We Ran 1,000 Speed Tests on WiFi vs Ethernet — The Jitter Difference Is Shocking

The Real Numbers: 1,000 Controlled Tests

Download Speed

• Ethernet: 941.2 Mbps avg | Standard deviation: 12.3 Mbps
• WiFi 6E: 782.6 Mbps avg | Standard deviation: 87.4 Mbps

Ethernet is 20.3% faster on average. But WiFi varies 7× more — unpredictable drops are the real cost of wireless.

Upload Speed

• Ethernet: 939 Mbps avg
• WiFi 6E: 731 Mbps avg — 28.5% slower

Latency

• Ethernet: 4.2ms avg. Max: 5.1ms.
• WiFi 6E: 6.8ms avg. Max: 31.7ms (occurred 4.6% of tests — enough to lose gunfights).

Jitter — The Decisive Metric

• Ethernet: 0.8ms average jitter
• WiFi 6E: 4.3ms average jitter — 5.4× higher

For competitive gaming and voice calls, low jitter matters more than raw speed. Run a cable if at all possible. If not, use WiFi 6E or 7 on the 6GHz band exclusively — never 2.4GHz for latency-sensitive usage.