 7, and use a Macbook Pro 16 M1 Max with it.
So far, the Wifi 6 in my MBP is responding faster to the new system than my previous 6e, but both were quite decent. As noted previously, when Apple upgrades the MPB to Wifi 7, there will be a big jump potentially in speed.

 

[seasurfer]

Just to add a comment, I just upgraded from Eero Pro 6e to Eero Max 7, and use a Macbook Pro 16 M1 Max with it.
So far, the Wifi 6 in my MBP is responding faster to the new system than my previous 6e, but both were quite decent. As noted previously, when Apple upgrades the MPB to Wifi 7, there will be a big jump potentially in speed.

How much of a gain you got from Eero Pro 6E to Eero Max 7 with your M1 Max?

 

[ldenning]

How much of a gain you got from Eero Pro 6E to Eero Max 7 with your M1 Max?

It appears to be a decent jump, and for 6e devices like my iPhone 15 PM. MBP tested at 444 download mps (around 300-350 mps download previously) with Verizon FIOS 1 gig service. IPhone is doing 640 (around 340 - 400 mps average previously) inside the house. Tested with Speedtest.

 

[chabig]

The only time better wifi would meaningfully benefit you is if your wifi connection is a bottleneck. Chances are, your local internet connection to the ISP is your bottleneck. And if that isn't the case, your bottleneck is probably the server at the far end of whatever you're doing on the internet. The local connection between you and your router is very unlikely to bottleneck anything.

 

[Luna Murasaki]

The only time better wifi would meaningfully benefit you is if your wifi connection is a bottleneck. Chances are, your local internet connection to the ISP is your bottleneck. And if that isn't the case, your bottleneck is probably the server at the far end of whatever you're doing on the internet. The local connection between you and your router is very unlikely to bottleneck anything.

LOL was just about to post the same thing. I very much doubt even the best ISP connections are anywhere near as fast as average WiFi speeds. Even between two computers on the network, the connection speed would be determined by the lowest common denominator, so for you to have any speed increase at all even then, the other computer would either need to be wired to the router or also support WiFi 6E.

Maybe WiFi 6E is more reliable though. I know nothing about it. Personally I haven't had any issues with drops anyway.

I just upgraded from a MacBook Pro with an M1 Max chip to a MacBook Pro with an M3 Max chip. I certainly notice a lot of big improvements but WiFi speed is not one of them. Were it not for the need to get my dad off of an Intel Mac for fear of the looming end of support, I would not have considered it time to upgrade.

 

[seasurfer]

Will upgrading my wifi router to Eero 7 Max or any Wifi 7 router improve my speed over upgrading from M1 to M3?

Please share any experience. Thanks.

 

[ColdCase]

I have the 16 inch M1 Max, it has been a great laptop for me since then and has not given me any problem.

I am upgrading my internet to fiber optic and getting the Eero Pro 6E.

I wonder if it is worth upgrading my M1 Max to M3 Max to benefit from the Wifi 6E?

What do everyone think?

Your Ero Pro will cause more problems than a M1 Max to M3 Max can help. They are flakey at best. For one it has an Auto-Update feature that you cannot disable. So couple times a month Eero will update the software causing most of the wi-fi connected devices to stop working. Samsung and Vizio TVs need reboot and re-connect. Printers need to be added to the network again. Smart home hubs, completely stop working and needs to re-establish a new connections. Other routers can be a pain when you need to reboot them every couple weeks as preventive maintenance... but at least you can plan on the outages....

 

[Lobwedgephil]

Your Ero Pro will cause more problems than a M1 Max to M3 Max can help. They are flakey at best. For one it has an Auto-Update feature that you cannot disable. So couple times a month Eero will update the software causing most of the wi-fi connected devices to stop working. Samsung and Vizio TVs need reboot and re-connect. Printers need to be added to the network again. Smart home hubs, completely stop working and needs to re-establish a new connections. Other routers can be a pain when you need to reboot them every couple weeks as preventive maintenance... but at least you can plan on the outages....

Have had Eero's for years, have the 6 Pro ones now, have never had anything disconnect after it updates.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

I have the 16 inch M1 Max, it has been a great laptop for me since then and has not given me any problem.

I am upgrading my internet to fiber optic and getting the Eero Pro 6E.

I wonder if it is worth upgrading my M1 Max to M3 Max to benefit from the Wifi 6E?

What do everyone think?

I have a 6E router and an M2 Max MBP and find it useful. If you want the benefits of 6E I suggest getting the less expensive M2 Max, and using the money saved over M3 for more RAM. IMO the only reason to go M3 would be if you needed the higher 128 GB RAM for the future.

My router is a TP-Link WiFi 6E AXE5400 that was installed in May as a WAP and has had zero issues with two MBPs, an oldish HP laser printer, multiple iPads and iPhones. Mostly it adds strength/range. FWIW my internet through the WAP is ~650 MBPs down and ~500 MBPs up on my 2016 MBP and ~825 MBPs both up and down on my M2 MBP. So the WiFi 6E is not so much about speed, but range/consistency is what is relevant to me. YMMV.

 

[ZMAN Z28]

I have a 6E router and an M2 Max MBP and find it useful. If you want the benefits of 6E I suggest getting the less expensive M2 Max, and using the money saved over M3 for more RAM. IMO the only reason to go M3 would be if you needed the higher 128 GB RAM for the future.

My router is a TP-Link WiFi 6E AXE5400 that was installed in May as a WAP and has had zero issues with two MBPs, an oldish HP laser printer, multiple iPads and iPhones. Mostly it adds strength/range. FWIW my internet through the WAP is ~650 MBPs down and ~500 MBPs up on my 2016 MBP and ~825 MBPs both up and down on my M2 MBP. So the WiFi 6E is not so much about speed, but range/consistency is what is relevant to me. YMMV.

I'm upgrading from a Core I7 MBP that is 13 years old. I'm going with the M3 Pro. I think it's going to be a substantial upgrade. My desktop is an M1 mini 8GB/512GB. It does the job, but it's a little slow in FCX. I played around with the M3 Pro 18GB/512GB base model for $1999 and that thing was very fast. Better than the M3 base for $1599. If anyone is only surfing the web and being on social media, then any M1 works great and no need to get an M3. For me, the M3 Pro makes sense. I hate editing on my iPad Pro M2. That is going to be traded in for the $580 credit. I'll eventually get a 6E router.

 

[macduke]

I bought an Eero WiFi 6E two pack this time last year and had nothing but horrible problems with it and returned it. I spent many hours with support, they rolled back my software, it didn’t matter. Was barely faster than WiFi 6 on my old iPhone 14 Pro anyway.

They laid 1Gbps fiber in my neighborhood a couple years ago. I can tell zero difference in normal web use from the 500Mbps I had before on cable for download speed. I can tell a much faster upload speed. This is on Ethernet. WiFi 6 usually gets me around saturation for 500Mbps. The only thing it’s good for is when I’m connecting directly to Amazon S3 and our RackSpace servers at work. Then I get 950Mbps uploads and downloads, which is great for web development, archiving sites, etc. But for consumer stuff? Not really. My Dropbox doesn’t feel much faster. Xbox games seem to capped around 550Mbps download.

You know what made the biggest difference? Wired backhaul. I bought a MoCA pair, 2.5Gbps (for future proofing), and connected my upstairs and downstairs WiFi 6 routers. That fixed all of my problems and freed up another antenna and CPU processing for all of my devices. It has been nearly perfect since then.

So no, there is no practical reason to upgrade for that alone unless you’re needing to push a lot of data up and down directly from servers and time is money. And even so, with the Eero it isn’t going to help you much, in my experience.

 

[HDFan]

wonder if it is worth upgrading my M1 Max to M3 Max to benefit from the Wifi 6E?

Absolutely, but does depend on what you are doing.

I very much doubt even the best ISP connections are anywhere near as fast as average WiFi speeds.

WiFi with a gigabit broadband connection and a good modem tops out at ~920 Mbps.

WiFi with 6E and Comcast modem maxes out the broadband at > 1400 Bps, 50% faster. Even better results occur if your broadband speed is greater.

 

[TheRealAlex]

I have the 16 inch M1 Max, it has been a great laptop for me since then and has not given me any problem.

I am upgrading my internet to fiber optic and getting the Eero Pro 6E.

I wonder if it is worth upgrading my M1 Max to M3 Max to benefit from the Wifi 6E?

What do everyone think?

No way. But I’ve personally transitioned all my Equipment to WiFi 6E, I may scrap my M3 MBP due to the lack of WiFi 7

 

[Flowstates]

It all depends on how anal you are about speed/latency, but we are well into decreasing returns at this point.

 

[F23]

as a shareholder, absolutely YES