My experience with using the same SSID for both bands is that most devices will do the right thing, pick based on signal strength and will reevaluate that choice fairly often. However, a small number of devices (normally older or cheaper devices) will often stick to a band until they have no other choice.

That said, a weaker 5GHz signal can sometimes still be better or more stable than a stronger 2.4GHz signal since the risk of interference in the 2.4GHz band is often much higher.

I’ve never ever had enough of an issue to worry about it.

If your AP has similar functionality, I've seen one trick (or hack, if you will) in Mikrotik talks [0] to make your devices pick 5Ghz over 2.4Ghz.

TL;DW: Reduce 2.4Ghz AP's transmission power by approx 7db, that's the 'magic' number that should 'even' the APs out.

I must say, though, never had an issue with devices picking a wrong band so far.

[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=JRbAqie1_AM&t=2054 (timestamp included)

Dropping transmission power on the APs helps a lot of clients make better roaming decisions anyway. I did it for my 2.4ghz aps and see a lot less of client barely communicating with a far away access point rather than switching.

I have that problem all the time. I have Ubiquity DreM Machine and an AP. My laptop in my office needs a solid connection for video calls. I routinely picks a "fast" 5Ghz that drops packets instead of a "slow" 2.4 Ghz that is "solid"

That must be annoying. Here is another thing you could do if tweaking the AP isn't an option. I don't have a 5Ghz wireless adapter at hand, but from what I see on my 2.4Ghz one, you should be able to set 'Wireless Mode' in the adapter settings to 802.11ac (or 802.11ax if you're that fancy :) ) to force 5Ghz. I recall having an option to simply select the preferred band on some laptop adapters, too, so you can use it, if it's available, instead.

I do that on Windows, but there must be something similar on Mac/Unix, too. I think these options are basically driver-related so the OS choice ultimately shouldn't matter.

edit: ah, realized I misread the post. Thought the "I picks" was "it picks" :)

I’ve configured dozens of networks over the past decade to use the same SSID for both bands, and have never observed a real world issue with myriad clients. The only tweak is sometimes the 2.4GHz Tx power needs to be dropped, but it’s rare.

Some locations I’ve had to create additional bespoke SSIDs for a specific band, but it’s only because the customer has explicitly requested it because they think it matters.

Pretty much same experience.

Weirdest bespoke network I have is one that only exists for an LG washing machine. It’s network stack eventually gets corrupted when network isolation isn’t enabled and receives some sort of broadcast packets.

From my experience, both Android, Linux and Windows consistently fail to use the faster 5ghz WiFi when starting out on the 2.4ghz. That's why I still have two separate SSIDs at home.

I've been doing this for many years now with excellent results. Ubiquiti APs and mostly Apple devices, FWIW.

From my experience devices do a good job these days picking the better of the two options. I notice that there are quite a cases where in practice some devices get better performance by picking 2.4 than 5. In particular I have some devices that apparently learned to stay on 2.4 for longer because I move them more between the different access points than for instance my macbook.

Look up band-steering. There's many ways to make a client prefer 5Ghz.

It is, but ...

It's awkward enough in enough situations that self-configuring wifi routers or wifi mesh devices such as "Eero" gave up forcing both bands under one SSID and now have a special trouble-shooting mode where they disable the 5Ghz SSID in order to allow you to discover / configure craptacular IoT WiFi devices. Then it re-enables 5GHz after 15 minutes and the bad device will stick on 2.4.

Just got fiber to the home and they gave me a free Eero (and more or less imply to the non-power users "this is what you use now")

Despite my old situation being an absurd mess of repeaters and powerline ethernet, it's still a better experience than the Eero. I went back to the old stuff.

(ps, definitely don't want to knock Metronet. They've been GREAT so far. I've had NO troubles at all being a power user, i.e. getting Static IP and such set up)

Some APs (eg Ubiquiti) can actually steer clients from one band to the other based on minimum RSSI and other parameters (including device compatibility, and you can exclude or force a band for individual devices), which prevents this from happening.

The phone will pick 5GHz when it's both needed (the phone isn't asleep) and it is actually faster than 2.4GHz. Forcing 5GHz is bad when your phone is good at roaming.