Read on this sub last week about the unlimited data hotspots and was intrigued, so decided to try one out and share my experience so far.
My ZTE PocketWifi from 4GCommunity arrived this afternoon exactly 7 days after ordering. Been keeping my expectations low since I've never used Sprint coverage before and am coming from Verizon, and I must say so far I'm pretty pleased. My Verizon phone is able to pull ~8-15Mb download speeds from within my apartment (depending on where I'm standing in it), but unfortunately the hotspot seems to only be able to hit ~5Mb downloads, which is still enough for streaming Netflix with minimal loss of picture quality on occasion. I was even able to live stream DirecTV Now all afternoon with good picture quality, but not great. Only stopped to buffer for less than a second on 2 different occasions all day. I also was able to play some online FPS games on my Xbox One without encountering any lag. While streaming Netflix and DirecTV Now through my Amazon FireTV, I was able to browse web on my laptop with no issues, but picture quality in my video streaming suffered a little bit, but not unbearably so. During all of this, I had my Xbox, Amazon FireTV, laptop, desktop, and phone all connected to the hotspot, though only actively using only AmazonTv, laptop, and phone. Phone was still showing about ~3-4Mb download speeds, all from within my 1st floor (of 2 floors) apartment which is surrounded by several trees. After testing as potential home internet replacement (which so far looks promising for this price), I decided to try it out as phone data replacement and ran some errands with it. Considerable improvement on speed once I left my heavily wooded apartment complex. Was seeing up to 28Mb download speeds as I was sitting at red lights with the hotspot sitting on my dashboard. As I was in the store buying groceries, was getting around 14Mb downloads, and was able to live stream the Atlanta United soccer match with crystal clear picture. Perfect :) My goal is for this hotspot to replace both home internet and my phone plan, which are $90 & $50, respectively, and so far it seems to be doing a solid at it, and at only about $33/month for first year.
One complaint is that signal doesn't seem especially strong in my apartment, which will take some getting used to as my current home internet is 45Mb. That being said, my last apartment 2 years ago was limited to DSL and 1.5mb speeds (miserable), so even if I'm only getting 3Mb, still better than that garbage. I would love to see if there's a way to boost my signal from within my apartment, but seems more difficult to pull off with the ZTE PocketWifi since it doesn't have antenna ports, and doesn't seem to be many ideas online for such a hotspot. So if anyone has any DIY solutions or ideas, please let me know! Another concern so far is hotspot battery seems a little weak. Didn't think to record what time I started using it from full battery, but was down to about 50% after at least a couple hours of use (I'll update battery info later!). As for replacing my Verizon plan, it seems rather capable, especially since I live in Atlanta, and anytime I'm not in Atlanta, I'm traveling on the interstate to other big cities that seem to getting 4G Spark based on Sprint's coverage map, so not too worried about not getting service other than some small spots on the interstate. I'll try to keep this post updated over the next week during my 7day trial period. I mostly wanted to get another review for this out there for people to see. I was skeptical about this service thinking it was too good to be true, especially since there is not a whole lot of info on the internet at this time. So figured I would take one for the team and try it out on behalf of some of the other skeptics out there. Not sure the best way to prove I'm credible (so let me know what I can do to prove I am!), but I can confirm this seems to be a very legitimate service based on my first day of use. Hopefully it stays that way!
Sidenote pertaining to this sub: only just discovered this sub the other day and decided to subscribe today and contribute. Hopefully I didn't reveal any poor spending habits in this post, but if I did please don't attack me for them. Looking forward to learning a lot from you guys on how to improve my financial situation and spend less!
July 01, 2017 at 10:52PM
