Geek Girl Review: SMART Rocket Plug-It

SMART Communications Inc. has recently launched a new addition to their broadband portfolio, the SMART Rocket Plug-It.

For the price of P3,995 for the dongle, it’s supposed to be the fastest mobile broadband prepaid service in the market with speeds that could reach up to 12Mbps.

Find out if it delivered! Read on.

UN-BOXING

The box!

Some information on the back of the box. Blah, blah, blah.

Minimum system requirements.

The dongle comes with the sim, the user guide and the settings

The dongle! *giggle* (I said dongle!)

You can insert an SD card so that dongle can acts as a USB Thumb Drive, too.

SPEEDTEST RESULTS

Oops, having a bad day, haha.

The best result so far!

My latency in World of Warcraft on a good connection.

My latency in World of Warcraft on a horrible connection. Uhm, yaiks!

1.69Mbps download speed!!!

RANDOM THOUGHTS

  • The signal keeps switching from HSPA+ to HSDPA to WCDMA. That itself means that the signal in our area is pretty unstable.
  • I had the best result when I tried it on the 5th floor of our condo. But inside our unit, which is on the 1st floor, I can barely get a HSPA+ signal. Light is always blue which means its connected to a 3G signal. Poop.
  • I live near Alabang and the nearest HSPA+ cellsite is at Festival Mall.
  • On a good, STABLE signal, the SMART Rocket can give faster results than our wired internet.

Speedtest result for our wired internet at home.

GEEK GIRL’S VERDICT
Well, obviously, the SMART Rocket didn’t do so great, looking at the Speedtest result

Definitely far from their claim of ‘up to 12Mbps’.

But I do have to say this: I’ve gotten better results with the SMART Rocket compared to my other mobile broadband dongle. (Dapat lang! With the one time fee of P3,995!)

At least I could do some decent surfing with the Rocket. There were so many times I got frustrated with the other mobile broadband dongle that I currently own. I could connect to the network, but I couldn’t send and receive data.

At least with the Rocket, even if the connection was disappointingly slower compared to the supposed speed they are marketing it, I could still load websites and even upload photos on my Facebook 😛

So on a final note: Location is a really important factor when it comes to choosing your mobile broadband.

SMART Rocket might not work for me, but it might work for other people who live in better proximity to SMART Bro HSPA+ sites.

With that said, SMART Bro has now over 500 HSPA+ sites. You can check the list of locations here: http://smart.com.ph/bro/products/hspaplussites.htm

The prepaid Rocket kit comes with an hour of free surfing. Regular browsing costs P10 for every 30 minutes.

Link: SMART Rocket Plug-It

Lia
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14 responses to “Geek Girl Review: SMART Rocket Plug-It”

  1. Miko Dalupan Avatar
    Miko Dalupan

    Hmmmmm, next time you’re here at our place, let’s try it. 😉 Great review!

  2. Lia Espina Lopez Avatar
    Lia Espina Lopez

    Miko, yes we should! 😛

  3. JM Avatar
    JM

    I was thinking of getting one.
    3mbps is still ok for me I guess, i play wow at 1.2mbps

    What server are you btw in wow?

  4. jm Avatar
    jm

    Thanks so much for the review! This helps a lot, but the 4K price is kinda high for a dongle that will give you speeds based on location.

    Thanks still.

  5. Lia Espina Lopez Avatar
    Lia Espina Lopez

    Hi JM! 🙂

    My toons currently live in Suramar Realm, Horde, US 😉 How about you? What toon do you play?

  6. Lia Espina Lopez Avatar
    Lia Espina Lopez

    Hi JM, you’re welcome! 🙂 Thanks for passing by my blog!

  7. berd Avatar
    berd

    hi,

    i just wanna ask if rocket plug-it offers the UnliSurf package (Php50 unlimited for a day) just like the power plug-it?

    On this review (http://technoodling.net/smart-rocket-plug-it-review/), the author mentioned that this is an option for Rocket plug-it though this wasn’t the case when it first came out.

    Thanks

  8. Swoosh Avatar
    Swoosh

    @ GeekGirl,

    Hi, since you did a review on Rocket Plug-it, just wanna ask if i decided to buy one,
    and being it on a prepaid service, will i be able to load it with a Smart pre paid Php500
    card? Also, does the service it offers is continuous? I mean, as long as you have pre
    paid load you wont get disconnected? Or, even if you’re load is more than enough to
    surf the internet for two hours (for example), still the service will get disconnected
    every hour?

    — Any help or info will be highly appreciated, thanks.

  9. xtian Avatar
    xtian

    this is prepaid? so how much is the rate per hour?

  10. Lia Espina Lopez Avatar
    Lia Espina Lopez

    Hi Swoosh, I believe you can load it up with 500 🙂 As long as you have load, you should be able to use it.

  11. Noel Avatar
    Noel

    I hate the upload speed. grrrrrrrr it’s about 0.30 Mbps. I need the upload speed more than the download speed.

  12. Lia Espina Lopez Avatar
    Lia Espina Lopez

    Hi Noel, where’s your location? 🙂 I get decent upload speed, around 1Mbps 🙂

  13. Kim Avatar
    Kim

    I bought a smart bro rocket plug it 3 months ago, this first time I used it looks impressive, I could reach up to 6.8mbps when I used at at NAIA. However lately I could barely reach 1mbps. When I was at NAIA just lately I tried to connect expecting a fast connection but to my dismay still it could barely reach 1mbs. Am not using it now, sucker!

  14. den Avatar
    den

    where can i buy?

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