3 Mifi (Huawei E585) Mini Review
When I was barred from using data because I had gone over my “fair usage” on my mobile phone I decided to buy the Mifi from Three to get around the problem.
The total cost of the package was £60 which included:
- Modem (Huawei E585)
- Sim card
- USB cable
- USB power adapter
- Documents
- 1 GB for 1 month
The hardware was very nice and was overhauled recently (when I bought it in the summer). There is a LCD display to show the battery life and the connect status. The display turns off after a set amount of time to save battery but can be turned back on by pressing the power button. All the settings can be accessed by connecting to the device via wifi and typing in the address just like a typical home router.
The unit uses a standard mini USB to charge the unit and includes a short cable and wall plug. It can be charge from a USB port but it won’t charge as fast as using the adapter. The unit can be used whilst it is being charged.
I wished the MiFi had a built in buzzer so that you could prank it like a mobile phone to locate the unit if it’s lost. The modem’s SIM does have a phone number attached to it for this to be possible.
The battery life was very good and I was able to get through a whole work day without the need to charge it (it lasted longer than the phone!). I had tested in various populated areas and it performed very well on Three’s network.
The down side to the package was the tariff itself. The amount of data supplied or even bought afterwards would only last 1 month and does not roll over to the next month which is not very useful if the device is a backup unit. The price per GB is very expensive on a pay as you go plan but the initial package price was very reasonable to get people to purchase it.
Overall I like the modem itself. It’s a smart package and with it’s standard interface, very reasonable battery life and performance in terms of wireless tethering and HSDPA speeds. The real turn off is the tariff pricing. Per Gigabyte it seems very expensive and the time limit as to when the data has be used by is really annoying.
