By Brandon Hill
Publication Date: 2026-01-06 18:02:00
Today at CES, Broadcom is expanding the family with two new dual-band Wi-Fi 8 chips that combine 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radios into a single chip. The BCM6714 is the lower-end offering, with a 3×4 arrangement. That means it supports three spatial streams on the 2.4 GHz band and four on the 5 GHz band. The BCM6719 ups the ante by delivering four spatial streams across both bands.
And with that news, I can already see the collective eyerolls of the enthusiast community. When Wi-Fi 7 launched, the first devices to hit the market were more expensive tri-band solutions that supported the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands. Later, more affordable networking products arrived, supporting only the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands. While this allowed manufacturers to hit a lower price point, it also created confusion in the marketplace – just because a router was labeled Wi-Fi 7 didn’t mean it supported the full feature set. That confusion will live on for another generation.