MacBook Pro has unexpectedly low Wi-Fi speeds

Wi-Fi Radio Signals from your Router fall off as the cube of the distance. Provided you are close to your Router and have clear line of sight and no competition from neighbors' Routers or known interference producers like microwave ovens.

All others need to do a more careful analysis to find out what is happening.

Wireless diagnostics:

Hold down the Option key while you click on the Wi-Fi icon on the menubar to open up the tools for investigating and fixing Wi-Fi issues

Choose "Open Wireless diagnostics", which opens the wireless diagnostics Assistant, but does not proceed.

NB> Wireless Diagnostics is an App that puts up its own MenuBar.

Using its Window menu, there are about eight different things you can do from here, but the top-level is to choose Diagnostics off the Window menu, or simply click (Continue) to do a quick check for Gross misconfiguration or operating problems. Your Admin password will be required. If any recommendations are shown, you should consider then seriously.

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Next is to hold down the Option key and click the Wi-Fi icon as before. The screen that opens shows operating parameters of your Wi-Fi network. There is a great deal, of valuable information in those numbers.

Readers are eager to interpret what is going on from the values there. Please Screenshot, transcribe, or photograph the results and post back in a reply on the forums. Looks like this older one.

"[...]I am curious whether there is anything I should look into, configuration-wise, that may be impairing my Wi-Fi speed? Thank you in advance for any comments or solutions."

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Single-Out this User:

Create a new Administrator user. See if you get the same error. If so, then it is an issue with this current user --and not the entire macOS.

<< My assumption is the Tx Rate relates to the speed test number? >>

No, that is much lower level raw transmit rate from your Mac to the router it connected to.

Remember that 'a chain is strong as its weakest link', and your overall speed will be limited by the slowest network segment. Turning up the speed your Router talks to the Internet to 2,000 M bits/sec can not give you faster speeds if you are limited to maximum Wi-Fi speeds of 860 M bits/sec.

Additional delays might be induced by your network topology, which could further slow your data and (very indirectly) producing slower [high level[ Speed Test results. That can be slower by too much "over-the-air". talking between Routers.

so in the example above, some network bandwidth is consumed by the Routers and access points talking to each other.

Contrast to this setup:

set up this way, with Ethernet cable between the access points, no Wi-Fi bandwidth is consumed forwarding the data, because it is forwarded using ethernet cabling.

<< Bluetooth, due to Mac OS Airdrop, can reduce Wi-Fi speed? >>

There is only truth to that if you are connecting in the 2.4 GHz band that is also used by Bluetooth.

Your connection is in the 5 GHz band, which does not clash with bluetooth

if it make you queasy to share all, then feel free to Omit IP address, Router address, and BSSID. They are not needed for this analysis.

Then transcribe the settings that do not include any identifying numbers.

Your RSSI signal level is adequate at -52 dB, where -40 is typical right next to your Router, and -75 is unusably bad.

Noise at -91 dB levels, is not usually a concern.

You have made a nominal 80 MHz-wide connection using 802.11ax rules in the 5GHz band on channel 100.

using both of your two antennas, each is contributing 408 to your total of 816 M bits/sec. You are using modulation consisting of 256 different patterns.

if your connection were to drop down one step due to problems such as interference, you would still get 340 for each of your two antennas for a total of 680, and use a simpler modualtion with only 64 patterns, which should be Much more stable.

Without the names of your devices, I can not tell whether you have connected to the extender or the main Router. But I would expect an extender would be closer and provide better results, if you have placed them appropriately.

The fastest possible speeds you can likely attain is about 1134 M bits/sec, and that would require Very strong signals, such as right next to your Router (or extender)

I see no trace of the 250 you were lamenting.

¿How are these numbers falling short of your expectations?

it is important to be skeptical of cable companies telling you faster internet connection speeds are simply better. If they were accurate, they will say that you can do more things with different connected devices at the same time, such as stream more than one movie while doing massive downloads of data and music and pictures.

But that is not how most families use their internet, so the massive extra speed they charge premium rates for is never used near its limits.

Faster internet connection will NOT give you higher Wi-Fi speeds at each device.

You can get faster speed, but that requires suing extra-high speed ethernet, such as 2.5 5, or 10 Gigabits/sec. In most cases, that requires special equipment.

Verizon FIOS in my area was discontinuing their lowest speed service, and forcing users to upgrade. I was paying for 25 M bits/sec service before, and the default after upgrade was 1,000 M bits/sec.

I noticed that after the upgrade, NOTHING (in terms of perceived speeds) changed. -- except the numbers that came up in an internet speed test. Observed internet responsiveness was indistinguishable from the old speeds, suggesting 25 M bits/sec was perfectly adequate for my household. (We don't stream movies or songs much.)

So I tried to get by speed reduced to save money.

The slowest available was 300 M bits/sec, and that was also indistinguishable from all previous speeds.

Conclusion:

There is a whole lot of HYPE in those high Internet connection speeds, that does not generally translate into real-world performance increases except in very special cases.

.. most important are:

RSSI (signal strength) and

Noise

Some access points have two independent Radios, and can talk on one channel and listen on the other. But none is typically as fast as a wired Ethernet connection.