New Mac Mini M2 has constant issues with wifi. Its unusable. Ethernet works perfectly, but when using wifi the connection will consistently drop packets. Wifi works perfectly with older Mac mini M1, MacBook Pro, Intel Mac in the same small office. I have turned off all other devices and still have same issue. Did a factory reset and same issues.
Mac mini (2023 with M2)
**Solution discovered** (but Mac MUST release a fix for this soon. Very unhappy with my new Mac Mini M2 Pro.)
it is a problem with Wi-Fi 6 routers that combine all the bands under one SSID (Wi-Fi name).
If you have Spectrum, their “smart” router doesn’t have the function to separate the bands and therefore will NOT work. You need to get another router and the bands have to be named separately as others have said in the posts.
this is an issue that shouldn’t be an issue, and I’m surprised no fix has come for this yet so regular people don’t have to become network professionals to get their internet to work!
This does not help at all, this is a problem with Kext/driver for this chipset or something relative, its all over, we have networks that work just fine with M1 machines, both pro and air. When m2Pro with Wifi6e chipset came and these machines are not all over companys we have wifi tickets all over, they dropping, bad connection and such.
No other machines have these troubles.
That's interesting. Most people have had HDMI port interference affecting their Wi-Fi issues. Just out of curiosity, could you perform an experiment? Could you ground the HDMI port of your Mac mini to see if that improves Wi-Fi signal strength? Some other people remarked that their Wi-Fi got better when grounding the HDMI port/cable. Maybe also ground the Thunderbolt port/cable and see if that changes anything?
Thank you, Ken Shimabukuro, for your information.
I really hope that Apple will take this issue seriously. If the HDMI connector may generate electromagnetic interference, the chances of resolving this problem through a software update are very slim.
For now, my temporary solution is using Type-C to HDMI.
Good day together,
As a general information at the start: when I use the word "normal" for describing my WiFi connection behavior, it means that the WiFi connection is showing high latency spikes, between normal latencies. It's just "normal" for me after several months with the Mac mini.
Today I did the following tests:
Results:
Interesting behavior in between: While I had 3 monitors connected, I attached the grounding over both USB-C to DP cables to the Mac mini. This produced complete packet loss to the gateway in the same subnet as long as the grounding was attached that way. This behavior was reproducible in that moment.
4. Detaching the third monitor connected via HDMI made a little difference in the latency. But, at all, the WiFi connection went back to "normal" again.
This is showing me again that there is something totally wrong in the design of the Mac mini. At least, this is my opinion. Unfortunately, it will/would be hard to explain this to Apple, because you will never get in touch with an Apple engineer who would understand what was done by myself or in this forum regarding the WiFi behavior of the Mac mini.
At the moment, I am still in contact with the Apple engineers (via telephone) to exchange debug data (Wireshark captures, WiFi diagnostics,...) for the third time, to prove that there is something wrong with the Mac mini and not with my environment/my WiFi setup. During the phone calls, I am always getting the feeling they are assuming that the behavior is caused by my WiFi setup and not by their Apple device. Even though a great number of other devices (Apple and Windows devices) in the same WiFi do not have any problems. But maybe that is only my experience with the Apple support. ...please excuse the little frustrated complaint about my Apple support experience.
Kind regards
Dominik
PS: I hope my English is understandable. I am a native German speaker. ;-)
The Other World Computing hub may still be too close to your Mac mini to avoid all interference. Yes, the M2 Pro Mac mini's shouldn't be vulnerable to interference that other Macs aren't affected by. Doesn't make sense to me.
Sorry for my late reply.
@Ken Shimabukuro: the displays are connected via HDMI and/or USB-C to DP. As mentioned on side 32 (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254587195?answerId=259394995022&login=true).
I think that the issue is not directly related to the HDMI port itself. I think it is more of an software / design issue. My issue is still under investigation by the software development team. I am still in contact with my technical engineer. Unfortunately, the software development team seems to need very much time for stating a statement.
And, just to mention it, please do not write all the time "the solution to the problem". ;-) All possible ways that are mentioned in this thread (e.g. splitting 2.4GHz and 5GHz, grounding the HDMI port, not using the HDMI port,...) are only workarounds. The issue is produced by Apple and the solution has to come from Apple!
I discovered the 6E modes the day I posted on this thread. So far so good. 👍🏽 I even did a speed test with 6E on and with 6E off. With 6E mode off I was able to complete the speed test. When I had 6E mode on, it would disconnect from the internet and would not be able to run the speed test.
I've tried that too with the same issue for my new MBP, no help. Only thing that worked for me was to use the 2.4ghz ssid. Turning off awdl0 made no difference for me.
It's been 5 days now that I don't have any problem
Workaorud new installation with Lan cable connected after that reliable WiFi
so my WiFi networks are separate and there is only 2.4 and 5GHz from my router. The settings don't matter to me. However, I can reproduce the error with HDMI cables or some USB-C cables.
Did you try the suggestion?
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/116uxf6/solved_apple_mac_mini_m2_pro_wifi_issue/
Yes, 13.4 also fixed it for me with the exception of my 6E network which it still fails to connect.
Update: Apple Store diagnostics of a few minutes was fine. But they suggested swapping the logic board. That’s being done in the next few days, more details later
I'm glad they're reading this thread. AbuYang's experiements have shown electromagnetic interference related to the Mac mini's HDMI port is affecting Wi-Fi.
What cable are you using to connect your display to your Mac mini?
Mac Mini M2 wifi issues
