D-Link DWR-933 4G+ LTE-Advanced Cat 6 Wi-Fi Hotspot, 300 Mbps, Portable, Battery-Powered Up to 14 Hours, Dual-Band Wireless AC1200, Unlocked

I've never really been a big fan of D-Link (or some others to be perfectly honest) but that is because my experience has always really been focused on Cisco, Billion and Netgear and such... However on this occasion I was purely looking for value for money alongside ability. I had a job it needed to do and I have to say, this ticks all the right boxes. I weighed up going with a TP-Link offering but the D-Link was my choice in the end.Very good, easy out-of-the-box experience (OOBE); plugged in, switched on and popped in the now old fashioned, large SIM card on a Vodafone Pay As You Go to test, having selected a meaty data bundle for the limited testing. I did have to tweak the mobile settings as the auto-detect, although finding Vodafone (2g and 3g) kept dropping (according to front lights) and didn't want to connect using default APN and user settings (which are usually pretty generic). Having popped in the PAYG ones manually (APN: pp.vodafone.co.uk User: wap Password: wap) I only then had to force the device to use the 4g coverage; else it would insist on only picking out the 3g on auto-detect.Coverage throughout the home is more than adequate. Speed across the LAN is brilliant and multiple devices running in tandem from Alexa, through FireTV, laptops and printers, all working better than I would have expected which is a great bonus. With the Vodafone 4g signal at a good strength where we are now and their data bundles having massively improved, this will also double up as a handy travel companion (signal permitting).Why did we feel the need to try one of these (particularly having used out phones as hot spots thus far)? Well, the hot spot is limiting for the person who is providing it and the number of devices it can manage. Then you have the going out factor. In addition, Vodafone do offer broadband far more competitively priced than most (£20 a month all in) by not insisting on you taking line rental with it, unlike the likes of BT; however, alas not in our area apparently. So, the options having moved were a line and broadband/fibre (if available) with an alternative (in excess of £30 per month with line and service); or with such a good mobile signal,explore the options. Since you can now get a 5g (not massively rolled out yet, certainly not here) unlimited option for £20 a month it makes sense to look at today's alternatives rather than getting stuck, blinkered on past offerings. The questions you ask if you have a good mobile signal are; do I need a landline? If the answer is no, there are reasonably priced alternatives out there, dependant of course on your usage/needs. I admit that some bandwidth/data hungry families may well need the likes of fibre but that's what you have to investigate on an individual basis.This D-Link is perfect for our home use and streaming on a 3g and 4g signal strength, operating consistently between 50% and 75%.

Fantastic. Just what I wanted and so easy to set up. Highly recommended.

Edit: I got it during black Friday sale at £350, otherwise I'd deem it too expensive.So far it has been a good investment; instead of paying 70 euro a month for broadband I'm now using a prepay 5g unlimited data sim at €15 a month.The speed is about 400-600Mb/s, can stream and play online games off of it no problem (obviously depends on your location).Battery will not last a full day, about 7-8 hours.3 months update, after using it for almost 3 months, topped up my prepaid sim for 15euros/month for unlimited 5G data, so it costed me a total of 45euros so far on top ups, usage of over 900gb, average speed between 200-600mbps, 6 devices are connected to this thing, also able to play LoL/valorant etc at less than 30ping jitter 1ms, defo the best investment made so farMany months later update, brought this around europe, south korea, china and hong kong, used their local sim with no issues, happy days

I live in a semi-rural area just outside of London with no FTTP available to me. I have a top-tier Vodafone 5G mobile internet subscription. The local 5G mast is approx 1 mile away and I have line-of-sight to it from my house. I also have an external 5G antenna pointing directly at the mast, connected to the router's MIMO inputs with some pretty tough cables. Everything should be set up perfectly for a stable and fast mobile internet.I've used D-Link products quite extensively in the past (mainly network switched) and had no problems, so although this router looks 'dated' I trusted the brand. It was fairly cheap compared other routers at the time and I thought I could balance reliability and price with the D-Link.What a mistake. I've owned it for 2 months and had nothing but trouble.Like other reviews here, I'm seeing drop-outs, weak 4-and-5G signal (even with my external antenna!), no 5G signal at all when using the router's own 5G antennas, frequent freezes, etc.The feature set is appalling for any modern router:* No static DHCP reservation* No support for security standards above WPA2 (even my iPhone keeps warning me that the network's security is weak)* No client list page, just a small pane on the router's admin panel homepage* No option to install a VPN* In-built 'speedtest' feature doesn't work - it always says "failed". The feature has been removed from recent documentation updates but it's still in the router's menu* No firmware updates available (apart from a minor patch version a long time ago)* The router body is huge, top-heavy, and cannot be wall-mounted* The 4 ethernet ports are in the most awful position, and the stand doesn't have cut-outs for the cable. So you have to decide between passing the cable under the stand and un-balancing the entire router until it falls on its face, or bending your cable into an unnatural 90-degree shape so you can still keep the router upright* System log doesn’t log anything useful at all, and it appears to get wiped when the router is rebootedAs for specific problems with mine:* The 5G light doesn't light up on the front hardware panel, even though the admin page tells me I have a signal* It drops the connection so frequently, I've had to set it to reboot early every morning* It often freezes while my wife and I are both on conference calls* One weekend it had such awful performance I went into the admin panel to try debugging, and I saw a whole load of garbled data pre-filled in the WAN connection parameters form* The admin panel stops responding from time-to-time* Even with my external antenna pointing at a mast close-by, the strongest 5G signal I can get is "3 bars" at -105dbm* Sometimes it doesn't recover from its daily scheduled reboot and it sits with its lights off like an expensive white plastic brick until I hard-reboot it by pulling the plug.It 'bricked' itself again this morning and I've had enough, which is why I've come back to leave this review. I'm now outside of the Amazon return window so I don't even know if I'll be able to get my money back. I'm so desperate for a reliable router that I've ordered a TP-Link to arrive today. The D-Link will probably sit gathering dust in my garage for several years as a monument to a costly mistake, until enough time has passed that I don't feel shame and anxiety any more (and that my wife has forgotten about how much money I spent on it), and I can take it to the dump.

Smarty SIM card can work, fast 5G routerSmall expensive, but suitable for my needs without broadband contract.

Had for 5 years - still going. Performance is OK, very useful device.