ZTE U50, 5G Portable WiFi Hotspot with SIM Slot Unlocked, Lowcost 5G Modem Router for 32 Home/Business Devices, 5G&4G+, AX1800 WiFi 6, up to 32 Devices

This is a review for the ZTE 5G CPE MC888.I live in the country and we have terrible wired internet, and no fibre broadband available here. 4G coverage is excellent, so we've been using '4G broadband' for a few years now, via a Huawei mifi device and a SMARTY card. We ended up needing two cards/devices as our walls are thick and the signal wasn't getting through. Wanted to get rid of having two devices, and use a better router with a mesh system......I did LOADS of research before getting this!! I'd tried a cheaper Archer MR 600 CAT6 4G device first, which just got very hot, kept dropping out and was disappointing! Sent it back, did more research and came up with this.I'm using a SMARTY card in it, and I'm on the edge of a 5G network, so thought I'd get the 5G capability, even if we can't get 5G just yet. As I thought, I'm only getting 4G, BUT the speeds I'm getting are still amazing compared to the old wired BT internet, and to the SMARTY card used in the mifi device. Setting up the device was easy. It works best in a very specific spot on a window sill in the living room. I moved it all over the house to see if anywhere else was better: upstairs was worse strangely.Bought a set of three Deco mesh hubs (TP-link Deco X10 AX1500, £144.99 on Amazon), as on its own the ZTE couldn't get through our very thick walls. The set up works perfectly. The first Deco hub connects to the ZTE router directly, and becomes Hub number 1 (hidden under an old 50's radio's shell in the photo!) which then sends the signal to the other Deco hubs. I now have a brilliant signal all over the house, with two Decos, and one extra one which we only use when people stay in the Granny annex.We've had this set up for a couple of months now, and we only lost signal once, when it was chucking it down with rain/stormy. We've had bad weather since then, and all has been well. Copes with three devices at once streaming films with no problem. No problems with Teams meetings for work, with lots of people on the meeting, and sharing presentations etc.It's fairly pricey (£212.49 when I bought it), but so far this has been money well spent.

Great consistent 5G connection, as good as a mobile hotspot but doesn't restrict.Worked immediately with a new 5G SIM from Vodafone, although I had to register the SIM by putting it in my mobile as the 5G router doesn't receive texts (that I can find)Tested with EE also, and no issues.Stable connection to mobile data and stable WiFi connection to devices.I set it up in a dock and had it connected via usb C to PC for power (although battery life is solid)Extra benefit of the usb C connection is it acts like an ethernet port and allows my PC to connect to the network over usb C rather than WiFi.Disconnect the usb cable and it immediately switches back to WiFi.Couldn't be happier, does exactly as expected and better. Highly recommend as a replacement to traditional broadband as well as a handy powerbank/mobile hotspotSpeed:While this is dependant on carrierI have run speedtest.net at various times of day50mbps-200mbps recordedHave even took it in my pocket on days out, the battery was only at 85% after 7 hours without chargingPersonal preferences here... But I don't like the weight, I didn't need it to be a power bank also, but if this is also providing power for the device, it's an acceptable compromise to me

This is a great gadget. We bought it because we have a house in Greece and need reliable and affordable WiFi. We tried it out in London using a Three data sim card and it was hopeless. For our area, apparently Vodafone gives a much better result than Three. Then we took it to Greece and used a Cosmote data only Sim card. We had tried the Vodafone sim card there last year and it was no use in our area. But with a Cosmote data sim card, the speed was excellent, in fact achieving better speeds than using the full fibre broadband we are used to in London from Virgin. If you can get a sim card with strong coverage for the area you live, this MiFi gives excellent, reliable WiFi 24 hours hours a day, 7 days a week.