There is a lot of 5G hype going on at the moment. 5G works, is legitimately, truly fast with super low latency, which could enable a lot of surprising new technologies we haven’t thought of yet. Think about the early days of the smartphone when it seemed like every day, somebody figured out a clever new thing you could do with your phone.
What sort of real-world speeds can you expect in the handful of cities that offer 5G service?
In downtown Chicago, Digital Trends never saw speeds in the Speedtest app dip below 550Mbps and the fastest was a blazing 1.35Gbps. CNET said it saw speeds consistently range from 400Mbps to above 1Gbps. Tech Radar hit a max speed of 1.385Gbps in its testing and PCMag clocked a 1.17Gbps test.
The emerging trend here, of course, is that 5G at least, in its current iteration in Chicago is extremely fast but inconsistent. The millimeter wave tech in use can deliver very fast speeds at low latency rates but has a low range and poor penetration. Unless you are close and within direct line-of-sight to a 5G node, you won’t get 5G service.
