I can’t count how many times I’ve heard “Widen your Wi-Fi channel and get free extra speed.” It’s one of those router tweaks that sounds too good to be true. One toggle, no new hardware, and supposedly more throughput on the other end.

The fun thing is that it’s basically true. Switching my 5GHz band from 20MHz to 80MHz delivered enough of a speed increase that the marketing might just be as good as everyone says — and I might just be convinced.

Widening your channel is supposed to be a free speed boost

It worked, but it wasn’t as fast as I’d like

The theory is straightforward enough.

Your router’s 5GHz band is carved into 20MHz channels, with each channel representing a fairly narrow slice of the entire spectrum. If you bond a few of those channels together, you create a wider channel that, in theory, allows more data to move through at once.

I don’t have particularly great 5GHz Wi-Fi in my home. It typically delivers around 85-100Mbps, which is way down on what 5GHz Wi-Fi can deliver. During a trip abroad, I tested the 5GHz in my apartment and received speeds of more than 600Mbps. Now, my incoming connection at home is capped at 500Mbps, so I can’t replicate that, but I should be receiving much faster speeds.

So, I changed my 5GHz from 20MHz to 80MHz, widening the channel to hopefully grab a speed boost.

The outcome was mixed. After swapping up and bonding the Wi-Fi channels, I regularly received between 125-300Mbps, with some spikes to 325+. I can’t count on the spikes, but also can’t really count on a single settled Wi-Fi speed. Every speed test is slightly different, and there are background issues that mean some speed tests don’t reveal your real speeds, but overall, it’s a positive increase.

You have to pick the right 5GHz Wi-Fi channels to bond

Try to avoid the DFS channels where possible

Bonding Wi-Fi channels isn’t as simple as just selecting a few within a certain range and hoping for the best. The best Wi-Fi channels to bond also depend on the Wi-Fi interference in your local area. Expanding your Wi-Fi channels can make your connection more susceptible to interference, as the wider channel has more chance of overlapping with a competing signal on the same channel.

Most modern routers automatically choose the “best” channel, and may have a list of other Wi-Fi networks and channels in use in your immediate vicinity. If your router doesn’t automatically show you the nearest overlapping channels, I’d suggest checking out a Wi-Fi analyzer app to help visualize where you’ll find some clean spectrum.

I’m lucky enough to live in a relatively quiet area with few overlapping signals, so I created an 80MHz band around channel 161 (spanning 20MHz channels 149-161). There is another potential 80MHz channel on 5GHz, channel 42 (spanning 20MHz channels 36-48).

These two 80MHz channels are important to note because they don’t trigger router Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS), which listens for radar activity and vacates the channel the moment it detects any. In most cases, on 5GHz Wi-Fi, extending your Wi-Fi channels to 80MHz or 160MHz means you’ll almost always end up spanning at least one DFS channel, but these two are mostly fine.

Why not bond the 2.4GHz band?

You can, but it probably won’t do what you want

2.4GHz is the most common Wi-FI band around the world. That also means it’s typically one of the most congested, as there are only three 20MHz channels that don’t overlap: 1, 6, and 11.

If you bond two of them into a 40MHz, you’re basically gluing together other channels that do overlap, and likely going to start experiencing interference from your neighbors’ Wi-Fi. It’s hard enough to find a 20MHz channel on the 2.4GHz band that doesn’t overlap, let alone make your own channel wider (40MHz), which massively increases your chance of interference.

In most cases, routers have already removed and hidden the option for 2.4GHz channel bonding. Way back when, in the days of Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n), 40MBHz bonded channels were marketed as a speed boost.

Back in the day, there was less Wi-Fi interference, so it made more sense, but it still wasn’t a great idea. The limited number of 2.4GHz channels means that unless you live on your own, in the middle of nowhere, you’re almost always going to encounter interference.

Wider Wi-FI channels aren’t an automatic fix

Bonding channels doesn’t create new spectrum out of nowhere. It merges several existing 20MHz slices into one wider lane, and if any of those slices already carry a neighbor’s Wi-Fi, you’re no longer just using more bandwidth; you’re sharing more of it. A wider channel widens your exposure to whatever else is already broadcasting nearby, not just your own capacity.

However, as said, it’s a very different experience depending on where you live. Out in the sticks with few neighbors, you’re far less likely to encounter interference. In a downtown apartment block? Every person and their dog is competing for the same Wi-Fi space.

That’s why when it comes to Wi-Fi channel bonding, bigger isn’t always better — but it’s absolutely worth a try.