The U7 Pro trades 5 GHz capacity for 6 GHz. It is 2x2 MIMO on all three bands. The U6 Pro is plain Wi-Fi 6 with 4x4 on 5 GHz, so it has about 2 Gbps more 5 GHz throughput. The U7 Pro's ratings are 688 Mbps on 2.4 GHz, 2.8 Gbps on 5 GHz and 5.7 Gbps on 6 GHz, for 300+ clients against the U6 Pro's 350+. The host notes that only the U6 Enterprise and U6 Enterprise In-Wall offered 6E at the time.
It needs PoE+ and gets wider channels and a 2.5 GbE port. It draws up to 21 W against the U6 Pro's 13 W, and the host measured about 10 W versus 6 W at idle. It also replaces gigabit Ethernet with a 2.5 GbE port. Channel width goes up to 240 MHz on 5 GHz (the U6 Pro tops out at 160 MHz) and 320 MHz on 6 GHz.
A Wi-Fi 7 phone nearly doubled the other test results. On the U7 Pro at 320 MHz, a Pixel 8 averaged just over 1.4 Gbps down and 1.87 Gbps up. An iPhone 13 Pro Max averaged about 700/812 Mbps at 240 MHz. On the U6 Pro, the Pixel got 673/944 Mbps and the iPhone 622/563 Mbps. Tests ran through a Pro Max switch's 2.5 GbE port to a ZimaBoard with a 10 GbE card running OpenSpeedTest, with one access point on.
Single-device tests may flatter the U7 Pro on 5 GHz. The host infers that with ten 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 iPhones testing at once, the U6 Pro's 4x4 on 5 GHz gives more lanes and might beat the U7 Pro. That is because much of Wi-Fi 6 and 7's gain is about efficiency with many devices.
The host sees no rush to upgrade to Wi-Fi 7. The standard was out of draft but awaiting a final vote expected later in the year, and he does not expect that to make these access points obsolete. Buying new after ratification is fine, he says, but existing Wi-Fi 5 or 6 access points have a couple of years left. Without Wi-Fi 7 clients, and with streaming boxes, IoT and printers fine on Wi-Fi 5, little difference would be noticed.