Wi-Fi 6, the latest Wi-Fi standard, has come a long way in the last 18 months, having started to ship in phones and laptops as well as access points.  Marketing messages have typically promoted OFDMA as the main feature of Wi-Fi 6, and OFDMA is at least table stakes in lower-priced access points available through retailers.  However, 8 x 8 MU-MIMO provides the biggest benefit to total system throughput and capacity, and makes sense where the highest possible performance is required, for example for supporting high-data rate client devices in applications such as video streaming.  OFDMA reduces contention, especially for low-bandwidth applications with small packet size, but does not have the same multiplicative effect on capacity as 8 x 8 MU-MIMO.

The author of a new Strategy Analytics report on Wi-Fi 6 arrived at this conclusion after discussions with testing labs, OEMs, carriers, and chipset providers.  You can read the entire report, which includes a list of high-performing Wi-Fi 6 routers / access points, here.