Wi-Fi 5 is the marketing name for IEEE 802.11ac, the Wi-Fi generation introduced in 2014 and now superseded by Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7. Wi-Fi 5 operates exclusively on the 5 GHz band (unlike its predecessors, which used 2.4 GHz) and supports speeds up to several gigabits per second on capable hardware.

In short: Wi-Fi 5 delivered substantial improvements over Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) in three areas. It uses wider channels (up to 160 MHz), more efficient modulation (256-QAM), and multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO), which allows the access point to communicate with multiple clients simultaneously rather than serving them one at a time. Practical throughput on a well-positioned Wi-Fi 5 link is typically 400 to 800 Mbps, with peak rates above 1 Gbps possible on three-stream or four-stream configurations.

For IoT deployments, Wi-Fi 5 remains capable but is being progressively replaced by Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 in new builds. Many industrial cellular routers from the previous generation (and some still shipping today) include Wi-Fi 5 radios. Teltonika's RUTX series, for example, includes dual-band 802.11ac on most models. For deployments where the connected devices are themselves Wi-Fi 5 or older (most IoT sensors, payment terminals, and embedded devices remain on older Wi-Fi generations), the router's Wi-Fi 5 radio is the bottleneck rather than the connected devices.

For new installations, specifying Wi-Fi 6 is increasingly the better choice even where the immediate need does not demand it. Wi-Fi 6 is backwards compatible with Wi-Fi 5 clients, performs better in dense environments, and futureproofs the deployment against upgraded clients arriving over the device's operational lifetime.