Verizon 5G Home Internet is “nothing fancy,” but it’s affordable and fast
An Honest Verizon 5G Home Internet Review, According to Customers
While many people seem to hate their Wi-Fi, there’s a surprising love out there for Verizon 5G Home Internet. For the first time since I’ve started reviewing internet providers, customers weren’t rushing to tell me how much they hate their internet service.
So why all this enthusiasm surrounding Verizon 5G Home Internet? This relatively new service—which runs over Verizon’s 5G cellular network—delivers solid speeds at fair prices. Customers get a five-year lock on their monthly price, and they also get unlimited data without extra fees or annual contracts to worry about.
Customer satisfaction ratings are high across the board, too, further reinforcing the idea that Verizon 5G is a worthy alternative to older internet types like cable and DSL.
Want to know more about Verizon 5G Home Internet? I dig into the details in this comprehensive review.
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Get to know Verizon 5G Home Internet: Plans and pricing
The Verizon 5G Home Internet plan gets up to 300Mbps download speed for $60 a month with AutoPay, and the 5G Home Internet Plus plan gets download speeds up to 1,000Mbps for $80 per month with AutoPay. You also get Verizon's Mobile + Home Discount of $25–$35 per month on your internet plan when you have a qualifying Verizon cellular plan.
Even without the mobile discount, Verizon offers an excellent deal. Customers don’t pay extra for installation (which you do yourself) or data overages (there’s no data limit). There’s no equipment fee, unless you choose to purchase Wi-Fi extenders. All of this comes with a three-year price guarantee, so you don’t have to worry about price hikes on your bill.
What plan is right for you?
Verizon’s 5G Home plan with 300Mbps download speed is the right plan for most internet users, as it offers fast download speeds for a decent price.
The 5G Home Internet plan is plenty for one person, a couple, or even up to 5 users streaming 4K video or video calling at the same time, alongside a few smart-home products. It may get a little slower as you approach 6 or more users, so if you want ultimate freedom, the 5G Home Plus plan gives each person all the bandwidth they need.
Overall, Verizon 5G Home Internet is a great deal—one of the best in the industry. You can feel confident that you’re getting great value for your money.
Verizon 5G Home Internet fees for modem and installation
Verizon E3200 Wi-Fi Extender
Data as of 03/21/2024.
$199.99 each
Verizon 5G doesn’t have installation, equipment, or overage fees, which is unusual in the internet industry. “Verizon is proud to provide customers with the best value and overall experience when using Verizon Home Internet,” a Verizon spokesperson tells us. “Transparency is key to a positive customer experience, so it's important that our pricing structure is clear and void of any hidden fees.”
There’s just one fee to look out for: If you cancel your service and don’t return your equipment, there’s a hefty non-return fee. (The exact amount depends on which devices you don’t return.)
What makes this review legit?
Our fact-based research process centers around interviews with internet customers from across the country, helping us understand how internet services hold up against diverse needs and challenges.
To compile this review, we spoke with four customers; parlayed with a brand spokesperson; reviewed the notes of a colleague who underwent the 30-day Verizon 5G Home Internet trial; spent countless hours looking for customers on Facebook and Reddit; and examined hard, cold numbers from research conducted by Reviews.org, HighSpeedInternet.com, and the American Consumer Survey Index.
Our breakdown of Verizon 5G Home Internet features
For all our internet reviews, we give a rating based on three main criteria—speed and reliability, dollar value, and customer experience—which we then average to make an overall score.
How does Verizon 5G Home Internet do overall? See our full take below.
Overall score: 4.3/5
Speed and reliability
Verizon 5G Home Internet gets a lot of customers great speeds and a stable connection. But since it runs over a fixed wireless connection, the 5G speeds are much more likely to fluctuate, and I’ve found that it’s hard to pin down exactly how fast Verizon 5G Home Internet is.
Verizon’s advertised download speeds are between 300Mbps and 1,000Mbps—an excellent range that more than covers home internet use. However, internet providers commonly fall short of their advertised speeds, especially over Wi-Fi connections. That said, Verizon places well in our Fastest Internet Providers report. The results on our speed test combine both Verizon’s Fios fiber and 5G services, and it ranks among the fastest providers in the country.
Still, Verizon may have some issues with reliability for some customers. Because it’s wireless, a 5G internet connection isn’t as stable as fiber or cable, which both use physical lines to connect homes to internet infrastructures. With that tangible connection, a wired internet service is harder to interrupt than a wireless one. With Verizon 5G home internet, you’re more likely to experience slowdowns or even outages, especially in areas with weak cell service.
That said, many customers feel Verizon 5G Home Internet is reliable enough to meet their needs. According to the HighSpeedInternet 2023 customer satisfaction survey, 72% of Verizon’s 5G Home Internet customers reported “they ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ experience internet outages.” Customers I talked to gave positive reports too. “It has been solid overall,” says Johnothy Michael, a Verizon 5G customer from Robinson, Illinois. Michael has never dealt with an outage on his service, and neither has customer Clare Messink in Salt Lake City.
Dollar value
Verizon 5G Home Internet offers a lot of bang for the buck, especially for students, low-income families, and other internet users on a budget. Unlike with many cable internet providers, you don’t pay for installation, data overages, or contract cancellation. There aren’t any data caps, and your flat monthly payment includes all equipment costs. You get a five-year price guarantee. Even if prices go up, you won’t feel it until after the first five years. And if you already have Verizon’s far-flung cell phone coverage, you can sign up for home internet for as little as $35 a month with AutoPay.
All of those perks come as part of a package that gives you truly solid speeds: 300Mbps download speeds are ideal for a small- or medium-sized household, while the gigabit max on the 5G Home Plus plan packs enough punch to support 10 or more Wi-Fi users.
Customer experience
The Verizon customer experience is better than the internet industry average. From the moment you sign up, Verizon makes things easy on the customer. “Installation was a snap—just take the gateway out of the box, plug it in, and go,” says Angelo Ilumba. Clare Messink says she hasn’t ever had to interact with customer service since she first got her gateway because she gets consistent speeds and never deals with outages.
One customer I spoke to via Reddit had an issue with Verizon customer service. He cites repeated issues with “improper billing,” which he’s never been able to resolve at one of Verizon’s brick-and-mortar stores. But Verizon generally gets excellent ratings for customer experience. HighSpeedInternet.com’s customer satisfaction survey ranks Verizon at second place among major internet providers in terms of overall satisfaction and for customer service. That puts Verizon only behind T-Mobile internet, another 5G internet provider.
Part of the enthusiasm may be due to the newness of 5G internet technology—customers may not have uncovered the bugs in Verizon and T-Mobile’s internet services or tech-support departments yet. But also it’s likely due to the high performance; half the Verizon customers I spoke with said they hardly interacted with customer service because their internet worked so well.
The 2023 American Consumer Satisfaction Index also gives Verizon decent reviews. The survey gathers customer satisfaction information using a Likert model (rating something on a 1 to 5 scale). While the ACSI doesn’t include a separate category for Verizon 5G, the Verizon Fios fiber service scored 75 (the industry average). The index gives the same score to “All Others,” the category in which Verizon 5G would land.
How long it took to get a real human on the phone: I couldn’t reach a live human, probably because I’m not a customer and couldn’t provide a specific problem from the phone tree for assistance. (There’s no option for “I just want to know more about your 5G internet service.”) After three minutes and three rounds of circular robot communication, I gave up.
How the chat service is: The chat service wasn’t as convenient as I’d hoped. Rather than dealing with a robot or AI, I was connected right away to a live agent (hi, Nancy!), but she was slow to respond. There were two to three minutes between my messages and her answers. However, Nancy did have some helpful responses, not the pre-canned stuff you get from a chatbot.
Overall quality
Verizon 5G Home Internet gets some of the highest ratings out of all the internet providers we review, and for good reason. It’s fast, reliable, and offers a solid value. Go for it if you’re eager to get cheap, easy-to-setup Wi-Fi or want an alternative to a traditional cable internet plan.
Verizon 5G Home Internet: What deals and promotions can you get?
Depending on when you sign up, you could get extra perks and deals on top of the plans that add Verizon home internet to Verizon cell phone service at a $25 discount.
Some Verizon plans also allow you to add inexpensive add-ons, like streaming service trials and subscriptions to Apple Music and Google Play Pass.
Verizon 5G Home Internet add-ons and perks
Streaming services like Netflix, Max, Disney+, YouTubeTV, and Discovery+
Available as add-ons with some plans
Apple Music
Available as add-on with some plans
Google Play Pass
Available as add-on with some plans
What do customers think of Verizon 5G Home Internet?
The three customers I spoke with were mostly positive about their experiences with Verizon 5G.
“I like how it gives us fast speeds without a video throttle cap, so we can watch 4K shows,” said Johnothy Michael, who works in IT and accounting in Robinson, Illinois. Michael previously had T-Mobile 5G Home Internet for a few years before switching to Verizon 5G in the summer of 2023.
“It was OK,” Michael said of T-Mobile, “but Verizon was cheaper on our phone bill each month and a more stable service.
“In comparison, T-Mobile Home Internet is always subject to deprioritization. Verizon is not,” he added, referring to T-Mobile’s policy of putting internet customers last.
Clare Messink, a teacher in Salt Lake City, Utah, said she feels her Verizon 5G service is good but a little expensive at $50 a month with AutoPay—at least compared to what she’s used to. “I moved back to the States last June after being overseas for a long time,” she says. Home internet was a lot cheaper in Thailand and Argentina, where she previously lived.
“I sort of feel like, ‘Man, this should be $25 a month,’” Messink said. “But also the last time I paid for home internet in this country, it probably was $25 a month.”
Happily, Messink at least feels that she gets what she pays for. She doesn’t use her internet to play games online or work from home. She mostly uses it for streaming and basic home use, and her service works so well for those tasks that she’s never had to deal with a router blip, much less a full-scale outage. “It was an affordable option, and I've had zero problems with it,” she says.
New Verizon 5G customer Angelo Ilumba had to replace his fiber service when he moved to rural California. Although he doesn’t get fast fiber speeds anymore, he’s still happy with his new setup. Ilumba works remotely as a writer, so he needs solid, fast internet service. So far, Verizon 5G has delivered. The plan’s download speed cap is supposed to be 300Mbps, and he often gets download speeds right in that range—and sometimes faster. “Speeds are pretty consistent,” he says.
Neither Michael nor Messink had complaints about Verizon customer service. Messink says that because her 5G system is so reliable, she hasn’t communicated with Verizon since picking up her equipment. Ilumba hasn’t interacted with customer service at all—he signed up for Verizon 5G online, installed it himself when it arrived, and hasn’t had to worry about any technical issues ever since.
Need to contact Verizon 5G Home Internet customer service or tech support?
Try any of these routes:
- Call +1-800-837-4966
- Use the customer chat
- Try the Verizon Home Support FAQ
What is 5G internet, and how does it work?
5G doesn’t cause COVID. Or cancer. Or radio pollution. But what does it do, especially when it comes to the internet?
5G stands for fifth-generation, as in fifth-generation cellular network technology. It does basically the same thing as the 4G LTE cellular technology that precedes it, sending data through radio waves and antennas. But it has increased bandwidth compared to 4G, because a lot of 5G spectrum operates on high-frequency bands that previously weren’t widely available for commercial use. This bandwidth allows 5G networks to transmit data at much faster speeds, with room to spare for supporting wireless internet connections.
Enter 5G home internet, specifically Verizon 5G Home Internet. Verizon’s 5G internet service connects your home wirelessly to the internet through its cellular network, similar to how it provides an internet connection to your smartphone. But because your home internet stays fixed to a specific location, you don’t have to worry about losing reception—although your speeds may fluctuate depending on the quality of cell service in your area and other factors.
Like T-Mobile does with its 5G internet service, Verizon has sought to shake up the internet business with competitive pricing. The provider in particular has emerged as a worthy alternative to cable internet—it may not be quite as reliable as cable, but does away with extra fees, price hikes, and other billing tricks that often raise the cost on cable plans.
"Transparency is key to a positive customer experience, so it's important that our pricing structure is clear and void of any hidden fees,” a Verizon spokesperson (who declined to be named for this article) tells us.
Overall, Verizon 5G Home Internet is simple and straightforward—no conspiracies here!
We’re eager to hear from internet customers about their experiences with their home Wi-Fi. Contact us at info@reviews.org to share your thoughts, recommendations, and hot tips.
Where is Verizon 5G Home Internet available?
Verizon 5G Home Internet is theoretically available wherever the Verizon cellular network touches, which is across most of the country. However, you can’t actually get home internet service in all the places on the map.
The Verizon spokesperson was unable to clarify exactly where Verizon 5G internet can be found. But that’s okay—if you enter your zip code below, the Reviews.org address checker will tell you if you’re eligible.
Verizon 5G Home Internet vs. the competition
Verizon 5G Home Internet is a price MVP compared to top internet providers.
Only Spectrum can compete with Verizon’s prices, and Spectrum doesn’t have that sweet five-year price guarantee. According to Verizon customer and Redditor BarrelDregs, Spectrum also doesn’t stand up against Verizon 5G: “I have Spectrum at my house. It’s terrible. It’s constantly getting worked on, and it always goes down during any storm with mild wind. So I’m glad I have my 5G device as a backup.”
Verizon also competes favorably in terms of download speed (its range is solidly in the middle), but it falls behind in upload speed. With Verizon 5G Home Internet, you can’t expect to get an upload speed above 50Mbps. That’s fine for most households—only serious content creators usually need a high upload speed. But it doesn’t look great compared to the symmetrical speeds offered by Google, AT&T, and Verizon’s own fiber offering, Fios.
Compare internet providers and prices
Verizon 5G Home Internet FAQ
No, Verizon 5G internet is not better than fiber. Verizon 5G uses wireless technology which is less stable than fiber, so 5G users will experience more slowdowns and outages. Fiber or fiber-to-the-home or premises (FTTH or FTTP) is the most reliable type of internet connection, and uses a physical fiber-optic cable that goes directly into your home.
Yes, Verizon 5G Home offers up to 300Mbps download speed, which is fast enough for 1080p HD video streaming. The Verizon 5G Home Plus plan offers up to 1000Mbps, which is fast enough for Ultra HD 4K video streaming. You do need HD or 4K compatible devices and the quality of your streaming might be affected by internet speed and network congestion.
Yes, 5G is worth it for home internet, but it isn’t as stable or consistent as fiber or cable. For home use, 5G is worth it for its affordable price and simple set-up. If you can deal with variable speeds from time to time, then 5G is a fair option for home internet.
Verizon 5G Home internet offers download speeds up to 300Mbps and upload speeds of 5–10Mbps. Typical download speeds are 85–300Mbps. The Verizon 5G Home plus plan offers up to 1Gig download speeds (1,000Mbps), with typical download speeds of 300–1,000Mbps. Upload speeds are 25–75Mbps.
Want Verizon 5G Home Internet? Find it in your area.
If you’re primed to switch to Verizon 5G Home Internet, then you need to know if it’s available where you live. Search below to see if you can get it.