Skyroam Solis Mobile Wifi and Hotspot Review

Hi, my name is Zaakirah, and I am a creative strategist, a cancer survivor, and a world traveler. Today we are talking about Chicago. This is a part of a series. I went on a road trip, uh, maybe about a month ago as of this video, and we got this small but mighty mobile hotspot and Wi-Fi, and I wanted to talk to you about what I liked about it, what I didn't like about it, and my unique experience to see if this is something you want to use as well. So Skyroam is the small but mighty mobile hotspot. It comes in this package and you can carry it around with you in your bag. It works in over 100+ Countries, and it's the hotspot that you need when you need good internet to work, play, or learn. If you are a world traveler like me, you love to stay connected to the internet as often as possible. So with this little device, it's 4G. It has a built-in power charger, one for both charging your device as well as charging it, so you can have your own wall outlet to go with it to plug it in and charge it, and then it really charges very quickly. I believe I only would charge it maybe about an hour and a half to get it to work at full capacity. So, I loved it because it worked in the U.S. We used it for our road trip We took a road trip across the southwest part of the U.S., and it worked in parts of the U.S. where there are still many small towns and there's lots of land available. And in the instances, for example, that we're driving but we're a little tired and we need to book a hotel, just, you know, go old school and call and book a hotel, or, or use our smartphones and our smartphones have run out of signal, say, you know, we have, you Sprint network, T-Mobile network, and our phones don't work. Our 4G towers on our phones don't even work. This came in handy. All I would do is turn it on. I'm going to turn it on just like this. You hold it for about 3 seconds until you see a little light come on. When the light came on, a little vibration, you felt a vibration in your hand. So even if you're not looking, you can just feel it come on. So right now it's also searching for a network. So what it is, there's going to be a Solis app. There's an app with Solis. This specifically is the Solis Lite. They have different variations. There's Solis X, and then there's a Solis with full capability. Now there's a different Solis for different You know, features and different prices depending on what you need when you travel that also have camera capabilities. Now for me, I am a photographer, so I already have devices to take photographs with, so I didn't need that. But it's just as small. It goes— I think, I believe when I saw it on a tutorial video that the camera is like right up top. So not up top, somewhere around here, so that you put it right on top of a table or someplace and you can take A remote and hands-free selfie. I didn't need all of that. So let me go backwards a little bit so you can see what these dots are doing. So these dots are still connecting to a network nearby. And right now I'm in the US, so it's probably going to pick up on the closest, strongest network that is nearby. What networks are they? I don't know fully, but because they operate, they're very strong, and I did not have any problems when I wanted to scroll social media, or post in real time on my Instagram stories, it would pick up very quickly. So I would assume it's something as strong as the Verizon towers, but I'm not sure specifically. I don't know all the specs. So once that's connected and it's also connected to the phone app, you'll be able to see in the app that you want to connect to it, and then it will connect. And the great thing about it is that it works in the US, As well as out of the US. So when it works out of the US, basically you have to have a different pay-as-you-go data plan. Now luckily, when I got my Skyroam, I was able to get a free 5-day trial because I got the Skyroam through a website called Nook, N-O-O-K. And through that website, you literally get to try it out, see if it's something you want to do. Now for me, that worked out because they also give you discounts if you choose to purchase it and keep the item. They send it to you, it arrived very quickly through UPS. I think I placed the order for a tryout, as they call it, on a Wednesday, and by Friday morning it was there. And so if you want to keep the item, you also get a— I got a 30% off discount. This specific Solus, there's a one-time price of $119 because it does many, many things. So not only can you use it as your mobile Wi-Fi, if you're out of the country you can use it as a VPN, which, uh, is basically the feature of if you are in a different country and you want to watch Netflix but Netflix is blocked, the VPN will allow you to basically access as if you are in the US. VPNs are also really good when you're checking personal records like your banking logins and the whole bit. So Wi-Fi, mobile hotspot, VPN, it's small but mighty and comes with a lot of handy-dandy tools that you would need to work on the go and still be on the beach or in the mountains or wherever you want to be to still continue to work. So I'm going to try to pull up the app now and see if you can see what it looks like. So the logo is a little orange, it's a little orange logo, and then when it's powering up, you'll see it show up. And while it's doing that, it'll ask you to connect to Solace. Well, for me, I have to relog in. Connected because you can see all 3 dots, but in the instance that it's not, you press the connect to Solace option. Now, this feature worked out because what I learned through trial and error is that when you go to another country, for example, on our road trip, we were traveling around the southwest part of Texas, which also is close to the Mexican border. So there was a part in Matamoros, which is kind of actually southeastern part of Texas near Brownsville, Texas, where we crossed the border, and we still needed signal to get Google Maps so we can know where we're going. So luckily it still picked up on the closest signal. However, I noticed that it was very, very, very, very slow, and I wanted to know why. So once I had the time, once we settled back, we only went for— we went for the day. We went for shopping. I can link that video for you too. We went shopping and, you know, we were only there for the day. So by the time we got back, I was able to have, you know, go back to using my phone's internet and just to figure it out and use my laptop as well. I figured out that it's because I was gifted when I did the tryout with Note Tryout and I got my free 5-day free trial, my 30% off discount, I also got 5 gigabytes of pay-as-you-go. So normally it's like a data plan. Imagine this is your phone. This is the phone. You only pay once for the phone, and then you pay for your plan. You can have unlimited, or you can have pay-as-you-go, or you can pay monthly. There are 3 different types of plans. And so I noted that I only had the USA plan. So once I knew that I needed and go to North American countries, uh, African countries, European countries, Asian countries, you name it, I would need to get a different pay-as-you-go plan. So 5 gigabytes for me because I knew not to, um, stream my YouTube and Netflix or watch a bunch of TikToks. I would— I didn't, I didn't even finish. I think if I can go to my plan on this app, you You'll see that I still have gigabytes left. So 3.91 gigabytes. But for me, that's not too bad because I also— I also was still alternating between my phone's hotspot. Because once again, I'm still in the US. We passed through a lot of major cities that still had access to phone towers, right? So I would still use my phone's hotspot because after all— If you have a phone plan, you're already paying for your hotspot on your phone, so why not use it? So I had it for my plan, I had up to 10 gigabytes of hotspot on the phone. So I just kept using, you know, my phone's hotspot when I needed it, or any of my family members' phone hotspots when we needed it. But in the instance that I did, you know, say we go back to Mexico or go to a different country, this is for life warranty. I have to look at my documents as far as the warranty of how long it was when you registered it. But all the details are also on the back as well. So if you did want to leave the country, you can go right into the app and press buy more data. And here are the rates for different gigabytes. So remember, the more videos you use, the more videos, the faster the data will go. But if you're using your email, if you're— I think using Zoom is pretty good. Like I said, I didn't really use it for that just yet because I was alternating. We were in a hotel with their Wi-Fi. I made it work so that I'm not using this all the time. So it worked out that they don't expire, the gigabytes don't expire. This is if you're getting the pay per gigabyte. So of course there's also the plans where if you wanted to get it monthly because you're going to use it more often, or you're going to get— like, you know how much gigabytes you need. So you can choose all of that right here in the app. And then, yeah, that's pretty much it. So you connect your Solis, you press that button. And you name your own hotspot. They will show you how to set it up, and you pretty much create your own hotspot. You can rename it to whatever you want. By default, I just select that. And so this is how they are able to connect. As long as they know that your specific hotspot is on, then they'll connect to the nearest tower, they'll ping off the nearest tower. So then— so this is— it disconnected again because it realized that we're still working. So it's still searching. So when I say that I want to connect, I'll press connect to my hotspot. It's loading, loading, loading. And it says connecting. And this has finally lit up as well. So I am now connected to my own personal hotspot. And it will tell you how many gigabytes you have. The cool thing about this, you can connect up to 10 devices. So this is perfect if You, you have more than one phone, or you have family with you that has a phone, and then they have a tablet, and then you still got to use your laptop. I have not seen if it slows down the internet the more devices connected or not, but I feel like it's very similar if you're familiar with how your at-home internet router works, that if everyone is watching videos on one network, something's gonna slow down. If someone's trying to record a video on one network, something's gonna slow down. So, if you haven't used it in a while, it will also say starting service. And so while it's doing that, you can have 10 devices on there. The battery life was amazing. Like, I think I went maybe 3 days without charging, also because I was not using it that much. But also what happens here is when this is, when you saw how it would Fully lit. Also, it will tell you, the lights will kind of dim if the battery is low. The app will tell you as well when the battery is dying, but like I said, I was able to go 3 days, um, but not 3 days, but say about 48 hours of battery life. Um, and so the lights would dim when you need to charge it, and it's very lightweight, so I was able to keep it in this little pouch. Um, you can clip it on If you want, but I just kind of threw it in my bag. So it kind of feels just like a case, you know, eyeglass case or AirPod case or you name it. So it came in very handy. Now I think the only cons that I would say that I did not like about it is it does seem a little pricey. I think it does seem a little pricey with your gigabytes. But I think that, that's the purpose of it. It's not supposed to be your, your, um, one-stop shop. So say for example, also what we did when we were, um, going to Mexico, we took a look at, uh, Google Wi-Fi— uh, sorry, Google Fi. Google Fi as a phone plan. Now certain phones you can still bring, um, with your own, uh, phone. You can bring your own phone to the Google Fi plan. But they also have, you know, new phones, you know, that you can utilize and bring with you. And so the cool thing about that was it works also in about 100+ countries. So I don't know if you remember back in the days of— if you were traveling and you needed to make sure your phone was unlocked so that you can use your phone, or you're using your phone to include another SIM card into there. And so now with Google Fi, you really don't have to do that. It just automatically will pick up as soon as you're in a new country to be able to literally use it like your own SIM card. But of course, there's also the power of WhatsApp nowadays where people don't have to utilize their own internet. You can still stay on Wi-Fi. There's so many ways to go around it. But I think others may be kind of shocked by the rates of the gigabytes. So as long as you use it wisely, it should be all right. Okay, so this thing came back up, so I want to try to show you what all these different features mean. So up at the top, you'll see like how strong the network is. So you'll see that it's a 4G network. So 9 out of 10 times it's going to be 4G. It'll tell you that it's connected. It'll tell you how many bars there are. And the T is really just showing you where it's connected. Now, if you press Signal Scan, if your network is slow for whatever reason, it will tell you to— it will let you scan and find a better network. Kind of very similar to your own Wi-Fi network. So that's that. Um, I will link it if you want to try it out for yourself. Uh, you can go to skyroam.com and visit— well, sorry, you can visit skyroam.com, and then if you want to get a discount or a free 5-day trial, use my code Zaakirah. That's Z-A-A-K-I-R-A-H. And try it out. It's very good. Like I said, if you are a traveler and you love camping, or you love being by the beach, you love going to countries where English is not the primary language, because 9 out of 10 times the signal would not be as strong as well. And yeah, I mean, I really liked it. It worked out for me. It's not for everyone, but yeah, that's that. So if you have any questions, Definitely be sure to drop them in the comments and I will definitely come back around and answer them. If you love this video, please be sure to subscribe. I'll be continuing talking more about little tidbits from my trip and little devices that I use, as well as turn on the bell and subscribe for more videos. So thank you so much for watching. I think— sorry, let me see if I can put this link in the comment section for you. All right, bye guys. Bye.