Robuck wrote

I have played around with the channel width and ultimately settled on 20/40/80Mhz for the 5G band as it appeared to be more stable. It should be noted my VM hub 5 is also using the same channel width.

 

  @Robuck 

Hi,

With a channel width setting of 20/40/80Mhz it is hard to achieve more than about 700 Mbps of real-world data throughput. The "1200 Mbps" you might see shown as "link speed" are just a theoretical number.

It is only with a channel width of 160 MHz (setting 20/40/80/160Mhz) that you would be able to achieve above 700 Mbps.

However, the setting "20/40/80/160Mhz" means that the router automatically chooses a channel width. Therefore, if you only achieve 700 Mbps with the "20/40/80/160Mhz" setting, then you should verify the router is indeed broadcasting at a channel width of 160 MHz or whether it has somehow decided to switch to 80 Mhz.

  @woozle Thanks for the reply. I am aware of the difference between link speed and actual bandwidth. My vm hub 5 was using the 80Mhz channel width and I was reaching the speeds I stated (ookla speed test). I confirmed with wifi analyser tool WIFIman to confirm the channel and width. In any case this still doesn't answer the issue of my laptop which has a wifi card 802.11ax (wifi 6) only managing to hit 400 mbps compared to the technically speaking inferior hub 5. I would atleast expect to see close to identical bandwidth numbers

  @Robuck 

Ok, I see.

While you run a speedtest, can you please check the relation between the Ookla speeds of your laptop and the "link speeds" shown by the BE550? (in the "Clients" menu click the "v" in front of the client device to unfold the section that shows "Tx/Rx Rate(Mbps)")

If the "link speeds" of the laptop were to be around 500-600, then this would point to an issue with the Wi-Fi, but if the link speeds were over 1000 Mbps while the laptop only gets 400 Mbps on Ookla, then the bottleneck should be something else.

  @woozle 

Here are my speed tests the bottom being my virgin media hub 5 and the top being my Be550. My link speed as stated by the Be550 is Tx 648/Rx 720 (variable). I do get significantly better bandwidth closer to the router. but for a £180 router I expect it to at least be on par with sensitivity/distance as my virgin media router. My sensitivity to both networks is Be550: -61dbm/Vm: -60dbm

  @Robuck 

Well, it is entirely possible that the Virgin Media Hub 5 provides especially good Wi-Fi. Pictures of the Hub 5 show that it is labeled as Sagemcom model F3896LG-VMB.

Sagemcom is a french company and I see no reason why they shouldn't be able to come up with a very good design.

How far away is that laptop from the BE550 when you get those 388 Mbps? Are there any walls in between?

I get 200-230 Mbps about 12 meters away from my BE550 and two plasterboard walls in between.
 

  @woozle My room is based upstairs I would say probably slightly offset from directly above. Most likely issue I can think of is a lack of power on the band/poor penetration and unable to physically adjust antenna position