More information has slipped about EE’s upcoming WiFi router including an image of the back of the unit and its accompanying signal booster. The Smart Hub Pro will be the company’s new flagship device, designed to deliver its multi-gigabit broadband packages through your home.
The WiFi 7 classification means it offers a third 6Ghz channel (in addition to the 2.4GHz and 5Ghz). This third channel was also available from WiFi 6E, but on WiFi 7, it has double the bandwidth (320MHz) to cope with even more data at once.
EE’s current top router, the Smart Hub Plus is a WiFi 6 device that supports up to 190 devices at any one time. While this uses Gaming and Work modes to prioritise traffic, a WiFi 7 router will be able to offer top speeds to even more devices at once.
(Image credit: EE)
The picture of the back of the new Smart Hub Pro reveals a very similar array of ports and buttons as before, with one notable exception. There’s no DSL broadband port for copper (non-fibre) connections. That means the Smart Hub Pro will only be available for dedicated fibre services, which makes sense as copper broadband services won’t be able to make use of the extra speed.
Each port and button has brail next to it, allowing for easier operation by partially sighted users. I also like that the unit sits taller and thinner, meaning it takes up less space on your surfaces.
The booster hub, which appears to be called the Smart WiFi Pro is likely to mirror the abilities of the current Smart WiFi Plus unit, which is a Mesh node that not only extends the signal, but has its own physical LAN ports to connect local devices in other rooms.
It’s not clear from the images whether the LAN ports on the Smart Hub Pro or the Smart WiFi Pro have been upgraded from the 1Gig ones on the Plus models to make full use of that current 1.6Gbs top speed. It would be nice if it offered the faster 2.5Gbps ports but we’ll have to wait for more info closer to release to find out.
