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Full Review of Verizon's 5G Home Internet in 2023 - The Good and The Bad
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Nov 17, 2023
I'll tell you all about my experience with Verizon's 5G Home Internet service, from the signup process, through setup, and my resulting Internet speeds so you can decide if it's right for you. My full review online is here: https://www.disablemycable.com/blog/verizon-5g-home-internet/
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Hey, this is Brian from DisableMyCable.com and today I'll be giving you my review of
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Verizon's 5G home internet service so you can see if it's right for you
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Verizon 5G is a wireless home internet service that you get from your nearest cell tower
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It's almost like using a cell phone as a hotspot and getting your home internet through that
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except with unlimited data. Now, if that sounds a little bit disconcerting to you, it did to me too
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Your reception on a cell phone isn't always the best. Well, Verizon only offers this service in areas with good 5G coverage
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Not everyone can get it, so you have to check the Verizon website to see if you're within their area of service
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They also limit the number of customers so they don't overwhelm any particular cell tower
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I've been using it for over a month now, and I haven't had any service interruptions or slowdowns
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And just to be clear, Verizon 5G is different than Verizon Fios
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Fios brings you internet through a fiber optic cable. Now, I'm actually a big fan of fiber, but they don't have it available in my area
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so 5G is the next best thing for me. Now, let's talk about how much money you can save
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I was paying $80 a month for internet access for my cable provider. With 5G, I'm paying $50 a month
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for a savings of $360 a year, which is not bad. And Verizon does offer a price guarantee
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of varying lengths depending on the promotion. It's usually like a two-year price guarantee
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but sometimes it's more. So let's say you have a three-year price guarantee. That's over $1,000
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that you're going to save over that three years compared to cable, which is awesome
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And just to be clear, this is not a paid promotion. I paid for this service myself, and I'm using it myself for my home internet
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And you'll see there's one part of the service that I actually really hate, so there's no way they would pay me for this type of review
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So stay tuned to hear that. First, let's talk about the sign-up and installation process, though
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The signup process was really easy on Verizon website I signed up I didn have to pay anything upfront In a couple days I received my Verizon Home Internet Gateway
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Now, the setup was ridiculously easy. I'm telling you, it was plug and play
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I connected power. I waited a few minutes for the unit to boot up and configure
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Then I plugged in an Ethernet cable like this and connected it to my computer and my gateway
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and I set up Wi-Fi that way. Now you can also set up Wi-Fi through a Wi-Fi connection
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using the password printed on your box, but I like to do it through a cable
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Just a tip, when you do set up your Wi-Fi, use the same Wi-Fi network name and password
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as your old Wi-Fi network. That way you won't have to re-set up all your passwords
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So of course, the first thing I did was check my download speed, and I was getting a full 300 megabits per second
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Now, since then, in the month since then, it's kind of stabilized between 220 to 260 megabits
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per second, but that's still way faster than the 90 megabits per second that I was getting with
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cable, and my cable service had seemed to be degrading over time. I think it's because of the
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quality, the poor quality of the cables in my home. So it was a huge speed improvement for me
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which is awesome. My upload speed was around 20 megabits per second. Now, of course, your mileage
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may vary depending on how far the cell tower is from your home, where you put the gateway in your
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home, and so forth. I've seen people online saying that they're getting the full 300 megabits per
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second others not as much. I'm really happy with over 200 just because it was so much better than
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what I was getting before and it's plenty to do anything I need to do streaming whatever it's great
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So let's talk about the the hardware. The unit does have a built-in wi-fi router which
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which I mentioned and I actually didn't expect it to. I thought I would just have to use my own
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Now, the Wi-Fi strength on the built-in router is fine if you live in a one-bedroom apartment or a one-story home, or even a small two-story home
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Anything bigger than that you probably want to attach your own Wi router I actually used it in my condo which is two stories plus a garage on the bottom floor below that
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So it's actually kind of like three stories. And it was actually working great for a while
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And then one day, all of my ring cameras stopped working because of weak Wi-Fi
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So I turned off the Wi-Fi in the box and used my own old Netgear Wi-Fi router
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now i don't really count that against verizon because you can't expect the wi-fi out of this
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little box to have the same strength as a dedicated netgear router with three external antennas it's
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just not going to happen it wasn't designed to do that so the wi-fi in the box is great for most
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people for small homes it's not going to work if you have a mansion or you live in like a three-story
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house or something like that. So I think it's actually good enough for a lot of people
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And I really like how it has two Ethernet ports. So you can connect one to maybe your computer and
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the other one to maybe your Roku or your TV or something like that. The documentation is pretty
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bad. It doesn't really come with a manual in the box. So I've actually included a link to the manual
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in my article, my blog post about this. But overall, I really like the hardware and I like
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the look of the white cube. It doesn't bother me on my desk. I actually kind of think it looks cool
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So I like that part of it. The bad news is that the account creation process was a complete nightmare
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So after you get the hardware working, you actually have to go in and set up your account
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which kind of sounds backwards. Usually you would think you would set up your account first. I had a lot of problems with that part. It didn't recognize my unit's phone number or any kind of
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serial numbers that I tried to enter. I had to call Verizon. They said to wait until the unit was
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set up fully. And so I did. That didn't work. I called them again. They said they reset my password
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but they had to mail me my new password when they reset my account. And that didn't quite do it. And
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so I had to do it again and in the end I was on the phone a lot with Verizon and
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I got it to work I got my account set up I was able to enter my billing
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information for my auto billing which got me that discount from a month to a month So it all set up now but there still a lot of inaccurate information about my account on the website Now I called
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them and verified that, for example, yeah, my monthly cost is $50 a month. It's not $60 and so
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forth, but there are parts of the website that still say $60. So the back end of the Verizon
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website is just terrible. It really is. It's bad. It's got inaccurate information, and I can't even
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update all the fields myself. I have to call in. Aside from the painful setup, it's working
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and I'm getting billed for the correct amount, which is the important part
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So other than that, I actually really like my Verizon 5G home internet service so far
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it's much cheaper than cable for me and I'm getting much higher speeds in my case
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I'm hoping that it will also be more reliable than cable because it doesn't depend on physical
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cable going from a telephone pole to my house which in the past has failed you know after storms
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or certain power outages and stuff so I'm just hoping a wireless connection to their cell tower
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will be more reliable than a physical cable, especially in bad weather or a natural disaster
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something like that. The Wi-Fi router included, I think is pretty good
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It's good enough for a lot of homes. It's not gonna be good enough for everyone. So usually that's not a problem
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because you already had a Wi-Fi router with whatever service you're using. Just use that one and hook it up
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There are a few caveats. If you use a VPN or do online gaming
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there are some settings that you might have to do. Check out my article linked below for more details on that
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For most people, you can just plug it in and it should work. So overall, I really like the service
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This is not a paid promotion. I paid for the box myself, and I'm using it right now
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So if this video was helpful to you, please like and subscribe to my channel
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If you want to read more about Verizon 5G Home Internet, check out my site, DisableMyCable.com
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I have a link in the description. and if you have any questions about Verizon 5G home internet, please leave a comment below
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and I will check my comments and answer them. Thanks a lot
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