T-Mobile gateway alternative - Nighthawk M6?

[sharpstick]

I have T-Mobile home internet and have had problems using their Nokia 5G21 gateway. I'd like to try a Nighthawk M6. What submodels will work(regular and Pro?). It looks like the MR6500 is ATT only. The MR6150 appears to be unlocked and will work. I'm retired, so price is a consideration. Are there any other options?

[FURRYe38]

I enjoy my M6150 on T-Mobile. I use there pay as you need service as I don't travel much but it worked last year for me when I was traveling. 

[plemans]

What issue are you having with that gateway? 

The hotspots are nice but that nokia gateway is setup quite extensive for cellular and router and is going to have a better antenna and internal router setup. 

https://eddiez.me/hacking-the-nokia-fastmile/

[sharpstick]

I also see that the M5, MR5200 should work.  My typical speeds are from 50 to 600 mbps. 100 is usually acceptable. The M6 is faster, but with my speeds, will it matter? (M5 is cheaper, too.)

[sharpstick]

Since they upgraded to 5G here in December(3 months ago), I've had daily outages lasting from seconds to days. Folks on the TM FB group say the cheap TM gateways are inferior. The Nokia doesn't have any antenna ports, either. I generally have 2 or 3 bars of signal.

[plemans]

The built in antenna's on that gateway are pretty extensive if you look at the teardown. A lot of the issue I'm betting is related to 5g not passing through materials well. Do you have it located by a window? or make sure that there isn't much blocking its signal. 

Do you find it dropping to 4g quite a bit? 

[sharpstick]

It's up in a window in the tower direction. I have had speeds as high as 585(once). I now have it on a UPS with a cooling fan. Still have problems. I can't tell if 4G is working better than 5G. I have the SSIDs split.

[plemans]

got an old router sitting around?

Couple reports of the built in router having issues. MIght connect an old router to the gateway and see if it stays stable/fast. 

[sharpstick]

Netgear chatbot says: "Both can support 5G.

However the MR6150 data transfer speed over wifi is faster than the MR5200." So how much faster, and at 5G 100 - 400 mbps, would that matter? 

[sharpstick]

I would think that would help the downstream gateway to device connections rather than the tower to GW connections.