Monday, December 13, 2021

Smart Bro Home Prepaid WiFi 5G Hands-on

Smart recently released its Smart Bro Home Prepaid WiFi 5G, a home router that connects to the telco’s 5G network, boasting a more reliable 5G connection and WiFi 6. Check out our hands-on below.

Design

The Smart Bro Home Prepaid WiFi 5G is the telco’s latest addition to its 5G-enabled WiFi devices, following the Smart Bro 5G Rocket WiFi launched several months ago. While the latter focuses on mobility, the former is designed for home use.

The Smart Bro Home Prepaid WiFi 5G is manufactured by GreenPacket with model number D5H and designed like most modern routers, but larger and features 6 external foldable 9dBi High Gain antennas. It’s made of plastic, not premium, but seems to be of good quality.

What will catch most people’s attention, though, is the artwork at the top of the router by award-winning illustrator Stephani Bravo Semilla. Also found here are the LED indicators for the WiFi status, 5G/4G signal, SIM, and System.

At the back are the ethernet ports, reset button, WPS button, and power port. The Smart SIM card is already pre-installed and comes with 20GB of open-access data.

Setup is easy. Just plug the router into a power source and wait for it to connect to the network, which takes about 2 minutes. At this point, the LED indicators will light up. If there’s 5G in your area, the 5G indicator will light up, otherwise, it will revert to 4G. Just connect to its default SSID and you’re good to go.

You can access the web management page via a web browser. From here you can see the connection status, read SMS, purchase load, and change network settings including SSID and passwords.

Internet speed

When it comes to connection, the Prepaid WiFi 5G supports 5G Plus 2NR Carrier Aggregation, WiFi 6 with Easy Mesh, and WiFi 2×2 MIMO. Since we’re using a mobile network, the quality and speed of the connection depend on your location. We’re testing this in Bacoor, Cavite, where 5G is limited to select areas.

I’m impressed that it was able to detect a 5G signal indoors, whereas our 5G-capable smartphone could not (we still have to go outside the house just to get a 5G signal). Speed is inconsistent, as we get speeds of 20 Mbps to 100 Mbps. Good enough for casual browsing, FHD YouTube streaming, and online calls. If you’re located in CBD areas in the Metro, you’ll most definitely get better speeds.

WiFi strength is really good and broadcasts the signal in 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. We placed it on the second floor and our devices can still detect the 5GHz signal on the first floor.

Should you buy one?

If you live in an area where fiber internet is not available but has a good 5G signal, this is a great option. You can load it up with Smart’s UNLI 5G data for PHP 599 for 30 days via the GigaLife App. If you already have a fiber connection at home, this is also a good backup, especially if you work from home.

It’s pricey, though, at PHP 15,995, the same price as the Smart Bro 5G Rocket WiFi. You can actually get a 5G smartphone for that price. But if the situation calls for it and you have the budget, this is one works as advertised.

The Smart Bro Home WiFi 5G can be pre-ordered here — https://smart.com.ph/bro/HW5G.

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