tkin
Back to school!!
*i.imgur.com/eZNVRLf.jpg
Device: Reliance JioFi 2 Portable Wifi hotspot
Cost: 2899/-
Benefits: 3 months free data+free calls+free sms.
Box contents: One router, one 2300 mah battery, one power brick, one usb cable.
Pros:
Looks: The new wifi router is a small, pebble shaped device, you can check the pics below. It's lightweight but sturdy, covered with smooth glass like plastic. The indicators are now hidden and can only be seen when lit up, giving the front an expensive feel. It's small enough to be carried around in any kind of pocket and slides in comfortably.
Device:
1. The router takes a standard sim but also comes with a microsim adapter. You can hook it up with your new jio sim, if you already have a jio sim you can use that too. The router is preconfigured to jio network, I'm not sure whether you can use it with other networks, the device does have the settings panel for changing APN.
2. According to specs you can connect upto 30 wireless and 1 usb device to the router, although 10+1 is suggested. Reliance claims 7.5 hrs of usage with 1 device and 3.3hrs charging time with the supplied adapter. I am yet to test this, but it did run fine with 2 devices for 2 hours straight and only one power bar was consumed.
3. The router takes around 5secs to start up and establish link and wifi, then it can be used. Even after prolonged usage while charging the device did not heat up at all, so carrying it around will be comfortable.
4. The device supports 2.4 GHz Wifi 802.11 b/g/n and security is provided via the standard WPA/WPA2-PSK+AES/TKIP mode, there is no support for 5GHz. You can select any channel for WiFi or disable the WiFi module completely and use it via the USB tether mode.
5. The device also supports WPS for quick connection and it works properly.
Network:
1. The network is quite stable, I am getting between 15-30mbps download and 5-8mbps upload speeds all the time. Most of the time the speed stabilizes around 18/5 mbps which is quite fast.
2. Ping quality is good inside India but some singapore servers in speedtest gave me low speed as well as very high pings, will need to test this more to verify suitability for online gaming.
3. For media consumers this will be a treat. 4k videos in youtube runs without buffering though my laptop struggled to play the video, full hd buffers extremely fast. Download speed comes above 15mbps all the time. Yet to check torrents.
Additional Features:
1. The router takes a standard sim but also comes with a microsom adapter. It can take a 32GB microsd card. You can use the sd card as webstorage by logging into the router from any device.
2. You can also gain voice via VoWifi feature. Install the JioJoin app in your mobile, connect to wifi and your smartphone becomes VoLTE capable. You can make and receive calls through the JioJoin app to outside networks (no internet required for receivers), you can also send and receive sms as well. Voice clarity in call is good and there wasn't any noticeable time lag.
Cons:
1. After I configured the router it conked off, it wasn't working properly and I couldn't even reach the config page. I had to reset it and redo the changes one by one. For now I've changed the WiFi SSID+Password, the User ID and Password for the admin panel and turned off WPS. I'll test the other settings later.
2. The JioJoin app is poorly built. First of all it's a resource hog, it consumes around 150MB ram and significant CPU time. Second it keeps showing you popups to turn it into the default messaging app. Once you activate the sim in your wifi device it can receive sms, these sms are delivered in the JioJoin app. But to send sms via the Jio sim you need to turn the JioJoin app into the default messaging app, something I am not quite comfortable with. Also it shows your entire sms history as well as call logs for all sims, it would have been more helpful if there was a setting to allow the JioJoin app to show call log and sms that is handle by the Jio sim only, it gets a bit cluttered.
Conclusions:
The JioFi device is well worth your money, the cost, spread across 3 months comes to 966/- per month. For this you get unlimited data, voice and messaging. Compared to cost of data, that's equivalent to 3GB 4G data in Vodafone, so at a pure VFM basis the device is really cheap, especially if you share it with your friends, the voice and sms are additional savings. The device is quite polished, works well and has additional features like USB tethering and wireless storage function. The service provided so far is extremely good but we need to see how they hold up once full service is rolled out. At this moment, the JioFi 2 portable mobile hotpsot is a bargain too good to pass on.
Images:
*i.imgur.com/1oZpSSM.jpg
*i.imgur.com/WXcQVSj.jpg
*www.speedtest.net/result/5567005424.png
Website:
*www.jio.com/preview/jiofi
Device: Reliance JioFi 2 Portable Wifi hotspot
Cost: 2899/-
Benefits: 3 months free data+free calls+free sms.
Box contents: One router, one 2300 mah battery, one power brick, one usb cable.
Pros:
Looks: The new wifi router is a small, pebble shaped device, you can check the pics below. It's lightweight but sturdy, covered with smooth glass like plastic. The indicators are now hidden and can only be seen when lit up, giving the front an expensive feel. It's small enough to be carried around in any kind of pocket and slides in comfortably.
Device:
1. The router takes a standard sim but also comes with a microsim adapter. You can hook it up with your new jio sim, if you already have a jio sim you can use that too. The router is preconfigured to jio network, I'm not sure whether you can use it with other networks, the device does have the settings panel for changing APN.
2. According to specs you can connect upto 30 wireless and 1 usb device to the router, although 10+1 is suggested. Reliance claims 7.5 hrs of usage with 1 device and 3.3hrs charging time with the supplied adapter. I am yet to test this, but it did run fine with 2 devices for 2 hours straight and only one power bar was consumed.
3. The router takes around 5secs to start up and establish link and wifi, then it can be used. Even after prolonged usage while charging the device did not heat up at all, so carrying it around will be comfortable.
4. The device supports 2.4 GHz Wifi 802.11 b/g/n and security is provided via the standard WPA/WPA2-PSK+AES/TKIP mode, there is no support for 5GHz. You can select any channel for WiFi or disable the WiFi module completely and use it via the USB tether mode.
5. The device also supports WPS for quick connection and it works properly.
Network:
1. The network is quite stable, I am getting between 15-30mbps download and 5-8mbps upload speeds all the time. Most of the time the speed stabilizes around 18/5 mbps which is quite fast.
2. Ping quality is good inside India but some singapore servers in speedtest gave me low speed as well as very high pings, will need to test this more to verify suitability for online gaming.
3. For media consumers this will be a treat. 4k videos in youtube runs without buffering though my laptop struggled to play the video, full hd buffers extremely fast. Download speed comes above 15mbps all the time. Yet to check torrents.
Additional Features:
1. The router takes a standard sim but also comes with a microsom adapter. It can take a 32GB microsd card. You can use the sd card as webstorage by logging into the router from any device.
2. You can also gain voice via VoWifi feature. Install the JioJoin app in your mobile, connect to wifi and your smartphone becomes VoLTE capable. You can make and receive calls through the JioJoin app to outside networks (no internet required for receivers), you can also send and receive sms as well. Voice clarity in call is good and there wasn't any noticeable time lag.
Cons:
1. After I configured the router it conked off, it wasn't working properly and I couldn't even reach the config page. I had to reset it and redo the changes one by one. For now I've changed the WiFi SSID+Password, the User ID and Password for the admin panel and turned off WPS. I'll test the other settings later.
2. The JioJoin app is poorly built. First of all it's a resource hog, it consumes around 150MB ram and significant CPU time. Second it keeps showing you popups to turn it into the default messaging app. Once you activate the sim in your wifi device it can receive sms, these sms are delivered in the JioJoin app. But to send sms via the Jio sim you need to turn the JioJoin app into the default messaging app, something I am not quite comfortable with. Also it shows your entire sms history as well as call logs for all sims, it would have been more helpful if there was a setting to allow the JioJoin app to show call log and sms that is handle by the Jio sim only, it gets a bit cluttered.
Conclusions:
The JioFi device is well worth your money, the cost, spread across 3 months comes to 966/- per month. For this you get unlimited data, voice and messaging. Compared to cost of data, that's equivalent to 3GB 4G data in Vodafone, so at a pure VFM basis the device is really cheap, especially if you share it with your friends, the voice and sms are additional savings. The device is quite polished, works well and has additional features like USB tethering and wireless storage function. The service provided so far is extremely good but we need to see how they hold up once full service is rolled out. At this moment, the JioFi 2 portable mobile hotpsot is a bargain too good to pass on.
Images:
*i.imgur.com/1oZpSSM.jpg
*i.imgur.com/WXcQVSj.jpg
*www.speedtest.net/result/5567005424.png
Website:
*www.jio.com/preview/jiofi
