Portable Wifi for traveling works essentially exactly as you’d imagine it would. You have a device that emits a wifi signal and you are going to be able to take this device wherever it is that you go. A lot like phone plans, these portable wifi devices are only going to work in a restricted area. Hence, the “Portable Wifi International Options” title for this article. Depending on where you are looking to travel you will have, or not have the option of buying or even renting one or more of these devices for the duration of your trip. The premise behind exploring this option is actually very simple. We know that portable wifi was an option and over the last few months we actually started seeing ads for many of these devices. We have to add some of these looked a bit sketchy.
What we want to do is explore some of the portable wifi for traveling options that are on the market today. We’ll let you know if we feel that it can be a good idea. Especially if you are traveling with a larger group. In one of the other articles that we have on the subject, we explored a portable wifi option to travel to Europe. Pretty much what we found is that you would have to travel with a larger group for the costs to really offset. Versus actually buying a couple of SIM cards for the people in the group. Here we want to explore different portable wifi international options for a wide variety of destinations. To see if it can be worth it when traveling to different parts of the world!
- How portable wifi works
- Traveling To Europe
- Traveling To USA
- Traveling To Asia
- Buy or rent a portable wifi for traveling use
- Portable wifi international vs data-only SIM card
How portable wifi works
Portable wifi is usually a small device that can be at times a little bit smaller than your phone. As its name would suggest this device is going to give you wifi coverage. It’s really just as simple as that. You are going to need to activate it and it is going to emit a wifi single. The same way that you would connect maybe to your home wifi when you get off the street. Ideally, you will be getting a device that you can connect multiple devices to. A lot of times, at least for travel, this is what it comes down to. You are going to want a portable wifi device that you can connect multiple devices to.
The advantage that you hope to get with a portable wifi device is that you will be able to pay for one coverage bill. Instead of having to buy SIM cards for every member of your family. Usually, it would make sense to buy portable wifi coverage for one of two reasons. Number one would be the one that we just mentioned. What you are trying to do is to connect multiple devices to one signal. This is going to save you money on coverage abroad. The other is if you are going as a group. Again you are just paying for one bill!
Now, these devices can either be bought or actually rented from the manufacturer. When you buy it, you need to activate it by buying data plans. Usually, you are going to be able to do this through an app. If you rent it, which is what most people may be looking to do, you are going to get the device delivered to you. You can have it delivered to your hotel, or your home prior to your trip. You are going to have a plan mostly already active on the device. It works again like a prepaid plan. You can get more coverage through an app or calling the provider directly. If it’s a rental once you are done using it you have to send it back. Late fees and loss fees are pretty hefty!
Traveling To Europe
We are going to be looking at two options for Europe. As you can probably imagine most of the portable wifi companies out there promise great European coverage. Some deliver, some don’t. The two options that we are going to be talking about have decent coverage at least according to personal experiences and online reviews. The number one option is XOXO WiFi. This device promises to give you unlimited internet at 4G speeds in 36 countries across Europe. The cost that you are going to have to pay for this device is said to be at € 8.95 per day. The rate for two weeks of Europe coverage on a rental that we got was around €134. For those of you doing the math that worked out to € 9.5 a day. They have some shipping costs that you have to cover.
What are some of the drawbacks that we had with this device? The speed decreases after the first 500MB that you use in a day. So, reliable 4G speeds throughout the day are not really there. What we liked is that it does provide a decent range of coverage. You can connect up to 5 devices. You are going to reach those 500MB really quickly and things are going to slow down if you do that. Still, it can make sense for larger groups.
The second device that we checked out was the Teppy device. You pay €164 on their premium coverage plan. Which is not unlimited, we wanted to make sure that we got that across. You get 8GB of coverage a day on this premium plan. You get essentially no drop off in speed. Certainly, this can make it a better option for some people. Even if it does not happen to offer that unlimited option.
Traveling To The USA
In the USA you are usually not going to have a problem with consistent coverage. The thing is, when you travel to Europe there is a better chance that you are going to be looking to get away to a more remote location. Getting good coverage in those places in any part of the world is tough. In the USA we went with SkyRoam. They claim to be the best portable wifi for traveling, and of course within the United States. We were surprised to find that the 134 dollar price tag is still a constant for 2 weeks worth of coverage. Remember we are talking dollars here. The last two options we talked about Euros. This means that you can get US coverage for two weeks for €119, at today’s exchange rate.
This device offers unlimited wifi. It does not advertise whether or not you are going to see a drop off from your 4G speeds after using up a lot of your daily MB. From what we could gather though this is a very decent option. As we mentioned, if you are going to be using these types of devices within some of the major cities you are not going to have any trouble. The only major issue that we see with these devices is that they are not typically great in cars. If you want to fully rely on them to put your maps application up, on your phone you may run into some trouble.
Another important fact is that SkyRoam promises to be able to hold a network for up to 10 devices. This seems like a great option for larger groups. If you are maybe with a group of 6 you are going to be ok. We would not recommend having 8 devices connected at the same time. That can really slow down your coverage speeds. Overall though, it is a decent experience.
Traveling To Asia
With Asia, we do have to make a couple of clarifications. We happen to believe that there are better portable wifi for traveling options available in the local Asian market. At times though accessing technology from that side of the world with a proper English site can be tough. What we mean by that is when you search for “Portable Wifi International Options Asia” on Google you are going to get American or British brands offering their services. Not necessarily Asian brands with better tech. That is our thoughts on this matter. Take it with a grain salt. We believe that in Korea and Japan specifically there is a chance that you can rent out a device that is going to offer at least a faster connection.
The trouble that we ran into is that we didn’t want to get there and have trouble getting a device because of the language barrier. So we went with a mywebspot portable wifi device that promised us coverage throughout Asia at decent prices. We got two-week coverage for €145. The whole process of getting a device with them was not hard at all. The coverage that we got on the trip was very good all the way around. So while we may have wanted to try out some Japanese tech, this device was on point. We can’t say it failed at any given time. Unlimited wifi for 5 devices and it was very reliable throughout the whole trip.
If you check out some of the sites of the products that we talked about you’ll see that most of them offer coverage in different parts of the world. Our main fear when trying some of these devices was that they would not be able to provide reliable coverage. Then we would be stuck with a device that we paid good money for, but we really couldn’t use all that much. At the end of the day though, most of our experiences were ok.
Buy or rent a portable wifi for traveling use
Should you buy or should you rent the device? This really depends on the type of use that you are going to give the device. Another thing that you are going to want to take into account is the actual device that you are going to be buying. Some companies actually want to promote having you buy the device. Others are actually more content with having you just rent from them. We are mostly going to be leaning towards saying that you stick to rents. Unless you happen to be a very, very avid traveler. To the point where you are going to be spending maybe up to 3 months abroad with a group.
The biggest advantage that you get from these devices is the unlimited wifi access. The problem that we see is that you could be getting similar access with a SIM card. A long term deal with these types of plans makes sense if you just need to have multiple devices connected at once all over the world. If you are planning to take your whole family on a 3-month trip you may look into buying one of these devices.
We really don’t want to come off as we are married to disposal SIM cards and burner phones. Although if you have read through some of the articles on the site, you probably know that is where we lean. The reason why we tend to feel that way is that SIM cards give you that throw away ability. Which at times is really beneficial when you are traveling. That freedom is something that really comes in handy when you are traveling. If you need access all day, every day and you are traveling all the time buying one of these devices is going to make sense. If you are just taking one group vacation rent.
Portable wifi device vs data-only SIM card
We got started on this debate a little bit earlier than anticipated. Again, it’s not that we want to systematically lean towards SIM card usage. Here is how we see it! If you are traveling with a considerable large group, about 5 people let’s say. If all of these 5 people need coverage abroad it makes sense to buy a portable wifi plan. The other option is going to be to buy a SIM card for everyone and that could, at the end of the day end up costing more money. When you add things up though, you could get a little bit more data from SIM cards.
If you are just traveling on your own it is really hard to make a case for these devices. The price tag on them is very similar to what you would be able to get from an international day pass from your regular service provider. Most people are going to feel that it’s easier to just use that. Rather than renting out one of these devices. Just to sum up, for medium size groups they are a good idea. For individual use, these portable wifi for traveling devices are a tough sell!