- Hello, WhistleOut family.
Today I am talking about hotspots versus WiFi.
Can you live off a hotspot?
Are hotspots necessary?
We're gonna go over comparing speeds
on your home WiFi broadband to hotspot speeds
and how those differ and why that's important.
So if that's interesting to you
and you need more info on hotspots
then this is a video for you.
Thanks for watching.
Stay tuned for more,
I'm Sherri Riggs, this is WhisteOut TV.
(upbeat music)
So in this video today I'm going to be answering
a few questions like what is a hotspot?
Why do hotspots matter?
Can I use a hotspot for my normal internet?
And a few other important questions
that tend to come up when we're talking about internet,
and cell phone plan.
So, without further delay let us get started,
let's jump right into it.
Now, quickly I'll address my little set.
I recently moved and my actual studio set
is not quite set up yet.
So I'm kind of improvising with this background here.
Won't be like this forever
but this is what we're gonna do for now.
So as you can see kind of got my website pulled up here
whistleout.com, we are talking hotspots.
So first what is a hotspot?
There are a few different types of hotspots.
There are mobile hotspots and personal hotspots.
Today I'm talking about a personal cell phone hotspot.
You can turn it on on your phone,
and then your phone becomes an actual network
that other devices can connect to.
Now, there are other things called mobile hotspots
they're kind of like little bricks
you can slide in a SIM card,
and you can carry it around with you
and then that becomes a mobile hotspot.
There are very specific cell phone plans for those
but we are only talking the hotspot
that comes already pre-built into most modern cell phones.
So, how does a hotspot work?
Well, here's the basic gist of it for you.
You go into your settings,
you turn on your hotspot,
you create a name for your network,
you create a password for your network,
then other devices can connect to your devices hotspot.
And basically, I have AT&T.
So how that would work is
I turn on my hotspot from my cell phone,
an AT&T signal comes out of it
and I can connect my laptop, my TV, my smart speakers to it
and it essentially becomes its own individual network.
So the next question that kind of comes along
with what is a hotspot is
well, Why would I need it?
Well, there are a few reasons why.
I use my hotspot when my home internet is acting up,
and I cannot get a good signal.
Normally my hotspot has a really steady current signal,
that I can do video calls on from my laptop,
I can watch TV or YouTube videos if needed,
and I can connect my speakers to them
if I really want to stream music
or anything along those lines.
You also might wanna use your hotspot if you're in public
and don't wanna connect to a public WiFi,
you can just connect to your own personal hotspot
and it's a little bit safer
and makes you a little bit more comfortable to do that
and those are just a few reasons
why you might be using hotspot.
Some people use hotspots as their actual internet,
because they might live in a place where
there's not great options for home internet
or satellite is the only option
and satellite way expensive in some cases.
So, those are just a handful of reasons
why you might be looking
for a cell phone plan with a hotspot.
Now, if you've used a hotspot before
you're just looking for more information
or this video ends up helping you,
click below, give me a like, give me a subscribe,
give me a follow and turn on those notifications
because every little bit helps
and oh my, my screen just went out,
and we're back, okay, that's right.
If you like this video,
be sure to give it a thumbs up,
I'll really appreciate all the help.
So now let's dive into some more info about hotspots.
Are hotspots fast enough?
Do they give you enough speed
to get this tasks accomplished
that you need to be accomplished, finished?
You know what I'm trying to say,
do you get enough data?
Do you get enough speed with hotspots?
Well, it depends on the carrier that you have.
Sometimes carriers limit hotspot speed,
sometimes they don't.
So let's go over a few carriers
and their speeds right now, shall we?
Let's go over.
I'm gonna go over some MVNOs
and then their correlating main carrier.
So let's start with Visible Mobile.
Visible Mobile offers an unlimited hotspot,
although they cap their speeds
at five megabits per second, five Mbps.
Kind of slow but you can get enough done with it,
you can scroll the internet just fine,
you can stream SD just fine
but don't get any ideas in your head about streaming HD,
you can't do that with five Mbps.
Now with Verizon, it depends on their plan
but for the most part
Verizon does not cap their hotspot speeds.
AT&T has no cap either.
Cricket, some of their plans
have data speed caps at eight Mbps
and it would make sense that their hotspots
would have that as well,
so just keep that in mind.
With T-Mobile, their essentials plan,
caps at 600 kbps which is less than Cricket
and less than Visible,
that is really slow it's 3G speeds,
other than that T-Mobile's plans
don't cap their hotspots speeds.
And lastly, we're gonna look at Mint Mobile,
Mint Mobile does not cap their hotspot speeds.
So just keep that in mind
when you're looking through hotspot plans,
which carriers cap their hotspot speeds and which don't.
So now that we know a little bit more about
the generics of hotspots,
how they work, what they are,
what you can do with them,
let's kind of go over how long a hotspot will last you,
how much data do you need,
and how long a hotspot lasts really depends on
how much hotspot data you are loaded each month.
Some plans give you a set amount of data to use for hotspot,
some plans only give you what is allotted to you
in your general overarching data supply.
So it really just depends
but to give you a good look at what you might need
and how much you'll use up,
I'm gonna go over a few daily tasks
and kind of show you how much data those use
and we'll go from there.
So to demonstrate this
I have our website pulled up behind me,
I'm screen-sharing on my cell phone to my TV
so we can kind of go over this together,
and I'm gonna be zooming in
and hopefully you guys can see this back here.
That is the goal.
So let's go for it.
Okay, so how much hotspot data
does generic web browsing use?
In an hour 60 megabits, which is very very minimal,
you can work every day on a hotspot
and just be doing generic web scrolling,
chatting with your coworkers,
doing really basic tasks on the internet,
you could do that every month
for just a handful of gigabytes,
and you would be just fine there.
What really eats up your streaming or your hotspot data
are streaming services like Netflix, Hulu,
even Instagram and TikTok,
those use about one gigabyte an hour.
So you're gonna be using up a lot of data.
If you're streaming all day everyday or even gaming,
that will use up the most data
out of all of the other tasks you could be doing
like scrolling Facebook,
or just checking your email,
those streaming video of any kind of eat up a lot of data,
streaming in 4K or HD is gonna eat up even more
than a gigabit an hour or a gigabyte an hour
so just keep that in mind
as you're going through your hotspot.
But if you're gonna be streaming eight hours a day,
that's eight gigabytes that you used up.
If you only have 15 gigabytes
to use a month on your hotspot,
streaming might not be the best idea
to use your hotspot for that purpose.
Now, before we move on from this,
let's talk about one other task that I do every day
and that many of us do every day,
that is talking on Zoom or video chatting.
Now that uses, let me zoom in on here,
we can see on the screen, we got Zoom right here,
Zoom high quality group call,
for a half hour that's 405 megabits.
And then if we're looking for a whole hour
that's almost a gigabyte of data.
So, again, any video
that you're using with your hotspot,
any streaming and even streaming music
uses up quite a bit too,
just keep that in mind with your hotspot
that's gonna eat it up a lot.
So, how much hotspot do you actually need?
Well, if you find that you yourself
are a heavy data user each month,
I use above 30 gigabytes of data each month.
So if you find yourself using a lot of data
then you probably will find yourself in need of a hotspot
every once in a while.
For me, I use a hotspot a few times a month
like I said, if my internet is acting up
or if I go work remotely at a coffee shop or something
and I don't wanna log into their WiFi,
I use my own hotspot.
My AT&T Elite hotspot gives me 30 gigabytes of hotspot
each month, that is a lot.
I never use 30 gigabytes.
I can't imagine many people use 30 gigabytes
unless you're using it for your own home personal internet.
If you're not using it for that,
if you just use the hotspot every once in a while,
all you might need is five to 10 gigabytes
I think that would be just fine,
but it all depends
if you need to know how much internet you need,
I have a great video about that over here
in one of these corners,
in one of these corners I have a great video
about how much data you need to sufficiently
have a good cell phone plan
and have good coverage and good service.
So that video will help you determine
how much of hotspot you need as well.
Okay, we've gone over a ton of hotspot information
now I'm gonna do a fun test.
We are going to use my hotspot to connect to my laptop,
and then we're gonna use my hotspot to connect to my TV
and we're gonna test those speeds out
so here, those are for you.
Okay, so right now I'm going to be doing
a really simple hotspot speed test
to see how my connection compares to my home WiFi
and then how it compares to my mobile phone's hotspot.
So let's check it out,
right now I am still on my home WiFi.
So let's check out the speed test here.
Now, my speeds that I pay for at home are 500 Mbps up.
Oh, excuse me, 500 Mbps down and 10 up.
So right now, right now my speeds are a little rough
I only got 56 down and it's about three up right now.
So I'm gonna do one more speed test,
to kind of see if that number will grow,
'cause sometimes it just depends on the timing,
the speed test isn't that great.
Yeah, now we're up to 150 almost
so getting 150, 180, 190, 200, there we go.
So these are great home internet speeds.
200 down and we're looking at seven, six up ish.
So now what I'm gonna do is
I am going to turn on my hotspot,
which is really quick on iPhones,
you just have to go to settings,
then you go to personal hotspot,
and then click allow others to join.
So what I'm gonna do is go into my network up here
and look for Sherri's iPhone,
that's what my network is called, here we go.
And I'm gonna wait
until we're connected up in the top corner
it says you are connected.
So now I'm gonna test again,
and see how my speeds compare.
Well, currently we're on zero Mbps down.
So this test is not going great for hotspot.
We'll just try it again,
we're gonna cancel out and retry.
There we go.
Just took a little bit to get ahold of it.
We're looking at 50, almost 60 Mbps down, not bad.
Remember that was what my first speed was
when I did my first test on my home WiFi.
And now we're looking at 25 up, that's crazy.
That's more than double what I got with my home WiFi,
that is incredibly impressive
and just because I tested the home WiFi twice
we're gonna test the hotspot twice.
So we're gonna see what it busts out.
30 down, not shabby,
this is not bad at all
considering some carriers
cap their hotspot speeds to five Mbps.
We're looking at nearly 30 on this second test
that's incredible.
And the upload speeds are not as impressive this time around
but I don't expect myself to get 20 Mbps upload every time.
So we've got 26 down and five up.
Now, this has been a quick test for you guys,
let's test out some more things, huh?
Okay, we're here with a second,
not really a speed test, but a connection test.
I can't really totally test my speed on a smart TV,
I don't have like actual access
to like search speed test on this TV
like a normal internet browser,
but we're just gonna open
one of my apps that I like to use a lot
and try and test out a portion
of a show that I really like to watch.
So basically we're gonna open Hulu
and we're gonna watch "Survivor."
Well, I'm not really gonna record me watching "Survivor"
'cause that would bring the copyrights stuff
but I'm gonna tell you how my experience was
watching "Survivor" using my hotspot
from my iPhone 12 pro and AT&T.
So let's get to it.
I guess the first thing I need to do
is connect my TV to my hotspot network,
which is gonna take a second.
So I'm gonna pause this
and we'll come back when it's connected.
Actually I just found a cool function on my TV
where it allows me to test the connection.
So I don't think you can really see it
but it's right over here.
I'm gonna try it one more time
to see what our speeds are like using my home network,
and then we'll switch to my cell phone.
So let's see what it is
one more time we're gonna retest the connection.
It says connection method is wireless,
signal strength is full,
and our download is 12,558 Kb/s.
I'm gonna have to see what that is,
12,558 Kb/s.
In my brain I cannot do the math to make that into Mbps
so let's see what it is.
It's 12, it's 12 Mbps down,
12.5 Mbps down.
Math is not my strong point.
So we shall test it one more time and see how it goes.
Now we're at 14.2 Mbps down using my home network,
that was more than enough speed to stream
although I do get caught up sometimes,
sometimes it buffers briefly,
but for the most part I have a pretty steady connection
and now I'm officially actually gonna switch networks
and then retest the signal strength.
Okay, I officially have my TV hooked up to my phone hotspot,
you can see it's Sherri's iPhone
for my network connection right here,
maybe you can't, I'll zoom in later.
And then right now I'm just gonna test the connection
and see what we get.
So before we got 12 Mbps and 14 Mbps down
with my normal home internet,
so let's just check and see what this hotspot speed is.
Testing the connection right now,
it is 6,000 Kbps which is six Mbps down.
Not great, not horrible
since we've been doing two tests connections
with every other device
but we're gonna do a second connection here
to see if it changes
and it went down to five Mbps
and the third one just for fun
and it went down to a 1.5 Mbps,
we're gonna go one more time.
Six Mbps again.
Okay, so we're ranging
from one to six megabits per second here,
which is enough to stream,
but maybe not in high quality,
it's just gonna have to be SD quality.
But yeah, that gives you an idea
of how an hotspot works over a computer and over a TV.
If I was kind of going to connect it to a smart speaker
I would be able to stream just fine any music,
I'll be able to use a personal assistant in that way.
But now I'm gonna watch a little bit of TV
and see how it does buffering.
I'll get back to you.
Okay, I'm gonna let this play in the background a little bit
while I'm talking so you can kind of get a picture
of how the connection is working.
From here, it's a little bit grainy,
it's not crystal clear.
However, that might be because
the show I'm watching was filmed in 2008 (laughs)
but it doesn't have any buffering, no lag,
is streaming perfectly fine
and just maybe not as clear as it could be
and we're getting about six Mbps down,
so not shabby at all.
Now here's a word of caution.
If you are planning on using
a hotspot to stream from your TV,
just know that it will eat up your hotspot allotment
much more quickly than say connecting to
just a smart speaker or connecting to a laptop.
Streaming uses about a gig an hour conservatively
up to two potentially depending on
if you're streaming an HD or SD or 4K,
whatever it may be that uses more data.
So, just be aware if you don't have an unlimited hotspot
or you only have a certain amount
of high speed priority data to use
then you might be running through it pretty quickly
but otherwise you're good to go
and stream from your hotspot on your smart TV.
Now, finally, let's talk about how to turn on your hotspot.
This is really easy, especially for iPhone users.
If you have an iPhone, just go into your settings
it should be on that main page.
When you open your settings,
click into hotspot and then just click turn on hotspot.
Very similar process with Android phones,
most Android phones go into your settings,
look for that hotspot
and then just flip it on, super easy.
If you need a little bit more help, honestly
it's really easy to Google that for your phone model
and it will pop up immediately.
But otherwise, yeah, just go into your settings,
turn your hotspot and you're good to go.
If this video helped you out at all,
let me know in the comments below,
what do you wanna hear about next,
I'd love to help you,
I'd love to chat some more about hotspots
or anything like that.
I'm Sherry Riggs, thanks for watching WhistleOut TV.