Identify and Describe Someone You Know Who Has Good Karma

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• True pay-as-you lot-get pricing
• 100MB of data awarded when someone uses your hotspot to sign upwards for a Karma account

Cons

• Coverage express to WiMax in 80 cities
• Data more expensive than what'southward bachelor with monthly plans offered by some carriers

Our Verdict

Karma's mobile hotspot and pay-as-you-get service is worthwhile for anyone with intermittent cellular information needs. The data is more than expensive than what you can get with some other plans, but it never expires and then you truly pay for simply what you use.

It seems "pay every bit y'all go" ways i thing to mobile carriers and something else to the residual of the human race.

For case, my Pay As You Go mobile service with Verizon ways buying more service every calendar month whether I need it or not. Certain, there's no contract, but failure to buy minutes in any month means my phone will exist disconnected and all my accumulated minutes wiped make clean.

Other carriers have similar ideas about pay-equally-you-become. What they all share in mutual is monthly payments. It seems to me that truthful pay-equally-you-get should allow y'all to buy service for a flat amount and simply buy more than when yous need information technology—whether that exist next month or side by side year.

That'south the model the year-old service Karma uses.

"We try to be clear and uncomplicated and honest," said Karma COO Robert Schouwenburg, and that certainly is the case with Karma.

To get started with the service, you lot must purchase a mobile hotspot from Karma for $99. You tin can buy data at the same time, or purchase it afterward ($xiv for 1GB, $59 for 5GB, or $99 for 10GB).

Karma is a Wi-Fi hotspot that provides a shareable 4G connection to the Internet.

In one case y'all buy the data, information technology'south yours until you use it—without whatsoever time restrictions. "If you buy 10 gigabytes today and use two gigabytes, when yous turn on your hotspot in all the same many months, you'll have 8 gigabytes to piece of work with," Schouwenburg explained.

Karma likewise has an interesting twist that lets yous add together data to your account for gratis. When your hotspot is on, it's open for anyone to use. Anyone with a Karma account tin can connect to the Internet with it, and and then can others without an account. These new customers can fix an business relationship on the fly and when they exercise, they and you receive 100 megabytes of data for gratis. That'southward plenty information for one or 2 hours of Web surfing.

When Karma launched, strangers desiring to set a Karma account also needed a Facebook account. That limitation has been removed and y'all can now sign up with but an email address.

More the merrier

No one accessed the hotspot during my fourth dimension with my Karma, so I didn't receive any data bonuses, nor was I able to run across if the hotspot's functioning took a hit as more users began to use information technology. Co-ordinate to Karma, the hotspot can handle up to eight users without performance degradation.

"We have traffic-shaping software on the hotspot, which insures that everyone gets a fair share of the bandwidth bachelor, and I have never seen a problem with as well many people connecting and my connexion was too slow," Schouwenburg said.

Karma offers for the Android and iOS operating systems, but all you really need is a browser.

When someone connects to the Internet through your hotspot, data usage is charged to their account, so you don't take to worry nigh them eating into your information reserves. That can be useful for families. Each family member tin have their own Karma business relationship, but you but need to buy 1 hotspot.

Karma'southward hotspot is the size of a lady'due south powder compact: two.25 inches square and a quarter-inch thick. The case is white with a black border. LEDs on the edge brandish ability information (red indicates two or less hours of power remaining; xanthous means two- to iv hours; and green, four- to eight hours), Wi-Fi connectivity (blinking green, no devices connected, and dark-green, devices continued) and 4G coverage (red, poor coverage; yellow, weak coverage; and light-green, excellent coverage).

In that location are fancier and lower priced hotspots on the market place than Karma's but they don't exactly square up with what Karma offers. For example, AT&T offers the MiFi Liberate hotspot, which has a touchscreen, for $xxx with a ii-year contract or $180 without one. Walmart has an " Internet on the Go" package with an $eighty hotspot, but it's limited to 3G service on StraightTalk.

Near-LTE speed

Karma relies on the Clearwire network. The 4G WiMax net is part of Sprint, which bought it for $two.2 billion at the end of 2012. That limits the coverage of Karma to about fourscore U.Due south. cities. However, Schouwenburg said Karma will expand to the full Sprint network sometime this summertime, which will give it full nationwide coverage and access to LTE speeds.

According to Karma, its hotspot will deliver download speeds betwixt 3- and six megabits per second, and upload speeds of about one.v Mbps. Speed tests I performed with Ookla Speedtest and Speedof.me backed upwardly those claims.

Running the Speedtest app on an iPad Air showed download speeds in the neighborhood of six.9 Mbps and upload speeds of 1.74 Mbps. On a 2009 MacBook Air, test website Speedof.me showed a download speed of 4.09 Mbps and an upload speed of 1.51 Mbps. Speedtest's online tool returned higher download speeds for the MacBook Air—9.31 Mbps—simply lower upload speeds: 1.36 Mbps.

Those are virtually-LTE speeds. According to a contempo written report by OpenSignal, LTE download speeds of the four major U.S. carriers range from iv.3- to eleven.5 Mbps.

For common Internet tasks, such equally Web surfing and email, Karma's hotspot with first-class coverage proved to be perky with no noticeable latency. Video clips also played smoothly, equally did streaming audio.

Karma is designed for people with an occasional need for Internet access on the go and don't devious besides far from major metropolitan areas — although that volition change once Karma gains admission to the full Sprint network. At $14 per gigabyte, its data prices are more than expensive than alternatives with more than restrictions, but less expensive than travel spots where online access may be needed like hotels and airports. What's well-nigh appealing about Karma is its "buy information technology and forget it" model for information usage, which allows you to truly pay every bit yous become for your information.

Editor's note:This story was updated on 7/14/2014 with Karma'due south new pricing policy.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2153848/karma-hotspot-review-a-mobile-data-plan-with-no-nonsense-pricing.html

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