A new Google or Nest Wifi could be in the works, may feature Wifi 6 for improved connectivity

According to a recent APK Insights deep dive by the 9to5Google team, Google could have a brand new Nest or Google Wifi device in the works. Codenamed “Sirocco”, which refers to “a hot wind, often dusty or rainy, blowing from North Africa across the Mediterranean to southern Europe”, the new device falls right in line with the company’s nomenclature for this category of devices.

At this time, 9to5 has yet to discover anything super significant about the mysteriously codenamed device, aside from its existence and its similarities to previous Nest and Google Wifi units. In this way, you could say it’s very much like the wind – unable to be seen, but most certainly there.

While we wait to hear more about “Sirocco”, let’s talk about what it may end up being. The old Nest Wifi and Google Wifi devices are aging quite a bit now in 2022, and neither features Wifi 6, so it’s highly likely that Google will want to go in this direction with the next generation. Wifi 6 was supposed to be in “Mistral” – the Wifi unit you probably have in your home right now, and that was released in 2019, but unfortunately, it just missed the boat when it was released.

Should Sirocco be packed with Wifi 6 though, it would offer higher peak bandwidth and much-improved distribution of bandwidth across multiple devices in your home. As of right now, the new Wifi standard has yet to really catch on, but when it doesn’t it’s going to drastically improve things across the board – not for speed, but for the aforementioned reasons.

It’s not so much overall speed that defines Wi-Fi 6, but how the technology allows a router to communicate with different devices at the same time, giving each dedicated bandwidth.

The Ambient

Anyone who remembers Google’s now dead and no longer supported OnHub will miss the good old days, and moving to the Google Wifi or Nest Wifi – even with the 40% upgrade discount that the company offered when it phased the OnHub out – didn’t exactly soften the blow, but Google Wifi offers much better data transmission speed and performance.

If you’re interested in upgrading your current router to whatever Google releases next, let me know in the comments. Believe it or not, I’m currently using the original Google Wifi and experiencing pretty crappy speeds, so I was about to upgrade to the latest model, but I think I’ll wait now to see what comes of the next hardware event.