Windows 11's new speed test tool is just another way to promote Bing — but Microsoft has time to fix it

A high-speed internet connection is essential for many in 2025. Whether you're streaming games through NVIDIA GeForce Now, watching your favorite shows, or syncing files, you'll need to know your connection is up to par. Soon, Windows 11 will feature a "built-in" internet speed test tool.

The bad news is that the "built-in" tool is actually a pair of shortcuts to open Bing's built-in network speed test tool in a browser. The good news is that Microsoft has time to fix it.

The feature was spotted by phantomofearth on X, and it is hidden within the latest Windows 11 preview builds.

Our Senior Editor Zac Bowden already covered the new speed test feature in Windows 11. He also highlighted that it will likely be several months before we see the feature roll out to general users.

In that time, Microsoft could change how the tool works, though I don't have high hopes for a native interface.

Bing's network speed test tool is perfectly adequate. It does exactly what you'd expect, listing your connection's latency, download speed, and upload speed after performing a quick check. The functionality is very similar to popular tools such as Speedtest by Ookla and Fast.com.

My concern isn't whether the feature will work. The Bing Dashboard has several tools that function well, including its speed tester. What I'm worried about is that the current implementation will be similar to the final product.

The ability to run a network speed test directly from the Taskbar on Windows 11 would be a nice addition. Having the shortcut appear through the context menu of the system tray's network icon or through the Wi-Fi quick settings panel also makes sense.

But do people really want "features" in Windows 11 that are just shortcuts to a website? Honestly, I'm not sure. Some would consider a tool like this bloat. Others would say that people may not know about websites like Speedtest by Ookla and Fast.com, so a "built-in" network speed test tool makes sense.

I think a more elegant solution would be an embedded version of Bing's speed test tool that appears within a small window you can access through the Taskbar. Though perhaps that would also be considered bloat by users who don't need such a tool.

A comment by "Longman" on Bowden's post proposes an interesting solution, creating a Taskbar widget.

Considering the network speed tester is still a hidden feature, Microsoft has plenty of time to receive feedback and play around with different solutions.