Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

iPad What can you do with 200mb?

B

Becact

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 15, 2013
61
0
Considering the LTE mini since tmobile's plan has 200mb free per month. But is this even enough to be useful?

I wouldn't use it to stream media, but I'd like to be able to have my email sync, read news sites and reddit, browse slickdeals and Amazon, etc. is this type of usage data demanding? For those on low data plans, how fast do you burn through it?

Basically just trying to decide if the extra 100-130 should go to storage or LTE ability :)
 
IMO, it's way too easy to go past 200 MB, for what you want to do. This allotment is useful for when you need to look up something and you're away from wi-fi. It's not good for normal browsing.
 
Becact said:
Considering the LTE mini since tmobile's plan has 200mb free per month. But is this even enough to be useful?

I wouldn't use it to stream media, but I'd like to be able to have my email sync, read news sites and reddit, browse slickdeals and Amazon, etc. is this type of usage data demanding? For those on low data plans, how fast do you burn through it?

Basically just trying to decide if the extra 100-130 should go to storage or LTE ability :)
Click to expand...

It's enough to check email and maybe load up a few websites every once in a while.
 
You won't be able to do what you're wanting to do, not with 200MB. That's a very small amount of data.

Either plan to pay for a data plan when you need it, or forget about the cellular model altogether.
 
ive been paying $30 a month to verizon on months when I haven't even used it. I know thats mainly my fault for letting it go but the free t-mobile data will be good. its free unless i actually use a lot of it which i'm ok with.
 
It won't go far for what I consider my "regular" computing needs. However, I use my iPad in the field for checking my email and syncing dropbox or iWorks documents. Maybe the occasional web search, check my RSS feed, but that's about it.

For web browsing, 200 mb is a lot on any smart phone. That's because websites will typically load up using the shrunken down, feature-stripped mobile version of the website. If you load it up on an iPad, you're getting the whole dang website to load up, which can eat more data. After about 25 minutes of use surfing MacRumors, ESPN, and some other websites, my iPad already ate up 40 mb. Compare that to a whole MONTH of my smart phone data usage of about 800 mb, and that's my primary device.
 
I used to pay Verizon $30/mo for 2GB and ended up just loading maps on trips and checking a few emails. Having 2 T-Mobile iPads saves me at least $30/mo for the simple "out of wifi" tasks I do. Your mileage may vary.
 
In my testing, just browsing facebook/reddit for less than 10 minutes uses up around 10 MB of data.

So I figure you get less than 200 minutes of light use.

Using Google Maps to navigate did not use that much data to my surprise.

I wouldn't rely on it to use normally. I would count on it as an emergency measure.
 
I actually use wifi most of the time, but I think the free 200mb is perfect for using maps in the car on a trip. And if it's lost I can use find my iphone to track it, or track my car...LOL. When I leave my car parked I usually hide my ipad.

So for free it's great for tracking the iPad in case of loss, using a pure wifi ipad makes it really hard to accurately track it.

So I don't plan to actively use it, just a good thing to have available.
 
Paying an extra 130 dollars for 200 mb of data is not even worth it in my opinion. If I need to look something up, I'd use my phone since it goes with me everywhere.
 
I bought the Sprint iPad and Apple gave me at t-mobile sim for free upon request, which I activated when I got home for the free 200mb monthly. It's great to use in a pinch when you're away from wifi, and if you find yourself using it more often (and have good Sprint lte coverage), then the sprint plans are very reasonable for additional gbs per month.

To stretch your data, I recommend Google Chrome with the data saving mode enabled, Opera with the same mode enabled, and Onavo, which routes most of your data through their servers using a certificate change and compresses the results. I save about 50% of my data that way, which is pretty nice. Definitely with the additional $130 investment.
 
1 - Most plans let you see what your usage is running.

2 - Over the past two weeks, at least 489 different threads have asked this same question. You might want to read a few of those for some additional input.
 
Becact said:
I wouldn't use it to stream media, but I'd like to be able to have my email sync, read news sites and reddit, browse slickdeals and Amazon, etc. is this type of usage data demanding? For those on low data plans, how fast do you burn through it?

Basically just trying to decide if the extra 100-130 should go to storage or LTE ability :)
Click to expand...

FWIW: I have the 200MB plan and after a week I'm about halfway through it. I do mainly what you plan on doing: e-mail sync, occasional web browsing when I'm away from Wifi.

So, I'll probably hit the limit in the second or third week of every month.

That said, the main reason I have this is because in cases where I decide I DO want more data, I can just add an on-demand pass from T-Mobile, either a day, week, or month long pass, and get additional data.

In a couple of days, for example, I'm going to be traveling, and so I'll just add the $30 month pass and get 2.5GB of data extra. If I happen to go over 2.5GB in the next month (which I doubt), I'll get throttled to 2G speeds, but still have data... and at the end, I just go back to the 200MB per month free plan.

So, it works out. IMO, the cellular iPad Air has proven to be a lot more useful to me already than my old WiFi-only iPad it replaced.

I've also still got my original Verizon SIM that came with the iPad Air, so I can switch to that if I decide to.
 
What can you do?

The same thing you'd do with the first 200MB of a paid plan.

It's FREE
 
You could always use mobile sites (when available) on LTE to save some bandwidth.
 
Becact said:
Considering the LTE mini since tmobile's plan has 200mb free per month. But is this even enough to be useful?

I wouldn't use it to stream media, but I'd like to be able to have my email sync, read news sites and reddit, browse slickdeals and Amazon, etc. is this type of usage data demanding? For those on low data plans, how fast do you burn through it?

Basically just trying to decide if the extra 100-130 should go to storage or LTE ability :)
Click to expand...

That's what I needed to decided when buying my air. I ended up with the 32 gb t mobile. Using it for email and a few websites while I'm away will last me a few weeks. Obviously nothing intense though. It's a no brainer IMO if you can afford the extra $100
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back