Review: The MiFi from 3

Out of the box

It's a nice little box, with plenty packed inside: The MiFi unit (the Huawei E5830), battery, two cables (one USB, one charger) and the SIM pack (like a cardboard CD sleeve), plus loads of little bits of paper. Really, loads - practically a whole tree, we reckon (see the end of the review for a full run down).

Initial thoughts

Chopping down a tree (the box packaging is multi-layered and over fancy too) seems a little ridiculous for a plug and play device - especially when all the bits of paper don't do an awful lot to demistify the MiFi itself. New users may well have trouble getting started if not familiar with using Wi-Fi.

The MiFi itself is a cheap looking device - but then it is free (at the moment). It's plastic and 80s looking, with a black/scrubbed silver front and white back. There's a simple layout, with three buttons on the right edge, microSD slot on the left edge, button to open the unit on the top and cable input on the bottom. It's about the size of a thin mobile phone, slipping easily into the hand. It's a little bigger than a dongle, but still pocket sized at 86x46x10mm (weighing 99g).

The unit is straightforward to open up and put the battery/SIM into and should be fine for anyone who has set up a mobile phone. However, it's a shame the instruction book is made for both the MiFi or a dongle, meaning repetition of some of the stuff on the included help cards, which could also cause confusion. Also, you need to charge it to get going - but there's no indication the unit is charging. Or of anything else for that matter. more on that later.

Usage

As long as you're confident about setting up a wireless network on your computer (again, the included tree isn't much help in this department), you should be up and running pretty quickly. And, once you are, as long as you can get a signal the unit works surprisingly well. One of the big criticisms I've had with dongles before is they tend to lose connection for no apparent reason, seemingly going down at the slightest gust of wind. I'm not so worried about slow speeds - that's unfortunately par for the course with mobile broadband right now - but a slow, steady connection can be preferable to a quick but dodgy one when it comes to web browsing and file downloading. Thankfully the MiFi did a good job in this department.

Battery life isn't perfect, but at 'up to' five hours (uh oh, it's that 'up to' thing again) you should find it can comfortably keep up with a laptop for battery life. However, it isn't helped by the fact it gives no indication that it's on at all - no lights, no nothing. This may help preserve the battery - but makes remembering to turn it off (or actually know its off) difficult. In theory, you can connect up to five devices at once - in theory. Any regular users of mobile broadband will know that keeping one device connected via a dongle is hard enough, and even when you can you're lucky to get a speed much higher than 1Mb. Try to split that between five connections and you're looking rightly down both barrels of crushing disappointment (it supports only wireless 'B' and 'G' too, not the improved 'N' standard).

That said, I'd take the MiFi over a dongle any day. You can leave it in your bag, pocket etc (without the annoyance of having to plug it into your machine, which can be awkward and time consuming) and if you've got a half decent signal its perfectly adequate for you and a colleague to get online.

Speed and coverage

While not as bad as it could've been, speed on the MiFi was as we expected: mostly poor. We didn't try it out on the move, but in the two static locations we used 3's MiFi our speed tests picked up the usual problems. The first location was, according to 3's coverage map, in a 'good coverage' area. In four attempts we only got above 1Mb once; upload speeds were woeful, peaking below 0.2Mb. The second location - in a 'not good coverage' area - fared slightly better, making a mockery of the map (which obviously doesn't take into consideration amount of users). Here we averaged over 1Mb, peaking at 1.95Mb. Upload speeds were also significantly up, averaging over 0.5Mb.

Data

The amount of data could also be problematic for many users. When the emphasis is on a shared connection, giving data allowances of either 1GB or 5GB per month seem pretty tight, especially as 3s it's a key Christmas product. That total will be gone in a flash for many users, especially the kind of 'early uptake' geeks they will be relying on to lead the charge.

Conclusion

Portable Wi-Fi is definitely the way forward and this is a reasonable first offering from 3. That said, you can't help but think that the whole thing comes across as a little rushed: the 'manual' is poor, the design cheap and as soon as anything goes wrong you're struggling. You only have to look around at other devices coming onto the market to see that this could go down as the ugliest member of the MiFi family.

But 3 has prided itself on leading the way in UK mobile broadband, and should be credited for getting a solid, working product to market ahead of the pack - again. We can only hope it is putting as much effort into improving its HSDPA coverage as it does into being 'first'. If you want mobile broadband, and are happy to be on the 3 network, the MiFi is the way to go. The fact the unit is available from 'free' right now makes it even more of a no-brainer. Although perhaps you'll want to buy it a little bag to hide in! But overall, to the MiFi we say 'yes'! Check out all the MiFi deals on our 3 price comparison pages: both PAYG and contract.

Appendix: that tree in full...

There is:

1) A weird little credit card sized 'useful things to know about 3' card.
2) A credit card sized info sheet, with unique codes (SSID, Wi-Fi key)
3) Warranty sheet
4) Copyright and safety info sheet
5) A pack of odd help cards which can be used to set up the MiFi unit (not numbered).
6) Set-up Guide

The SIM pack has the SIM (natch), plus another bunch of pieces of paper you can litter the room with:

7) Terms of purchase sheet
8) T&Cs sheet, including returns policy
9) An info book, duplicating a bunch of the stuff on the cards
10) A guide to how to make sense of all the cards and guides (OK, we made this one up)