Happy New Year! Hope you have all enjoyed a well-connected break over the festive period. We’ve kicked off the year finding out some some exciting new developments as announced at the CES 2020 tech show in Las Vegas over the past few days.

You’ll know about mobile hotspots – A vital tool for many people such as frequent travellers and remote workers, keeping kit connected for work or leisure activities wherever you are. But what if it could work for you in your own home, perhaps as well as or even better than your Wi-Fi equipment?

This week Netgear’s new Nighthawk M5 5G Wi-Fi 6 Mobile Router was unveiled at CES 2020. This pocket friendly hotspot device could replace your home router as well as providing fast Wi-Fi on the go.

This is going to be 5G’s year. Mobile networks are continuing to roll out 5G across the country and the thought of mobile internet as an alternative to cabled Wi-Fi is becoming more viable. And if your coaxial cable is providing questionable reliability then why not consider 5G?

5G will be capable of delivering up to 2GB’s a second download speeds. As it’s signal is capable of reaching homes, theoretically it could deliver enough throughput to stream all the home necessities like streaming 4K content and enjoying online gaming.

Netgear’s Nighthawk M5 Mobile Router has all the standard features that you’ll find on most hotspots including a dedicated touchscreen LCD display for:

• Accessing settings
• Showing connection status
• Monitoring data usage and monthly limits

What this hotspot has that other’s do not, however, is the ability to not only connect to 5G mobile networks, but also Wi-Fi 6 devices. Even with multiple devices connected at the same time, it promises the fastest wireless performance and minimal bottlenecks. So

So if you were thinking that the amount of devices you would have connected at home would be significantly more than on-the-go, it would seem that it wouldn’t cause much of an issue for the M5.

Hence why Netgear is positioning the Nighthawk M5 as a viable alternative to getting your home internet through wires. How many times have you been let down by your internet at home? A problem with your provider, roadworks outside disrupting cables, slow to get connected in a new home – All of these reasons and more would also present the M5 as a reliable backup for if/when your cable internet or fibre service gets disconnected for whatever reason.

The M5 device includes a handy removable rechargeable battery, so if you did decide to use it in the home you could just plug it into a socket. The downfall may be the coverage – Hotspots generally don’t have the same Wi-Fi range as larger routers or mesh networking hardware. But this can be worked around by using the mobile router’s gigabit ethernet port, enabling you to connect it to your normal Wi-Fi router and transmit a stronger signal throughout your home.

If we’ve got you all excited and eager for this handy bit of kit then sorry – It likely won’t be available until the latter half of this year. You won’t be able to find out the price until this time to unfortunately. If you’ve got the M5 within your sights then bear in mind that you’ll need a mobile plan and a carrier operating a 5G network in your area.

So ditching your cable internet asap is probably not a great idea – And also may be a pricey one. But the conveniences of it may just make it worth it!