You can now find T-Mobile’s 5G in six cities around the US. Here’s how it stacks up in one of them.
T-Mobile is the fourth and final major US carrier to turn on its 5G network and today, with the help of a Galaxy S10 5G phone provided by Samsung, I’ll become one of the first people to try it out. I’ve just run the first test and guess what — 5G really is blazing fast.
Today I’m running dozens of speed tests using the Speedtest.net benchmarking app, and downloading apps, movies and TV shows. The goal is to do all of the above on the Galaxy S10 5G and a 4G Galaxy S10 Plus, which will really show the difference between 4G and 5G speeds. I’m starting my four-hour field test in Manhattan’s Tompkins Square Park before traveling to other parts of the city to see how 5G fares.
Here’s a first impression: On the corner of 1st Ave and East 7th, T-Mobile’s 5G, at 462 Mbps is more than five times faster than 4G LTE for a download. A little later, in Soho, the speed edged up to 491 Mbps and then 525 Mbps.
When I downloaded the movie Wine Country (555MB) from Netflix in Soho, it took roughly 40 seconds over 5G. On 4G LTE, there was barely any progress after 4 minutes.
To download and install the game PUBG from Google Play (a little over 2GB), it took about 2 minutes, 12 seconds over T-Mobile’s 5G. On 4G LTE the game took roughly double the amount of time to download and install, coming in at 4 minutes and 25 seconds.
Downloading the first season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in its highest quality (1.82GB) took just over 6 minutes, 30 seconds over 5G.
As AT&T, Verizon and Sprint raced to turn on 5G around the country, T-Mobile has been — rather surprisingly — sitting on the sidelines. The self-proclaimed “un-carrier,” known for brash marketing and aggressive statements, didn’t rush to tout a 5G broadband network to claim “first,” nor did it rebrand its upgraded LTE network to a 5G-related name.
Instead, it waited, and after, testing its first 5G network in New York, it appears on early tests the wait has been worth it, though some work still needs to be done.
Running around lower Manhattan we were able to try out the millimeter wave (or mmWave) network for ourselves, seeing download speeds that rival those of home broadband, at least when on the street.
So far T-Mobile’s 5G is impressive but speeds are closer to what CNET saw with Sprint 5G in Dallas than the over 1Gbps that we encountered on Verizon in Chicago or the nearly 2Gbps we got with AT&T in LA.
T-Mobile is the fourth and final major US carrier to turn on its 5G network and today, with the help of a Galaxy S10 5G phone provided by Samsung, I’ll become one of the first people to try it out. I’ve just run the first test and guess what — 5G really is blazing fast.
Today I’m running dozens of speed tests using the Speedtest.net benchmarking app, and downloading apps, movies and TV shows. The goal is to do all of the above on the Galaxy S10 5G and a 4G Galaxy S10 Plus, which will really show the difference between 4G and 5G speeds. I’m starting my four-hour field test in Manhattan’s Tompkins Square Park before traveling to other parts of the city to see how 5G fares.
When I downloaded the movie Wine Country (555MB) from Netflix in Soho, it took roughly 40 seconds over 5G. On 4G LTE, there was barely any progress after 4 minutes.
To download and install the game PUBG from Google Play (a little over 2GB), it took about 2 minutes, 12 seconds over T-Mobile’s 5G. On 4G LTE the game took roughly double the amount of time to download and install, coming in at 4 minutes and 25 seconds.
Downloading the first season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in its highest quality (1.82GB) took just over 6 minutes, 30 seconds over 5G.
As AT&T, Verizon and Sprint raced to turn on 5G around the country, T-Mobile has been — rather surprisingly — sitting on the sidelines. The self-proclaimed “un-carrier,” known for brash marketing and aggressive statements, didn’t rush to tout a 5G broadband network to claim “first,” nor did it rebrand its upgraded LTE network to a 5G-related name.
Instead, it waited, and after, testing its first 5G network in New York, it appears on early tests the wait has been worth it, though some work still needs to be done.
Running around lower Manhattan we were able to try out the millimeter wave (or mmWave) network for ourselves, seeing download speeds that rival those of home broadband, at least when on the street.
So far T-Mobile’s 5G is impressive but speeds are closer to what CNET saw with Sprint 5G in Dallas than the over 1Gbps that we encountered on Verizon in Chicago or the nearly 2Gbps we got with AT&T in LA.