T-Mobile 5G Home Internet: The Good and the Bad. My Full Review

After using Verizon 5G Home Internet for over two and half years, I saw a deal to get T-Mobile 5G Home Internet and save $15/month, so I decided to give it a try! Here’s my full review of T-Mobile 5G Home Internet, with the good and the bad. This is NOT a sponsored post!

Cost

Currently, if you have a T-Mobile (or Mint Mobile in my case) phone plan, you can get T-Mobile 5G Home Internet for as low as $35/month with auto-pay enabled. Without a T-Mobile plan, the lowest price is $50/month with autopay.

Verizon has similar pricing tiers, but its speeds are throttled, so you can potentially get more bandwidth per dollar at T-Mobile. Also, T-Mobile currently offers a five-year price lock, while Verizon currently offers a three-year price lock.

You should consult the T-Mobile website for the latest costs.

Signing Up

Signing up for T-Mobile Home Internet on their website was pretty straightforward. Note that you do need to have a phone to use T-Mobile Home Internet, because a lot of the settings are done through their app.

One curious thing – they say that you need to sign up with a bank debit card in order to get the auto-pay discount. But, later when you create your account, they ask you for that information again, leading me to believe that you can just sign up with a credit card initially and change it when you create your account.

Also note, they will run a credit check on TransUnion, so you should unfreeze your TransUnion credit report before signing up. (More information on credit report freezes here).

Also kind of strange is that you’ll be prompted to create a PIN that never gets used again, as far as I could tell.

Account Creation

At some point, you’ll want to create your account with payment details. Why this isn’t done as part of the signup process, I don’t know (it’s probably to lower the initial friction of signing up). It’s like that with Verizon, too.

After you sign up, you’ll receive a series of emails confirming your account, plus an email with an account creation link.

One minor glitch – the account creation email that T-Mobile sent me was blank when I viewed it in my desktop email client. It was fine when I viewed it online, which is how I think most people view their email, so I don’t think this is a huge deal, but something to watch out for.

Once the account is created, you can enter payment information if you want to do autopay from your bank.Note that in the fine print they say that autopay does not kick in until one full billing cycle. So you won’t get that $5 discount the first month.

The Gateway – I Love It!

A few days after signing up, I received the white T-Mobile 5G gateway. I was super impressed by two things.

First, it’s got a nice display right on the unit that shows your 5G signal strength in five bars. This really helps you place and point it to get the best 5G reception.

Second, it’s got external antenna connectors right on the bottom of the unit!!! This is a huge feature that shouldn’t be overlooked! It means that if you have reception problems, you can purchase a MIMO cellular antenna, connect it to this unit, and place it in a location that gets better reception, possibly even outside. Users who have done this have reported insane speed improvements! I am super excited about this!!

In addition, it has the standard two Ethernet connectors. There are two USB-C connectors. One is for power, and the other doesn’t seem to be supported for anything at this time.

Setup

Getting the hardware set up and working was pretty easy. There is a setup guide but basically, that just has you scan a QR code to install the T-Mobile app that actually guides you along.

After plugging in the unit, you’re prompted to wait seven minutes for firmware updates. Then, the app will show you the best place to put the gateway, either by using your camera and pointing it (sort of like virtual reality), or by showing a map. This feature is quite helpful to get the best signal strength.

Next, you scan the QR code on the gateway and set up your Wi-Fi network name and password. You’ll also have to set up an admin password for the gateway itself.

Overall, the actual process of getting the gateway working was pretty easy. Everything “just worked” for me, which is a good thing.

My Download Speed – Wow!!

Here’s the section of the review that honestly, you have to take with a grain of salt, because your download speed will highly depend on how far away the T-Mobile cell towers are from your home, and if there are any obstructions in between.

I actually measured download speed in two separate locations in Santa Monica about 3/4 mile apart: at my Mom’s condo and at my home. So maybe you can take this review with TWO grains of salt.

Let me say that I was impressed!

For my first measurement at my mom’s condo, I got 470 Mbps! For comparison, my Verizon 5G Home Internet never got above 400 Mbps at my home. Most of my subsequent measurements were between 300 and 440 Mbps. Wow, not bad at all!

At my condo a few weeks later when I got T-Mobile Internet there, I measured 780 Mbps after setting it up! A little while later I measured a whopping 950 Mbps!!! I didn’t even know it was capable of going that fast. Since then I’ve measured speeds mostly between 300 and 400 Mbps. Still impressive!

Latency – Not Good for Gaming

In general, the latency for 5G home Internet is not sufficient for real-time Internet gaming (i.e., first-person shooters). I measured unloaded latencies from 17 to 23 ms and loaded latencies from 40 to 142 ms; pretty bad for gaming but absolutely fine for most other online activities. I personally don’t notice the latency and I work from home using the Internet.

Reliability – Good So Far

I’ve only been using T-Mobile Home Internet for a few weeks now (at two locations), but so far there has been zero downtime. So far, so good!

The Built-In Wi-Fi Router

The T-Mobile gateway (model G4AR) has a built-in Wi-Fi router. During setup, you set the network name and password through your phone.

I live in a two-story condo with a garage below, so it’s actually three stories. My T-Mobile gateway is on the top floor, and it is able to (barely) reach the Ring camera down in my garage without any kind of extender or mesh network, which is pretty impressive!

The T-Mobile Wi-Fi also works great in my Mom’s condo. It basically replaced an expensive Linksys AX5400 Wi-Fi router that I bought to reach her downstairs doorbell.

So, the T-Mobile G4AR Wi-Fi router should be fine for most apartments or small homes. It probably won’t be enough for a suburban 4-bedroom 3000 square foot two-story home, though.

If you think you’ll need more Wi-Fi coverage than the gateway can offer, keep reading.

The Bad: Lack of Settings

So far, I’ve had mostly good things to say about T-Mobile Home Internet. Now for some of the bad, or at least, stuff I wish was better.

If you log into the gateway, this is what you get:

Notice there are no settings controls! It’s just a status panel, not a control panel. To set anything, you need to use the T-Life app.

To me, that isn’t ideal because now you’re dependent on your phone and an app. If the app were to go away, you’d lose the ability to change your Wi-Fi network name and password. I’d prefer having the control panel built into the gateway itself so it’s always there, rather than being dependent on your phone and an app.

I would also prefer being able to access the gateway settings via Ethernet and not Wi-Fi. Why? Because if you change your Wi-Fi network name or password, you immediately lose access to the control panel until you change your phone to that network. If you made a mistake when setting your password, you’ll have to reset the gateway and start over.

But even in the T-Life app, hardly anything is adjustable. Basically, you can reboot it and set your Wi-Fi network name, password, a few other Wi-Fi settings, and that’s about it.

For many people, that’s enough. But if you’re a tweaker, you might be interested in passthrough mode, firewall settings, port forwarding, and so on. None of this is available through T-Mobile (while all of this and more is available on Verizon gateways). Heck, you can’t even turn off Wi-Fi if you want to use your own router! There is a workaround though. There’s a free app called “HINT” that will at least let you turn off Wi-Fi on your T-Mobile gateway. It’s available for iPhone and Android.

This app is not from T-Mobile. It appears to be from some random guy who just put it out there, which is a bit disconcerting if you’re concerned about entering your gateway password into some app! Granted, even with the password, they can’t access your gateway from afar; they need to be on your network to do that, but still.

And again, if this app were to go away someday, you’d lose the ability to turn off Wi-Fi on your gateway! (To turn on, you’d have to reset it).

T-Mobile should have given users the ability to turn off Wi-Fi in their own app; or better yet, made the setting directly accessible in the gateway’s control panel rather than through an app.

Extending Wi-Fi Range

So what if you need to extend the Wi-Fi range of your T-Mobile gateway? I see three options.

• If you want to use your own Wi-Fi router, you’ll have to turn off the T-Mobile Wi-Fi signal using the HINT app as previously described. You might need to change some settings on your router to avoid double NAT issues.
• Or, you can go with a mesh system. T-Mobile’s All-In plan includes a mesh access point to extend your coverage up to 2,200 square feet. Of course, that plan costs more than the base plan. You could instead buy your own third-party mesh system to use with the T-Mobile gateway.
• Or, you can go with a Wi-Fi extender, but that has disadvantages such as loss of bandwidth and conflicts if you want to use the same network name as the gateway.

If I try any of these options, I’ll update this article with my findings. Until then, you can find a lot of good information on these options if you search on Reddit.

Conclusions

Overall, I have mostly positive things to say about T-Mobile 5G Home Internet. The cost is lower than Verizon, with higher speeds and good reliability (for me at least). I love the ability to connect your own cellular antenna to the gateway – that is awesome future-proofing in case you have reception problems in the future!

My one big beef is the lack of settings, but honestly, that won’t be an issue for most people. Here’s my rundown:

Do you have any questions? If you have T-Mobile 5G Home Internet, what do you think of it? Please leave a comment below! – Brian