The Vodafone Mobile WiFi dongle has hit the UK, just weeks after Three’s own second gen mobile WiFi hotspot was unleashed. Just like, it shuns the USB port of older dongles in favour of creating its own impromptu WiFi hotspot for all your gadgets to leech off. Does it do it with aplomb, or should people simply opt for a phone that does the same? Find out in our full Vodafone Mobile WiFi review.
If you amble around any of the UK’s main cities, you’ll find dozens, or even hundreds, of WiFi networks. But you won’t be able to leech onto 99% of them, not without paying or being awfully good at guessing passwords. Enter the Vodafone Mobile WiFi box. But is it really a good way to get connected?
Simple, versatile and massively portable, 3G internet plans have become massively popular over the last few years, but what’s the next step? The Vodafone Mobile WiFi box, which is around the size of an iPod Classic, takes the best bits of using a 3G dongle and zaps several of the crippling limitations.
Under the Vodafone Mobile WiFi’s backplate there’s a SIM slot, which you fill with the SIM suppled with the box – at present you’ll buy the Vodafone Mobile WiFi alongside a data plan. Using HSDPA, it’ll pull-down 3G data at rates of up to 7.2Mbps. Theoretically anyway – 3G speeds never reach these giddy heights in reality.
But here’s the clever bit – the Vodafone Mobile WiFi box takes this fast 3G connection and transmits its connectivity as a Wi-Fi network. Up to five devices can connect to it at the same time, and doing so is just like connecting to a home Wi-Fi network – just select the network from within any gadget’s standard Wi-Fi menu and then connect using a security code.
The Vodafone Mobile WiFi box uses WPA2 as standard, and the security code is printed on a sticker that’s hidden under the battery cover. It is – like the rest of the Vodafone Mobile WiFi’s operation – dead simple.
This simplicity is perhaps the best bit of the Vodafone Mobile WiFi kit. You charge it, using a microUSB charger, the same as used in a great many mobiles today, flick the oversized switch that takes up half of the box’s front and the device does the rest itself. It starts-up the connection itself, switching between the best connections available where necessary. And with a solid four-hour battery life, it’s ready for the road. Four hours may not sound like all that much, but consider that many laptops are dead to the world after not much more than two and things start to sound a lot brighter.
Boosting ease of use yet again, the monochrome display is wonderfully simple too – five icons telling you your network, network type, signal strength, battery life and number of devices connected. It times-out fairly quickly, presumably to save battery, but can be brought back to life with a tap of the Vodafone Mobile WiFi box’s only button, on its side.
The Vodafone Mobile WiFi’s more advanced features are the ones that still have a few kinks in them. DLNA data transfer, which could in theory let you use this little device like a media streamer, isn’t here yet – but should be coming as part of an update, and microSD support isn’t quite as slick as you might hope.
By the SIM slot, under the battery cover, is a microSD slot. Cards can be accessed by any connected devices, but it’s not the easiest process. You need to visit the IP address of the box in the browser of your mobile/laptop/Wi-FI enabled toaster and then select the microSD link in the web interface that pops up. It’s a bit too clunky to get us excited, but it’s a limitation of the underlying tech more than the Vodafone Mobile WiFi device itself.
Our only real issue with the build of the Vodafone Mobile WiFi is the size: it’s not quite as small as Three’s effort (Both are made by Huawei), and looks are deceiving: the middle section which looks like a separate dongle doesn’t come out.
We do have one more serious concern about Vodafone Mobile WiFi – the price. You end up paying £5 a month for each gigabyte of data (with more expensive plans cutting-down the cost of the box itself – it’s free on the £25 a month plan). They’re roughly the same deals you get with a 3G dongle from Vodafone, but Three’s MiFi alternative gets you more data, for less. It’s not an issue with the gadget itself, but a factor surrounding it.
However, the hardware of Vodafone’s Mobile WiFi offers a couple of extra useful features, and while it’s significantly bigger than a dongle, it’s a neat piece of kit that you won’t lose in a pile of memory sticks, like a dongle. It’s only a price drop away from becoming a killer bit of kit, and if you have the lifestyle and gadgets to make good use of it, it’s already a winner.
