ESP32-C5 does support 5GHz, so there’s an option out there. It’s also reasonably powerful for a micro and supports Thread, Zigbee, and BLE.

It's 802.11ax, it's much better than 802.11n.

Universal compatibility only helps if you can actually reach the access point over the most crowded channels in the apartment building.

Do city people actually? lmao

Some of us have a challenging RF environment and rely on the 5GHz band for reliability, even for low data rates.

802.11a was ratified at the same time as 802.11b, and still doesn't have to fight with cheap baby monitors for bandwidth.