MoFi 4500 SIM4 vs SIM7 with AT&T Unlimited Plan - How are the Speeds?

hey everyone in this video we're going to be taking a look at the sim 4 and sim 7 versions of the mofi 4500 4g lte router for those of you that don't know the mofi 4500 is a high performance cellular router that works with all the major carriers in north america and many others around the rest of the world in my case i'm using a t with a router on an unlimited plan for twenty dollars a month with that being said i'm going to give you a brief overview of the setup that i use with the mofi and then we'll hop on the computer and run some speed tests with both routers and compare the results but before i do i would like to mention that i first found out about the mofi from another youtuber named sealy training after you watch this video i would highly suggest going to check out his videos if you haven't already as he does have some very helpful information on the mofi i will leave some links to his videos in the description for you to check out later now we're just going to start with a side-by-side comparison showcasing the exterior of the two versions of the router you can't really tell the difference until you check the bottoms as it shows the model information on the labels okay so now i'm going to tell you a little bit about the setup that i use with the mofi i'm currently using an unlimited tablet plan with a t for 20 a month like i previously mentioned when i originally signed up for the plan i received a universal sim card which is kind of handy as you can just simply pop it into the mofi no problem one more thing to mention before we go on the computer i'm using an external yagi antenna which seems to improve the signal strength by about 10 decibels it's a good idea to go with two external antennas if you live pretty far from the closest cell tower in my case i'm just using one which is connected on the primary side of the router and this seems to be good enough for me at the moment okay i'm on my windows 10 computer now we're going to start with the sim 7 version i'm going to go ahead and connect to the wi-fi first and then i'm going to open up internet explorer and just a little side note mofi does not recommend using google chrome when accessing the router settings okay and now we're at the login screen i just want to briefly mention as of the making of this video the latest software version of the mofi is 4.4.1 now i'm going to go ahead and login the default password is admin ok and this is what the main page looks like i'm going to go ahead and go to the mofi internal modem then i'm going to go to check signal strength and the router is currently on band 4 so what i'm going to do now is just go to the band scanner and now we're at the band scanner so i'm going to go ahead and start a scan i'm going to speed this up here and there we go it looks like band 2 4 12 14 and 66 are the only good options for me as the ones with the star next to it represent a different carrier and for those of you that don't know the different bands represent different frequencies from the radio waves being transmitted from the cellular towers so what i'm going to do now is lock the mofi to each of those bands and check the signal strength and do a speed test to do this first we go to the band lock and then select band 2 from the drop down menu and then we'll click next and finish and this will reboot the router i'm going to speed this up here okay and then we'll have to log into the router again okay and let's check the signal strength again we're on band 2 at negative 107 decibels so now let's run a speed test i like to use google chrome for this okay and it looks like there was an error when testing the upload speed however we did get a 1.76 megabit per second download speed so i'm just gonna say zero for the upload speed for this one so what i'm going to do now is just go through and test each of the other bands don't worry i will speed this up here and we can compare the results after okay so now looking at the results here it seems that band 12 had the best signal however band 14 had the best download speed at 4.33 megabits per second now just looking at all the bands here those speed tests are pretty poor download speeds those are pretty low and the upload speeds those are little to none so i guess let's see how the sim 4 version compares okay so i'm going to do the same process here with the sim 4 i'm first going to connect to the wi-fi and then log into the router and the main page is slightly different on the sim 4. i'm gonna do a signal strength check and it looks like we're on band 4 at negative 99 decibels so now let's go ahead and do a band scan okay and it looks like the best options are band two 4 12 25 and 26 i believe band 5 and band 13 are with a different carrier so i'm going to go to the band lock and lock it to band 2 first okay and i'll let the router reboot and then we'll log back in and we'll check the signal strength again okay we're on band 2 at negative 92 decibels so now let's go and do a speed test wow that is a significant improvement to what we had with band 2 on the sim 7 version now let's go ahead and do the other bands again i'm going to speed this up here man look at those results much better than what we had with the sim 7. again band 12 had the best signal strength however band 4 had the worst signal strength but the best download and upload speed here's a side by side comparison of the test results now you may be thinking what explains the difference between the sim 7 and sim 4 well so am i i'm not 100 sure why the speeds on the sim 7 were so low i was thinking that the carrier aggregation feature on the sim 4 would explain this however when i did the signal strength checks it displayed carrier aggregation not assigned and for those of you that don't know the carrier aggregation feature on the mofi works by combining two bands at the same time for the purpose of achieving a faster speed i believe the carrier aggregation feature is disabled when the mofi is locked to a band so i'm still not exactly sure what explains the speed differences between the sim 4 and sim 7 and another thing to mention is that i did do some tests prior to this video using an ethernet cable and the results were about the same when compared to the tests over wi-fi now i've noticed that i have been using band 4 most of the time with the sim 4 of course as it does have the higher speeds averaging from 20 to 40 megabit per second download and 10 to 20 megabit per second upload now if you are planning to use a t with the mofi i would highly suggest going with the sim 4 model as from my experience it is the better one of the two now i can't speak for any of the other carriers since i've only used at t but please post your own experiences with either of the two routers in the comments i'd like to hear them well i think this pretty much wraps it up for the video if you guys have any questions and such please leave them in the comments below and i'll try to answer them as quickly as i can anyways thanks for watching and do consider subscribing as i may post some more mofi videos in the future you

Channel: Holt's iPhone Help

Views: 12,953

Rating: 4.9055119 out of 5

Keywords: MoFi 4500, MoFi router, MoFi, MoFi Network, mofinetwork.com, MoFi 4500 SIM4, MoFi SIM4, MoFi SIM7, MoFi 4500 SIM7, SIM4, SIM7, SIM4 vs SIM7, MoFi router comparison, Download speed MoFi, Upload speed MoFi, MoFi AT&T, MoFi AT&T unlimited, AT&T, AT&T Unlimited tablet plan, AT&T $20 a month, Unlimited MoFi $20, Unlimited hotspot, AT&T unlimited plan MoFi, Speed test MoFi, Speed MoFi, Yagi antenna MoFi, Yagi antenna, Insty Connect, Insty connect router, 5G router, 5G MoFi

Id: ItWXFHMmvfg

Length: 12min 33sec (753 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/mgcarley]

AT&T have been closing this loophole for ages - if your IMEI is identified as a mismatch (i.e. not an iPad) there's a fair chance they'll shadowban it on the network and turn the line down with zero recourse.

Caveat emptor.

[u/blapjohnson4]

Do you have to have an AT&T phone plan to get the unlimited tablet plan? Also, if you put the sim card in the mofi, doesn't AT&T buffer your account?

[u/FWGuyJax]

SIM4 has a different cellular modem inside (Sierra MC7455) vs the SIM7's Quectel modem.

[u/debtnotlimited]

Why was the SIM4 able to lock Sprint's B25 and B26 using AT&T?

[u/jackelope90]

My AT&T unlimited tablet plan is not working on my Mofi 4500-sim 7. It connects but no internet. Mofi support says it has to be a hotspot plan not a tablet plan, but I know this has worked for others previously. Is there a way to get this to work without buying a new plan?