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Sapphire Touch International Mobile Hotspot REVIEW
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Jun 22, 2024
If you're someone who travels internationally, you know the pain of trying to get online in foreign countries. Whether it's expensive local data plans or sketchy Internet cafes, lots of people just skip going online altogether when overseas. Enter Sapphire Go and the Sapphire Touch International Mobile Hotspot. Offering 4G LTE speeds and secure encrypted connectivity in over 100 different countries around the world, it's great for world travelers - and for soldiers stationed overseas too. Tech expert Dave Taylor of https://www.AskDaveTaylor.com/ checked out the Sapphire Touch and found it a good, reliable Wi-Fi Hotspot, though with some rough edges you'll want to know about before making a purchase decision. Learn more at https://www.SapphireGo.com/
View Transcript
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A hotspot that'll work anywhere in the world
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Let's have a closer look. If you travel overseas, you know that getting online in different countries can be quite a pain
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It ends up being pretty tricky to figure out all the different online programs and maybe going to a Wi-Fi or internet cafe and not being sure about security
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So if you are a world traveler or if you're a world traveler or if you're, in the service, we'll come back to that, then this is going to be your best friend
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This is the Sapphire Touch International Mobile Hot Spot. And this thing is really nice
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As you can see, it's kind of a bit thicker but general size of an old school cell phone
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But this offers you a lot of capabilities. Specifically, it works with, you ready for this
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WCDMA, LTD, FDD, LTD, and GSM. So that covers the really significant percentage of the world
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It works as a 4G LTE hotspot and its maximum theoretical downward downspeed is 150 megabits a second and maximum up is 50 megabits a second
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I actually ran some tests at different places, so we'll come back to those numbers
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It also includes a 3,500 millamph hour battery, which means that you can run this for a day or two or you can actually use the USB
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poured on the bottom and charge something like your smartphone, right? So if you're running out of
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juice, this thing can help you in a pinch. That's pretty handy. It also supports up to five
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devices being connected simultaneously. Obviously, the more devices you connect, the slower it's going
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to be per device. But you know what? If you're getting a good 4G connection, this is actually
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going to be pretty good. When you buy the unit, it comes with 500 meg of data, but of course
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you going to end up having to buy data plans or there a pay as you go program or you can even drop in a sim or two as you travel if you want to use the dual sim system that they have in this so that pretty cool but let talk about how you use this so one of the things is that there a smartphone app for either Android or iPhones and that called Sapphire myfi and here a couple of quick sample screen so you can see the home screen looks a lot like the home screen on this Go figure right
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And then the usage history, I had to translate, right? So there's a tiny bug they might want to work on
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So that 1377286 kilobytes turns out to be 1.34 gigabytes. So I have used over one gig of data off of this
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And I will tell you, it's a funny story. I hooked this up, I got it hooked up, and was using it for one of my computers, and then I
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forgot that's what I was using. So for the entire evening, I was watching videos, I was doing Facebook, I was emailing, I was
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uploading content, everything was zipping along so fast that I actually didn't realize
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I wasn't on my own local Wi-Fi network. So this was really, really good in terms of its performance
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Although I did use a fair amount of data, if you're going to use something like this
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you probably want to be very careful of thinking through how much data do you need
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If you're using this to stream Netflix in 4K, you are going to be really amazed at how much data
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you can use in a short amount of time. Now, as I said, it is a global service
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It supports over 100 countries. Here's a coverage map, right? And they do this through what they call cloud sims
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So there are essentially over 2,000 preloaded sims that let this device connect locally
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to a wide variety of different networks and let you access those wireless networks or cellular networks
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as if you were a local there and as if you had purchased a SIM for a data plan in that country
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So if you're in Afghanistan, if you're in Libya, if you're in Italy, if you're in South Africa
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this thing can get you online. That's pretty cool. Now, I said that there are three different payment programs, so it offers prepaid
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and prepaid runs about five cents a megabit or a megabyte maybe actually would make more sense
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So five cents a megabyte. There's pay as you go and pay as you go
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As you can see in the screen capture, you just go and get what you need from within the app
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So there's a wide variety of prices. And that gets you a fairly large amount of data depending on which country And so those prices are not vastly out of control And if you stuck in somewhere in the Middle East or somewhere in China where all the local options are really expensive
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this does not suddenly look that expensive as a way for you to get online securely without using any of their telecom infrastructure
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And then knowing that you're actually a little bit more of a secure connection than if you just walk into the local internet cafe
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So let's see. And then there's the dual sim. Like I said, if you're going to be like, you know, in Germany for a month, you might just go ahead and get a local German data plan, get a SIM card, and then you can pop the back of this and put it in here
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So that's actually pretty straightforward too, which leads us to, so what's the performance like
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So anecdotally, I told you that I was online for an entire evening and didn't even realize that's what I was using
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I also ran some speed test. So here's the first speed test I ran, and this was in Colorado. So you can see
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Down was 15.17 and up was a pretty impressive 11.23 megabits a second
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And then I went and traveled to California, really just to test this
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Everything else is coincidental. So I went to Southern California and I tested this there
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And I found actually I got even better performance, right? So I got 20 megabits a second down and 12.5 megabits a second up
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That's pretty darn good. That is plenty, plenty, plenty enough bandwidth. to have a really nice video chat, for example
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Right. Now, I will say there were some connectivity hiccups. So the first place I tried this in Southern California, it just never connected
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And I do find that it takes a couple of minutes, even after it says it's connected
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it takes a couple of minutes to really get on to that system's network and for you to be
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able to really be able to get to websites and do stuff. So my recommendation is probably turn this on, get it all
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rolling while that's happening go get a cup of coffee or go and grab a beer or something
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and then when you come back you should be good to go but it's not an instantaneous turn it on
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connect boom and you're ready to rock and roll so that's kind of a drag so let me tell you that you do
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have to buy the base unit so I showed you some of the prices for the like pay as you go and we talked about the price for prepaid but that requires you to actually have this device So before I tell you the price of this unit which is the Sapphire Touch International Mobile
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HubSpot, before we get to that price, let me ask if you can go ahead and click on subscribe
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really appreciate when you subscribe to my channel and you get the benefit of keeping up on the
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vast array of technology and consumer electronics and gizmos and gadgets that show up and that we
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test. So go ahead, click that subscribe button. Really appreciate when you do that. And if you are
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stationed overseas, let me know how are you connecting right now? Are you just using base Wi-Fi
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and what's that experience like? Leave a comment. Let me know about that. So, all right, so that leaves
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us with the actual Sapphire Touch International Mobile hotspot. It is $179 at sapphirego.com
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that comes with a little bit of a data set or a little bit of a pay as you go sort of thing
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But probably you're going to want to go and upgrade and get a better program or a better plan, right
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But it does get you started. And other than that, like I said, it's, you know, it's a little heavy
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It runs Android, but it's kind of a not super impressive version of Android, but it's all you need, really
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The only complaint I will have is when I was charging. it doesn't actually give you like a percentage charged or anything
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It basically just shows like a little battery filling up until it's finally full
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So I would appreciate as I was using it, I would have appreciated a little better feedback on that
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But it's certainly quite functional and the connectivity is great. And if you're overseas and you want to be able to get online without relying on anyone else or any other service
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then this could be a great solution for you. So I say check it out and I'm going to go back online, but I'm going to be a little more thoughtful about what I use before I consume another gig
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So this is Dave Taylor and I'll catch you in my next video
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