Verizon 5G Home Internet Free Trial Review

Miraculous technology (if you don’t have fiber already)

Tyler Abbott
Aug 07, 2024
Icon Time To Read3 min read

I live in a new home development, so I get constant knocks on my door from solar, pest control, and internet sales bros. One sales bro actually made it into the threshold of my home by promising free 5G home internet for 30 days from Verizon. Free internet, why not? 

I took him up on the offer and tried out Verizon 5G home internet for a month. If I didn’t already have fiber internet, I’d definitely use 5G home internet.

Signing up and setting up Verizon 5G Home Internet

The easiest internet setup ever

Here’s what the process looked like for me to get Verizon 5G home internet set up at my house:

  1. Let the sales bro into the house (or you could go to a Verizon store, if you want).
  2. Share some basic information, including email, address, and *gulp* credit card information.
  3. A few days later, receive the Verizon Gateway internet device in the mail.
  4. Take the Gateway out of the box, plug it in, and suddenly have 5G home internet.

The whole process was infinitely easier than setting up Google Fiber. To quote Professor Gilderoy Lockhart at the end of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, “It’s just like magic!” Seriously, that’s what it felt like. I just plugged the Gateway box into an outlet, and within a minute or two I had a 5G Wi-Fi connection point for any of my devices. No Ethernet or internet technicians required to get 5G home internet set up

verizon 5g home internet router

Just plug it in, and you’ve got 5G home internet

On the bottom of the Gateway, you’ll see the name of the Wi-Fi and the password.

verizon

Just flip the 5G Gateway box over to get your Wi-Fi information
Image: Verizon

Verizon 5G Home Internet performance

Fast speeds, just not as fast as fiber internet

I took several different speed tests while using Verizon 5G home internet, and my average results were right around 150Mbps. There were moments when my download speeds crested over 200Mbps, and a few times in the early evening when my download speed hovered around 85Mbps. 

For every-day internet activities like streaming and online gaming, it wasn’t a dramatic difference from the fiber internet I currently use (I get around 500Mbps with fiber internet). The only time I felt the slower speeds was when I installed a big game (Baldur’s Gate 3) on my PC while my wife and son were streaming on separate devices. When the network was the most congested, I would occasionally have to wait a minute for Netflix to buffer before I could watch Seinfeld. But that didn’t happen often, and it was a minor inconvenience. 

Since I’m a bit of a technophile and regularly stream from my gaming PC to my handheld gaming device, I’m the type of person who requires faster-than-average internet speeds. Fiber makes more sense for me because it’s faster and more efficient than 5G home internet. But if you don’t have fiber in your neighborhood or don’t require ultra-fast data speeds, 5G home internet makes a lot of sense.

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How much does Verizon 5G Home Internet cost?

Plenty of hotspot data for an affordable price
Plan
Price
Download speed
Data cap
Details
5G Home with Mobile Plan Premium$35/mo. w/Auto Pay and select 5G mobile plans*Up to 300 MbpsUnlimited
5G Home Plus with Mobile Plan Premium$45/mo. w/Auto Pay and select 5G mobile plans*Up to 1000 MbpsUnlimited
5G Home$50/mo. w/ Auto PayUp to 300 MbpsUnlimited
5G Home Plus$70/mo. w/ Auto PayUp to 1000 MbpsUnlimited
* w/ Auto Pay and select 5G mobile plans. Consumer data usage is subject to the usage restrictions set forth in Verizon's terms of service; visit: https://www.verizon.com/support/customer-agreement/ for more information about 5G Home and LTE Home Internet or https://www.verizon.com/about/terms-conditions/verizon-customer-agreement for Fios internet.
w/ Auto Pay. Consumer data usage is subject to the usage restrictions set forth in Verizon's terms of service; visit: https://www.verizon.com/support/customer-agreement/ for more information about 5G Home and LTE Home Internet or https://www.verizon.com/about/terms-conditions/verizon-customer-agreement for Fios internet.

If you decide to keep Verizon’s 5G home internet beyond the 30-day free trial, you’ll pay somewhere between $25 and $70 a month with AutoPay. For those of you who already use Verizon as a cell phone carrier, you’ll get a discount on home internet service. And if you don’t currently use Verizon as your carrier, it would probably be worth switching for the internet discount alone (plus Verizon has awesome wireless coverage).

I should note that I only tried the basic Verizon 5G home internet plan with the free trial, so it’s possible the plus plan offers faster speeds. In fact, as I’m typing this, I’m curious if the 5G Home Internet plus plan could even beat my Google Fiber connection. I strongly doubt that 5G could compete with fiber internet, but I bet I could get decently close with the higher-tier Verizon 5G home internet plan.

Verizon 5G Home internet free trial recap

Absolutely worth a try

Long story short, you should try the Verizon 5G home internet free trial. Just make sure to cancel your service before the 30 days are out and return your equipment to the nearest Verizon store if you don’t want to keep the plan. But if you’ve been plagued with slow internet speeds, 5G home internet can be your ticket out. My parents recently switched to Verizon 5G from a cable provider, and they’re internet speeds more than doubled overnight. If you feel like your current internet connection isn’t cutting it, 5G is like a golden ticket to a faster internet connection.

Make sure to check our Verizon 5G home internet review for more details on pricing, coverage, and deals.

Tyler Abbott
Written by
Tyler has been obsessed with watching sports as efficiently as possible since the creation of the DVR. He is always on the lookout for the best tech in TV and wireless so he can watch all the sports and still have enough time to hang out with his baby. He has written about streaming, wireless, and TV for over three years. He hopes the Lakers will eventually get better.

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