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1.6Gbps broadband reviewed: is multi-gig internet worth upgrading for?It's expensive and kit-heavy, but I'm not going back.Image credit: Amazon Blog by Will Judd Deputy Editor, Digital Foundry Published on March 15, 2025 Early last year, the first widely available multi-gig broadband was announced for the UK market, offering download speeds up to 1.6Gbps over the Openreach FTTP network. As an irredeemable nerd who gets overexcited at the prospect of a download progress bar reaching heretofore unseen speeds, I knew that I had to try it out to see if it actually offered a noticeable improvement over the more readily available 900Mbps BT service I had before. Would there be a tangible benefit for gaming, content creation and downloading Linux ISOs? To find out, I managed to get in touch with Zen Broadband, who amongst EE and Vodafone are one of the few UK providers offering this package. They offered a spot amongst their early access customers for "Full Fibre Max". The broadband was installed in early October, so I've now been using it for four months - and I've got to say, I'm a fan. That's despite the relatively high monthly cost (65) and the equipment I needed to pick up to truly make the most of a connection of this magnitude (router, switch, motherboard). Before I get into the whys, hows and what-fors, it's probably sensible to address the elephant(s) in the room: yup, pretty much everyone can live with far more affordable broadband, even for 4K streaming or gaming, and of course, far faster broadband exists too - both abroad and right here in the UK, where residents of some lucky communities can get symmetric fibre connections up to 8Gbps (the mind boggles). However, as something that's in theory a bit more widely available, I think there's still value in looking at how this decidedly asymmetric 1.6Gbps/ 0.11Gbps connection performs. To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Getting set up: multi-gig install procedureSo: multi-gig broadband. To get this installed at a property that previously had FTTP connection up to 900Mbps, you'll need an Openreach engineer to upgrade the device that turns the fibre-optic cable that comes into your house into a regular ethernet cable that you can attach to your router. It's called an optical network terminal or ONT in the lingo, and most modern ONTs max out at gigabit speeds - pretty sensible. For faster connections, that's replaced with a 2.5-gig alternative, which in my experience is a relatively rapid procedure that requires an engineer visit but is otherwise painless. Left: the 2.5-gig ONT. Right: Zen broadband costs, ranging from a 105Mbps connection at 35/month to 1.6GBps for 65/month. Other ISPs offering 1.6Gbps connections via Openreach include EE and Vodafone. | Image credit: Digital Foundry/ZenCritically, the fibre line itself isn't changed, so there's no need to drill any fresh holes in the side of your building - just waiting for the engineer to unplug the existing ONT, plug in the new one and wait for it to be activated. For me, this took the better part of an hour from start to finish, with most of the time spent just waiting for the ONT to be remotely activated. Choose your Zen router: Eero Pro 6E vs Max 7As I went with Zen as an ISP, I had a choice of two new routers: the Eero Pro 6E, which is included in the price of the broadband, or the Eero Max 7, which costs an extra 10 a month. I went for the 6E, and that proved to be mistake - and it's the only thing I'd really ding Zen for in what was otherwise a seamless, deeply personalised and gentle swap from my previous providers BT. Here's the thing: the Eero Pro 6E is a lovely bit of kit, providing fast and wide-ranging WiFi 6E - including that all-important 6GHz spectrum in addition to the usual 2.4GHz and 5GHz - but it doesn't allow you to access the full 1.6Gbps connection via ethernet. That's because the router only has two ethernet ports, a 2.5-gig port that must go to the ONT, and a one-gig port that can go to your PC, console, router or switch. The Eero Max 7 is expensive for a WiFi 7 router, but the app-based approach to setup is polished and works well. | Image credit: Amazon/Digital FoundryThat feels like a massive failure for a router provided alongside a multi-gig connection, as the people that are spending this much on internet probably know the importance of a wired connection to maximise speeds and reliability. Sure, WiFi 6E can go beyond gigabit speeds, but it still felt galling to know I wasn't able to get the full-fat connection on my gaming PC! Thankfully, Zen very nicely sent over the Pro 7 so I could compare the two devices, and the WiFi 7 option is definitely worth the extra 240 (10 x 24 months) given that it retails for 600 by itself. As well as boasting higher maximum wireless speeds, this router comes with what I would consider to be a suitable number of ethernet ports for multi-gig broadband: four, two of which are 10-gig, with the other two being 2.5-gig. That means you can use one of the 2.5-gig ports for your incoming internet, while keeping two 10-gig ports for extremely fast local transfers - eg for connecting a gaming/work PC and a NAS. Everything here is logically laid out and much snappier to navigate than your average router software, but it's a pain not being able to access via a web browser if you've left your phone downstairs. Apple Silicon Macs can at least run the iPad version of the app. | Image credit: Amazon/Digital FoundryBoth Eero routers were quite novel to me in that they don't allow you to set them up using a web browser; instead you use an Android or iOS app. This simplifies certain things considerably - setup is particularly easy and rapid, and it's great having notifications when new devices join your network - but you do have fewer options than most traditional routers I've used over the years. Ultimately, I haven't ever needed to use those more advanced options, nor have I felt the need to install custom firmware, but it's worth knowing that the whole setup is much more firmly locked down than your average TP-Link, Asus or Netduma router. Of course, there are plenty of other WiFi 7 routers available that I haven't tested, so it's worth doing your own research on that front. Making the most of a multi-gig connectionWith my router situation solved and a stable 1.6Gbps download, 110Mbps upload and 7ms of ping registering on speed tests, it was time to work out what I would actually use this much bandwidth for. Sure, you can download an entire 845MB Nvidia graphics driver in four seconds, but you could have done that in about seven seconds on a 900Mbps connection, so what's the hurry? The real differences come with substantially bigger downloads. The current Digital Foundry CPU benchmark suite accounts for just over 1.3TB, so the download time for that moves from around 3 hours and 15 minutes to an hour and 48 minutes. That's a critical speed-up when, for example, it's embargo day and you need to redo all of your tests on one CPU in your lineup, but the SSD you've been using now refuses to boot and you need to quickly reinstall everything on another drive... ask me how I know! You too can solve the "didn't-download-Warzone-patch-and-now-all-my-friends-are-waiting" problem for good. Of course, you could just log on 10 minutes earlier... Beyond this, you really need multiple computers to reliably max out a multi-gig connection - and ideally, some roommates or family members that like to download their content rather than stream, as even 25mbps connections are capable of streaming 4K videos. Like the RTX 4090 effectively solves the issue of rasterised rendering, having broadband of this speed effectively solves multi-user streaming. You'd have to have a huge family unit to really notice any slowdowns at all, and in most cases you'll be hitting the limits of the servers you're downloading from rather than your connection. Sharing the load: multi-gig switchesWhile some routers like the Eero Max 7 have plenty of ethernet ports, others like the Eero Pro 6E do not - so often you'll want a second router or an unmanaged network switch to give multiple computers the ability to access the full potential of a multi-gig connection. It may not surprise you to learn that I have about a dozen computers in various states of repair in my office, so having a switch made the most sense to keep multiple computers connected at once without having to resort to WiFi - something that isn't included on all of our test systems. D-Link were kind enough to send over their DMS-106XT, an unmanaged switch designed for gaming (we know this because it has an RGB light bar and a cool wedge-shaped metal design). It's genuinely the nicest-looking switch I've ever used, and of course like all unmanaged switches it works effectively without any need for configuration - just plug in your router or a NAS via the 10-gig link and five more devices via its 2.5-gig ports, and you're off to the races. This photo doesn't show the RGB light bar on the front, but it's real nice. On the back: one 10-gig port, five 2.5-gig ports, a turbo mode switch, an RGB toggle and a barrel power input. | Image credit: D-LinkHowever, there are some extra features that are similarly set-and-forget. There's a turbo mode switch on the back which enables a port-based priority mode (ports one and six can effectively claim as much bandwidth as they want at the expense of other devices; port two gets second dibs and the remaining ports whatever scraps remain). There's also a button to toggle the RGB off if you want a more sedate look. The switch has worked silently and reliably for months now, and at as low as 105 on sale it's quite reasonably priced for the 22.5 gigabytes of potential throughput you're getting. Multi-gig and gaming routers: Netgear XR1000 and Netduma R3 Now this is a gaming router: the Netduma R3. I also experimented with using a few secondary routers to see if they were worth using instead of the Eero, though ultimately I decided against it. The Netgear XR1000 is a router that I've been using since 2022, providing some quite unique gaming features including a ping heatmap that blocks access to badly-performing or geographically distant game servers, ensuring your Counter-Strike matches will be lost by you and your teammates rather than because of network conditions. There's also a rather excellent implementation of QoS, a feature which prioritises gaming and other real-time traffic over downloads, preventing bufferbloat - where your connection to a game server goes all screwy when someone starts downloading something. The Netduma R3 is an even more advanced version of the same idea, a device designed from the ground up to be a gaming router with some new capabilities like "Hybrid VPN" - essentially a way to easily connect multiple devices to an OpenVPN or WireGuard VPN, an ad blocker and "Steady Ping", which increases your ping to make it more stable - a bit like capping your game at a specific frame-rate. These are nice features that work as promised, and are easier to access than on the XR1000 with a modern-feeling UI. These screenshots of the mobile app provide a taste of the sort of features you can expect - a desktop-class browser version is also available if you prefer. | Image credit: NetdumaHowever, the R3's hardware doesn't seem quite as fast or reliable as the XR1000 it ostensibly replaces, and I found its wireless signal strength and speeds were noticeably worse - likely as it's an AX3000 router versus the AX5400 of the XR1000. It also lacks USB functionality versus the XR1000, which could use it as a network share. Finally, it doesn't support PPPoE connections over a certain speed (500Mbps), making it a particularly poor choice for high-speed Openreach connections in the UK in particular. Of course, you can pair it with your ISP's router to get around this issue, but it is a pain if you want a single router solution, and with only gigabit ports you can't use the full potential of a multi-gig connection. This Dongknows review is a little out of date now, but it reflects a lot of the experience I've had with the R3 - a good idea that hasn't quite delivered in practice. The router does continue to receive firmware updates, so it's worth trying if multiplayer gaming is particularly important to you. I hope that we eventually see an R4 model that combines WiFi 6E or 7 with some higher-end specs - it could be a great companion for a multi-gig connection in the future. The Eero app lacks any advanced gaming features, but the single "optimize for conferencing and gaming" toggle does work effectively for eliminating bufferbloat. Thankfully, the Eero routers provided by Zen do have the most important thing for gaming - a decent QoS implementation, which is called "Optimize for Conferencing and Gaming" or "SQM". Enabling this reduced my bufferbloat to similar levels as with the Netduma R3, which is good enough for my purposes - though I do still miss some of the DumaOS ping geofencing features. Wrapping upSo - is multi-gig internet worth upgrading for? For me, the answer is yes. It's a great benefit to my actual job, it makes downloading Call of Duty patches as painless as possible, and it means that I never worry about guests or family members reducing my download speeds or interrupting a gaming session - there's more than enough bandwidth for everyone. I'd still kill for a symmetric connection with substantially more upstream bandwidth - those YouTube videos aren't going to upload themselves! - but for now, this is as good as it gets in the UK outside of relatively rare community fibre projects. Would I recommend it to most people? No. I faced no hardships operating with the 900Mbps internet I was using before, and from a value perspective only the heaviest internet users should even consider gigabit speeds, let alone anything faster. If you're like me and also work in an online medium where fast speeds will make your life easier, then it's more justifiable but still a luxury purchase of a sort - especially as the high download speeds aren't accompanied by an increase in upload speeds over 900Mbps connections. Beyond the not insignificant outlay on the internet connection itself, it's worth considering the cost of the various devices that you might feel compelled to pick up at some stage to make the most of your new speeds: new motherboards and laptops, fancy WiFi 7 routers and switches, high-end smartphones. Of these, the D-Link DMS-106XT switch is an easy recommendation to share a high-speed line between more wired devices, while the Eero Max 7 and Netduma R3 are both interesting routers worth at least knowing about. Of course, there's always something faster on the horizon - Vodafone are promising 2.2Gbps speeds - including 900Mbps uploads if this promo photo is to be believed - while Openreach have also announced 1GBps symmetric connections for some areas. Image credit: VodafoneBeyond testing this specific connection speed, I've also come away with a positive impression of both Zen, my new ISP, and Eero, my new router system. Zen's customer support has been so much more engaging, responsive and real versus the giants of BT and Virgin that I've used previously, and I'd recommend them to anyone in the UK. For multi-gig in particular, I think offering the Eero Pro 6E is a bit weird, and they ought to swap to the Eero Pro 7 and its two 2.5-gig ports instead once this is available later in February. Amazon's Eero routers are also a bit of a revelation - I don't particularly like giving up the control to really fiddle with firmwares and so on, but the features that are here work well and the process of monitoring devices or adding new routers is exceptionally streamlined. There are certainly more affordable WiFi 6E / 7 devices out there, but for ease-of-use these routers deserve their reputation. I think that's just about everything, so I'll just conclude by saying that I look forward to reading your comments on multi-gig internet below. If you have any questions about the whole situation, I'll answer them if I can.
