Everybody’s been asking about getting an LTE pocket wifi, and I’m happy to report that I saw a very big price drop for the Smart LTE pocket wifi to P1,995!

LTE pocket wifis were previously sold at around P4,000-P5,000, and when I saw it sold for only P1,995, I was like, ‘Finally!’. I’ve been saying that the prices of LTE pocket wifis will be dropping in the future, but I didn’t expect it this soon.

Unfortunately, I just bought an openline  Huawei 4G pocket wifi from Lazada a few months ago, so I won’t be buying the LTE pocket wifi anytime soon. But I’m really wishing that I hadn’t just bought one so I can buy this LTE pocket wifi instead 🙁

But for those who are looking to buy a pocket wifi, THIS IS THE CHANCE TO BUY ONE!

Click here to see it at Lazada.

The price of a non-LTE pocket wifi is around P1,800 – P2,000. Why not buy the LTE pocket wifi instead for about the same price?

WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF LTE?

• Amazingly fast internet – when you are in an area with strong LTE coverage. My BF J just upgraded to a new Note 4 that is LTE-capable. The first time I saw him use the internet on his phone (in McKinley Hill), my jaw literally dropped! Hahaha, I’m so used to waiting like 1-2 seconds before web pages load fully. But this was, BOOM, instant!

WHAT ARE THE DISADVANTAGES OF LTE?

Nothing. Except maybe less coverage. At the moment, LTE coverage is not yet as widespread as we would like. Coverage is concentrated mainly in the business centers and upscale areas. But that doesn’t matter. If the LTE pocket wifi cannot get an LTE signal, it will just get the next “lower” signal (4G, 3G, Edge), so you will still be able to get internet, just not as fast. If you really want to maintain super fast internet, no problem. Just go to an area with strong LTE signal. 

WHY GET A POCKET WIFI WHEN YOUR PHONE IS ALREADY LTE-CAPABLE?

• conserve your phone’s battery life – using mobile internet will use up your phone’s battery juice much faster than just using wifi; also, phones tend to heat up more when being used for mobile internet, and there is this persistent general opinion (though not proven), that using your phone for mobile internet 24/7 will tend to shorten the phone’s life. Me, personally, I think it will kill your phone’s battery a lot faster.
• share your internet – with a pocket wifi, you can share your internet with your other gadgets like your wifi-only tablet, or laptop, and also other people’s gadgets. Sure, you can turn your phone into a mobile hotspot, but I don’t think that doing that to your phone 24/7 is a good thing, see my point above.
• don’t put all your eggs in one basket – I am always worried about “what-if” emergency scenarios. We are in the Philippines, after all, where being stranded in floods and storms is a normal occurrence. I’m always worried that if all I had was my phone for calling, texting AND internet, and the battery dies because the battery drains faster, I won’t have another means to contact people. However, if I had a pocket wifi for internet, my phone battery will not drain as fast. And, just in case I lose my phone, or the phone battery dies, I still have my pocket wifi. If I had my wifi tablet with me, I can still contact people for help, send pictures of where I am, how high the flood is, etc… This is also the reason why I opt to use two phones instead of one dual-sim phone. If my main phone battery dies, at least I still have my second phone. I carry a powerbank, too! LOL. Overkill, maybe. But I feel better knowing that I’m prepared for a prolonged situation.

Loading the pocket wifi SIM is a little bit of a hassle, though – what I do is physically take out the sim card, put it in a cellphone (you can use your second phone or an old cellphone for this), register to the promo of my choice, wait for the confirmation message, then put the sim card back in the pocket wifi. There are other ways to load your SIM – via text, via app, etc… but I just like to know without a doubt that my registration made it through, and seeing is believing (the confirmation message, I mean).

The Smart LTE pocket wifi package also includes a FREE SMART BRO MULTI-CUT SIM and 3 months of FREE INTERNET (350 MB/month).

So what are you waiting for? Take advantage of the price drop!

BUY FROM LAZADA AND USE HELLO PAY FOR MORE DISCOUNTS!

Lazada and Hello Pay have promos where you can get cash back for purchases! So far, I have received Php 400 and Php 500 in cash backs, and I’m still waiting for another Php 400 cash back. Yup, since March, I bought items from Lazada 3 times already, always timing my purchases with their promos.

Right now, they have an April Fools’ Sale (April 1 – 3) where you can get a P400 cash back with a minimum purchase of P2,000 on the Lazada app, using Hello Pay as the payment method.

I wrote a post on HOW TO USE HELLO PAY, you may read it to get an idea of how to use Hello Pay.

Always check Lazada and the Hello Pay User FAQ Promotions section to see if there are any promos you can take advantage of.

Lazada also always has vouchers for NEW USERS. Unfortunately, I am not a new user anymore so I can’t use them 🙁 If you are new users, you can totally get these additional discounts on top of the automatic Hello Pay cash back by using the vouchers like the ones below.

These are the vouchers you can use for the whole of April 2016 (NEW USERS ONLY):

SUMMER200 – P200 OFF, minimum spend of P2,000, all platforms

LZD10SMR – 10% OFF, minimum spend of P500, max discount P200, all platforms

The cash backs take a few weeks before they are credited to your Lazada account. I got an email when the cash backs were credited to my Hello Pay account. The cash back credits can be used as normal to pay for purchases. I have already used my cash backs when I paid for my latest buys – I just had to pay for the remaining amount. For example, I bought P2,400 worth of items. My Hello Pay account has Php 900 credits inside. P2,400 – P900 = P1,500. I only have to pay P1,500!

This LTE pocket wifi is locked to Smart, as expected. It is sold by Villman, one of the well-known sellers in the local computer / gadget world, so you can be sure about the authenticity of the product.