Getting Wi-Fi in your car is convenient in many ways, including using a navigation app, checking real-time traffic conditions, or requesting help in an emergency. While many simply use their 3G-capable smartphone for these purposes, you would need other methods to get a reliable Wi-Fi connection in your car so your passengers can use it too.
We are fortunate to live in 2021, when Wi-Fi in your car is easier and more affordable than ever, with many choices to suit your budget and data consumption demand. This article will explain in detail the different options available so you can compare and make the decision yourself. Each method involves a one-time expense for hardware and recurring costs for the data plan, and comes with its own distinct set of advantages and disadvantages, so there’s something for everyone.
Getting Wi-Fi in Your Car: What You Should Consider
Why Get Wi-Fi for Your Car?
If you only need to use navigation apps occasionally or request help if your car breaks down, you might as well use your smartphone to connect to the internet, as most of us have a smartphone today. But there are other circumstances where you would want to have internet access in your vehicle at all times, for example, if you have children and need to entertain them (thus keeping them contained!), or if you often travel with your spouse or family on long camping trips.
Many people may need the most powerful and reliable service possible to work on their laptop when not in the office or at home, such as sales representatives. And in a time when most of us are working from home due to COVID, having Wi-Fi in your car would offer more possibilities in terms of redesigning how you coordinate working from home with time spent elsewhere.
Furthermore, using your smartphone to surf the net or as a mobile hotspot to provide a connection to other devices has many drawbacks, as will be explained later. Before diving into the details of the different ways to get Wi-Fi in your car, there are a few things you need to know firsthand, as they are relevant regardless of the method you choose.
Data Costs
Data cost essentially means how much you have to pay each month for a maximum amount of data you can use. If you have high demand, there are plenty of data plans with unlimited data, and once you’ve used up the allocation for limited high-speed data, you won’t have to pay extra, but you might only get slow speeds if the network is busy. The monthly cost and allocation for high-speed data vary from plan to plan, so you need a balance between what you pay and the bandwidth provided by the provider.
Sometimes, when you buy a smartphone or a brand new car with built-in Wi-Fi (yes, it’s the new thing), you can get a free data plan with a limited amount of data or a complementary data allocation for a limited time. Data is only free in these limited circumstances, so you will eventually need to look for a solution.
Each country has a few major cellular service providers and smaller ones, and bigger doesn’t mean better when it comes to data plans. The common opinion is that you don’t necessarily need to go with the giant companies to get good service, but you should always check different providers and different data plans to get one that offers the best value for your situation.
Limited High-Speed Data
As above, don’t just look at the maximum hotspot data amount of a plan, but look at the actual amount of data that will be available at the fastest possible speed. There’s no point in getting a plan advertised as “unlimited” if it only offers a small monthly allocation of high-speed data, after which you’ll get extremely slow service.
Network Coverage
Another important factor to consider when getting a data plan for your car is the coverage or network availability of a provider. It refers to where the provider has service and where it has good data speeds.
Many providers advertise very wide-coverage networks, meaning you can get very good connections almost everywhere you go in your country, but it’s not uncommon to find that you can only get the fastest data speeds in certain geographic areas. Many others have large high-speed networks but have huge “dead zones” where no cellular service is available, as they haven’t built the necessary facilities in those locations yet.
Getting a data plan from a mobile carrier with good network coverage would offer you more flexibility and possibilities to prepare for whatever will happen in the future. This is especially important if you often take long car trips to hard-to-reach places or live in a rural area. You will need to look for a data plan that will cover you.
Security
A note for using your car’s Wi-Fi once you have it. When you have a Wi-Fi connection in your vehicle, remember that someone in nearby cars might have access to your mobile Wi-Fi connection. At all times, treat your onboard Wi-Fi connection like public Wi-Fi: do not enter any sensitive information (credit card details, bank account ID, as well as your full name and date of birth, which is enough to be used in identity theft). For extra protection, you can use a VPN.
The Easiest Way to Get Wi-Fi in Your Car: From a Smartphone Hotspot
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, it’s now common knowledge that you can use your smartphone as a hotspot to provide a Wi-Fi connection in your car. This is absolutely the simplest, most readily available, and cheapest method, as you wouldn’t have to pay for hardware like with other options if you already have a smartphone.
Although you can do this if your smartphone isn’t capable of acting as a hotspot, but that’s rare for smartphones nowadays, and even if it is, you might as well consider upgrading your phone. Because if you only need Wi-Fi occasionally without having to use too much data, then having a hotspot-capable smartphone would be a versatile and cost-effective option.
When the hotspot feature is active, your phone essentially acts as both a portable modem and a router, thus creating a localized ad hoc wireless internet connection that other devices like iPads, laptops, or even Wi-Fi-capable head units can connect to. This is called tethering. Most smartphones have the option to be enabled in the phone settings or, in some cases, may require downloading an app for this purpose.
So, basically, there’s still only one connection, which is the same data connection that lets you surf the web on your phone, but now it’s shared with all other Wi-Fi-capable devices that you or your passengers have. For this reason, the main drawback of turning your phone into a mobile hotspot is the risk of your cellular data allocation for the month being used up quickly, as it’s shared. For example, after a long car trip when your passengers watched many YouTube videos in the back seat, later in the month, you might find that you’ve used up your high-speed data allocation and can’t even check and reply to emails on your landline phone.
The second drawback is that tethering is very bad for your phone, as it excessively strains the battery. Doing this constantly will drain your battery and cause it to deteriorate faster.
Tethering is available with virtually all mobile carriers, whether included in the base data plan or sometimes offered as an add-on. With some providers, when you use your phone as a hotspot, any device connected to it will only get a slower download speed. So, sometimes even if the phone is capable of 4G, you’ll only get 3G data in your car. If you decide to use your phone for tethering, remember to ask about this when comparing data plans and read the fine print to be safer.
Get Wi-Fi in Your Car: Use a Dedicated Mobile Hotspot
If you don’t want to stress your phone’s battery and/or need a fast and reliable connection, getting a dedicated mobile hotspot would be a great way to get Wi-Fi in your car. A mobile or portable hotspot works basically the same way as your phone’s tethering function.
They are easy to use and have many advantages. For one, these devices can usually connect more devices than a phone’s hotspot would allow, typically up to eight devices, including phones, tablets, laptops, and cameras. Compared to your phone, a mobile hotspot usually provides a better Wi-Fi signal via 4G LTE networks, and there are many plans with more data allocation.
It’s not a drawback at all, but note that a mobile hotspot is a device solely for connectivity, so you don’t get an all-in-one multifunctional device like your smartphone.
While you use the same network and data plan when using your phone as a hotspot, a dedicated mobile hotspot requires a hardware cost for the device itself and, in addition, a monthly plan with a mobile carrier. The average recurring cost is between $20 and $90 per month for typically 2GB to 10GB of data. Most mobile carriers allow you to add a hotspot to your current phone plan, or if that doesn’t meet your needs, you can totally get a separate data plan for the mobile hotspot with another provider.
Here, it’s helpful to understand the difference between two main types of dedicated mobile hotspots: cellular dongles and standalone devices.
Cellular Dongles
Cellular dongles are portable USB devices usually designed to plug into laptops or other devices with a USB power source to create a localized Wi-Fi network. During initial setup, some units can even be plugged into any USB port you might have or have added to your car, such as your head unit, a powered USB connector, or the OBD-II port.
An example that plugs into your car’s OBD-II port is Sprint Drive. This cellular dongle provides a connection for up to eight devices, and you can opt for an unlimited monthly data plan. Convenient additional features include virtual vehicle maintenance and roadside assistance services. Another popular product on the U.S. market is the Alcatel LinkZone 4G LTE, which plugs into your car’s cigarette lighter socket via a USB port to stay charged at all times.
Standalone Units
Being more portable than dongles, dedicated standalone mobile hotspots are usually available at a higher price. Although these standalone units are designed to be plugged into any 12-volt accessory socket for power, they come with built-in batteries. They don’t need an external power source at all times, meaning if you need to, you can easily move your Wi-Fi network away from your car, like working or streaming music in your camping tent.
A notable example is Verizon’s MiFi. The advice is that if you prioritize better services, more data, and wider coverage, it’s better to go with major cell providers like Verizon and AT&T, given that you’re willing to pay a higher price for them, of course. Otherwise, if you don’t ask for much, opting for a smaller carrier like Freedompop would be more economical, as it offers a small amount of free data.
The Most Reliable Way to Get Wi-Fi in Your Car: Install a Permanent Wireless Modem and Travel Router
The two methods above are portable and convenient. But if you really need a lot of high-speed data and reliable services at all times, the best option is to permanently install a wireless modem and router in your car.
This option has many valuable advantages. The only drawback is that it is by far more expensive. The hardware alone will cost between $200 and $600, and on top of that, you’ll also pay installation fees and recurring monthly data fees, which vary from carrier to carrier.
These car wireless routers are also not as versatile and portable as phone hotspots and mobile hotspots. Later, we’ll talk about the most high-tech option currently available, i.e., vehicles with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. Such convenience is possible because these cars are equipped with one of these devices.
Most of the time, these car routers are wired, however. That said, there is a way to make them more portable to some extent, i.e., by permanently wiring a dock in your car, which allows the device to be easily removed and installed in another dock in another vehicle.
Some popular products in this category include the $20.50 GL.iNET GL-MT300N-V2 portable wireless single-band travel mini router, the $40 HooToo FileHub single-band, the $40 TP-Link AC750 portable wireless dual-band nano travel router, and the $50 RAVPower FileHub dual-band.
Advantages of a Permanently Installed Modem/Travel Router
Stronger Signal: The main selling point of permanently installed travel routers is that you get stronger Wi-Fi and cellular radio signals compared to previous methods. While a mobile hotspot uses a built-in antenna to receive a signal, a modem/travel router essentially turns your vehicle into an antenna, and this mechanism usually provides more reliable signals and better speeds.
Wi-Fi All the Time: Instead of having to, say, enable the hotspot function on your phone, you won’t have to do anything with a travel router. Whenever your car is turned on, Wi-Fi will be instantly available, as these devices run on your vehicle’s power.
Multifunctional: A modem/travel router usually has a dual or triple function as a range extender to amplify weak Wi-Fi signals, as a portable charger for phones and tablets, as a memory card, and even as a cloud sharing hub for external hard drives. If you work remotely on long trips, you’ll love these convenient features.
USB or Ethernet Connection: Although these permanent devices are not portable, they offer another versatility. Some car modem/router combos include USB or Ethernet ports, so it’s also possible to connect various mobile devices via USB or Ethernet.
Doesn’t Drain Your Phone’s Battery: As above, turning your phone into a mobile hotspot would significantly drain your battery and, over time, could deteriorate it prematurely. Of course, you can always keep a charger in your car, but long-term damage to your battery is still inevitable, and keeping your phone charged at all times means no one else can charge their devices either.
Save Your Mobile Plan Data: If you only need Wi-Fi occasionally and don’t need to consume data, a smartphone with hotspot features can help. But if you travel with others on long trips in your truck or van, you should get a permanent modem/router combo with a separate data plan to make the most of everything, while saving data on your mobile plan for when you need it, including in emergencies.
Convenient Services for Your Vehicle: Some carriers offer devices with useful additional features such as sharing location and driving history, and collision response, like Verizon’s Hum.
Get Wi-Fi in Your Car Using an OBD-II Device
If you’re still considering between a dedicated mobile hotspot and a built-in modem/router combo, check out OBD-II Wi-Fi devices. In terms of portability, they fall right between mobile hotspots and permanently installed devices, and they also offer unique features that other options lack.
These devices plug into your car’s OBD-II port. If you’re not familiar with this technology, an OBD-II port is the connector where you can easily plug in your smartphone and run a dedicated app for computer diagnostics of your car’s health.
A car OBD-II Wi-Fi device, like the Delphi Connect, creates a localized Wi-Fi network to various mobile devices, and another interesting feature is that it allows you to use an app on your smartphone to perform a health check on your vehicle (kind of like a mobile hotspot and an ELM 327 scanner all in one).
These devices also provide vehicle tracking data so you can track your vehicle’s location in real-time as well as in the past.
If You’re Considering Upgrading Your Car: Think About Cars with Built-in Wi-Fi
Again, depending on your situation, you may not need an in-car Wi-Fi connection at all times. That said, as we are now in 2021, and if you’re looking to buy a new car in the near future, you will most likely come across a few models with built-in Wi-Fi technology in your search, whether you’re specifically looking for one or not. If you sometimes need to use Wi-Fi in your car, it might