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of the new M4 Macs continue to offer Wi-Fi 6E, and while it does allow for access to the 6GHz band on supported Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 routers, it's not the latest and greatest technology. It is surprising that Apple opted out of updating the new machines with Wi-Fi 7 because all of the iPhone 16 models that came out in September feature Wi-Fi 7 chips from Broadcom. The iPhones support the 802.11be Wi-Fi 7 standard with 2x2 MIMO, but there is a caveat with the iPhone 16 models that takes a little bit of the sting away from not getting Wi-Fi 7 in Macs. Apple's Wi-Fi specifications page confirms that the Wi-Fi 7 chips in the iPhone 16 models have a maximum physical layer data rate of 2400Mb/s and a maximum channel bandwidth of 160MHz, which is the same performance as the Wi-Fi 6E chips in the iPhone 15 Pro models and the M3 Mac models with Wi-Fi 6E on 6GHz networks (Apple's chart hasn't been updated for M4, but presumably the Wi-Fi 6E chips have not changed). Wi-Fi 7 in the iPhone 16 models does up the maximum data rate when connected to 5GHz bands compared to the Wi-Fi 6E chips used in Macs and iPads, but Apple does not support the full 320MHz bandwidth with its Wi-Fi 7 implementation. Wi-Fi 7 offers up to 320MHz bandwidth to accommodate more devices, but Apple has limited bandwidth to 160MHz, so iPhone 16 models don't take full advantage of Wi-Fi 7 despite having a Wi-Fi 7 chip. That limitation has been a disappointment, but the iPhone 16 models do support Multi-Link Operation (MLO) for connecting to multiple bands at the same time for faster data transmission and lower latency on supported networks.
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