you are looking at right here speed test results from us mobile and visible these
are two low-cost cell phone service providers that use verizon's network and both of these
carriers can save you money compared to verizon wireless but can us mobile really
compete with visible's 25 a month plan this is the cheap phone plan experiment and it continues
next hey what's up savers it's michael welcome to the channel if you've followed me for a while you
know that i've tested more than a dozen low-cost cell phone service providers over the years but
i've never reviewed us mobile until today i signed up for us mobile and tested it out for 30 days
using my iphone 12. and in today's video i'll share the results with you and compare us mobile
to visible so here it goes the five things to know before you sign up for us mobile let's get started
number one plans and pricing and us mobile's plans are generally cheaper than the major networks how
much cheaper a single line of unlimited service on verizon post paid well it starts at 70
a month and that's before taxes and fees with us mobile it is 45 a month and taxes and fees
are included but like many of its competitors us mobile offers a way to lower your monthly price
to 25 a month per line for unlimited and here's how that is with a family plan and three lines or
more when you're on that family plan you'll also get to choose from one of these music video or
gaming perks the disney bundle netflix standard and hbo max are all on this list so if you have
three or more lines i really like us mobile's unlimited plans but for singles and couples
i'm going to give the edge to verizon own visible and visible's unlimited plan it's
a month with party pay activated now party pay it's similar to a family plan
but everyone gets a separate bill that's a big difference because you don't need to be related
to the people in your party as long as you have four or more in your party everyone gets
the lowest monthly price you can start your own party or join one that already exists it takes
about two minutes to find one on reddit or you can join my party i'll link in the description below
not everyone needs unlimited data though and with visible there's only one plan that unlimited plan
us mobile does have some other options there are too many to list but i'll highlight one
if you use minimal data you may be interested in this one the one gigabyte plan it's not a bad deal
but unlike the unlimited data plan look here us mobile does not include taxes and fees with these
plans and that'll add about five bucks a month to the advertised price us mobile is a prepaid
carrier and all that means is that you pay for your service in advance and you get to decide
whether you want to automatically renew or not one other expense with us mobile that is for this
the starter kit it is four dollars at the regular price but you may be able to find a promo
code and get it free i'll link to that in the description below right now moving on number two
network coverage now when my us mobile starter kit arrived in the mail it had two sim cards and yours
will too one is black and one is white and that's because us mobile doesn't just have one network
partner it has two us mobile has this tool on its website just enter your current carrier location
or device to determine which network is best for you the super lte network that refers to verizon
and the gsm lte network that is t-mobile now i wanted to test us mobile on the super lte network
which is verizon so i chose this one the black sim card and entered that into my iphone during
my month with us mobile i ran 20 speed tests using the speed test app and download speeds
they surpassed 100 megabits per second half of the time now typically a download speed of only 10 to
20 megabits per second is fast enough for all of my needs including video streaming on my phone
since i have verizon visible for my primary line i was curious how it performed compared to us mobile
so check out this the results of that speed test us mobile is on the left of your screen
visible is on the right and for this test us mobile's download speed about 67 megabits per
second visible higher at 116 but both very good upload speeds were both in the mid 30s also very
good now one downside of visible that i've noticed over the years is a slower ping that is especially
important for gamers and that was the case here too the ping or latency was 36 milliseconds for
us mobile 68 for visible and this is also important us mobile says the unlimited plan
on the super lte network again verizon is a truly unlimited plan in other words data is uncapped
and unthrottled but if you use the gsm network with us mobile again that's t-mobile
there is a 50 gigabyte cap on high speed data go over that and you may have your speeds reduced
aside from data speeds call and text performance also very good but there was something that kind
of surprised me at the start of my test my first few calls the audio was really muffled and just
kind of distorted but i gave a call to us mobile's customer support they made some changes on their
end and i was good to go for the rest of the test and by the way i'll touch more on customer
support a little later on in this video right now though number three and additional features
i've got something pretty important to share with you about us mobile's phone options or
lack of phone options but first i want to run through a few additional features that may be
important to you first up mobile hotspot you can add 20 gigabytes of mobile hotspot data to your
unlimited plan for 10 a month however it is not included in the base price now this is an area
where visible gets the advantage because it offers unlimited hotspot data at no additional charge
although that hotspot data is capped at 5 megabits per second back to us mobile and the second
feature i wanted to talk about free international data and this is great if you travel outside the
country with that unlimited plan you get up to 10 gigabytes of high-speed roaming included
number four phone options so if you're like me and bringing a phone that you already have to
us mobile you're probably in luck that's because us mobile has two network partners as i mentioned
verizon and t-mobile the company says nearly all unlocked phones with a sim card slot will work
but let's say you want to buy a new phone from us mobile might not be worth it here's why at
the time of this recording only about 10 phone models were for sale from us mobile's website
and to my surprise none of them appear to be on sale we'll compare that to visible and as i
scroll through this page there are about double the number of phone models available for sale
although some of them are out of stock the big difference though is the phone deals with visible
there are discounts off the list price virtual gift card offers and zero percent financing of
course phone offers change all the time so you can check the websites for us mobile and visible
links to them in the description below we're gonna keep it moving to number five customer service and
this is where a lot of people get hesitant about switching to any of the cheap cell phone service
providers and i can understand that to a degree us mobile has no retail locations so if something
goes wrong at any point your options are only to call or live chat both call and chat available 24
7. companies like us mobile know people are reluctant to switch so they made the process
as easy as possible the starter kit i showed earlier is so simple to follow and us mobile has
a great app to manage your account i tested out us mobile's customer support a few times for the
purpose of this review overall i can say the phone support was better but the chat support was faster
i've compared us mobile to visible throughout this video and this is perhaps the biggest difference
because with visible customer service is handled primarily over chat there isn't even an 800 number
to call but you can request a call back so if phone customer support really matters to you
go with us mobile over visible now to my final thoughts who is us mobile best for after 30 days
of testing us mobile i understand why a lot of people really like this service and here's why
you may want to switch to it here's who us mobile is best for first up people who can get that 25 a
month per line price for unlimited also people who plan to bring their own device because us mobile
sells only a limited number of phones and people who want a choice of networks either verizon or
t-mobile people who don't need mobile hotspot data or are willing to pay extra for it and finally
people who are okay giving up in-person customer support but still want 24 7 support by phone
or chat now for me i am not switching away from visible at least not at this point there are some
real advantages with us mobile but visible works for me because of that 25 a month party paid plan
unlimited talk text data including mobile hotspot having said that if my experience with visible
ever took a turn for the worse i take a real close look at us mobile as a long-term solution
in order to keep verizon's network without paying the premium price if you want to learn more about
us mobile find a link in the description leave a comment below if you have experience with either
us mobile or visible and i'll see you back here for another review soon until next time