CR-R King Pocket LTE Review

Our neighbor's mini internet shop was badly affected by the recent typhoon Glenda. Their roof at the 2nd floor was thrown away by the typhoon's extremely strong winds, allowing the rain to pour down to the lower floor which houses the mini net café. We're paying just a little amount to them to use the internet - that's a 5mbps DSL connection.
As of this writing, they still don't have the internet connection.

That triggered me to look for alternatives to sustain the internet connection at our home. I then decided to buy an internet device at which has a comparable browsing speed as I used to before - an LTE device.
There's no available LTE pocket wife's out there. There's only 4G pocket wifi available at stores which ranges from P1,995 to P3,500(that's only up to 7.2mbps - not LTE). I tried to apply for an LTE plan at Globe at which you will buy the LTE pocket wifi for P2,999 and pay 299 each month for 50hour LTE usage. Also expensive. Aside, you'll just be having a locked LTE device (can only be used with Globe SIM cards) -- and at that time, I'm just on my 2nd week on my new job. I will then be denied to apply on any plans as I don't have the enough proof of income or any other documents.

Then I try to look at CD-R king, to buy any affordable 4G device, and was surprised on what I saw on their newly delivered items - an LTE capable dongle! I bought it then.



Below is the list of the product's features, and specs based on the CDR-King website:
•Pocket-size, portable
•High-speed Wi-Fi access router function
•Provides multiple 4G-LTE internet access
•Broadband/USIM modem function
•With Micro SD Card Slot up to 32GB
•Supports Log-in WebUI Managing page
•Supports SMS and Phonebook managing page
•Support File Sharing from Micro SD Card
•Supports GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900
•Supports UMTS 2100, 1900, 850
•Supports LTE TDD 1900, 2300, 2600
•Supports LTE FDD 2600, 1800, 2100 Long-life battery
•Wi-Fi Standard: IEEE802.11b/g/n
•Wi-Fi Band: 2.412~2.484Ghz
•Wi-Fi Security: WPA/WPA2
•Sim Card Slot: Standard 6 PIN SIM Card interface
•Card Slot: Micro SD/SDHC up to 32GB
•USB Interface: Micro USB; 60cm cable
•USB Version: High-speed USB 2.0
•Standby Time: 240 hrs
•Working Time: 8hrs
•Charging Time: 4 hrs with adapter; 6hrs with USB
•Battery: Li-ion battery, 2300mAh
•AC Adapter: 5V DC / 1.5A~1.8A; 100V~240V, 50Hz~60Hz

The Review.
Below is an actual image of the unit I'm using, while in operation:

It's quite bigger compared to the dongles of Smart or Globe, probably because of the 2100mAh battery it has inside.
It has a colored LCD screen as you see at the left side. Tile display inspired by the Windows phones. The LCD display some important notifications about the device
-The signal type and signal strength (in yellow)
-Battery level / charging status. (in pink)
-Number of connected devices. (in orange)
-SMS Notification (in green)
-In blue tile:
Operator name, time consumed of current connection and the amount of data consumed since power on / recent connection.

At the right side of the device is a SIM card slot (mini sim - the regular one), power on / display on key; and a WPS key to show the SSID and password on the device' display.

In terms of signal reception, I think this device is good as I can still get an LTE signal just wherever. Our house is quite far from the business districts, but I can still receive a bar of LTE signal from Smart and 2 bars from Globe.

For more pictures, just refer to the CD-King website, they have detailed pictures there.
I use the device continuously while in an unlimited browsing promo, so I just have the device connected to the charger. The device heats up too much. But I think that's normal.
There are times that the device is restarting automatically - just seldom, maybe because I'm using it heavily. Maybe some other broadbands also have that issue.
I'll be using this device heavily for the first months so that I can replace it if something happened wrong with the device. This unit has a 6 months service warranty.

As usual, this product is made in China. I guess it's a rebrand of a device from Alibaba.

The Device Interface:

Log-in page

You can just browse 192.168.0.1 on your computer or on your phone's browser. Default username and password is admin.
Users connected to the wifi connection can also access the micro-SD card contents attached to the device without logging in as admin.

Device Information - status bar at the top showing the things you can see on the physical device' screen.

Connected Devices. There's also a MAC filtering feature for this device as an added feature for user authentication.

Mini Speedtest. Showing you the current download and upload speeds. Also, it has a tool to let you set the amount of time or the amount of data you're using.

Data usage/ time limit function of this device is very cool. I'm using this a lot as I'm currently subscribed to Globe Tattoo LTE postpaid plan 299 which only has 50hour data usage and a cap of 3gb per month.
Make the most out of your money?  Cheapest LTE Promos.
I'm only paying P199 instead of P299 for the Globe postpaid plan as I only took SIM-only Plan. 50 hours or 3gb (Fair Usage Policy) per month is just very few for my needs. So what I'm doing is that I'm just using the 50 Globe hours while travelling / while at office to check some mails / Facebook.
At weekends, I change the SIM to Smart Bro LTE and register for an unlimited LTE usage for 1 day. There's no cap / data usage limit with Smart Bro prepaid.
Just register by texting LTE 50 to 2200.
Alam na!



SMS function. The device has a capability to send and receive messages. Whenever you receive a message, there will be an indicator on the device LCD screen.

Some settings. From basic to complicated.

SD card file sharing function.

There are 2 options for USB storage access in this device.
1. HTTP share - share file wirelessly by accessing 192.168.0.1 on browser
2. USB - access the micro-sd card's contents by plugging the device on a PC through a USB cable.

Will this device last? we'll see.

====================================================================

Of course, there will be CD-R King product haters out there. Any product will be vulnerable to malfunctions if the owner doesn't know how to take care of their devices. So far, among all my 'expensive' CD-R King devices, it's only the Android TV box (worth P2,000) that I broke. I confess it's my fault as I tried to root the device and change the ROM and unfortunately bricked the device. Already out of 6 months service warranty, I asked for a paid repair - but they just returned me the same broken unit, unrepaired, after a month - unrepairable, disposable.
Matitibay naman talaga products ng CDR-King, been a customer for more than 5 years. Basta wag na lang kalikutin yung device pag di naman kabisado yung ginagawa :)

Mareview nga mismo yung CD-R King, hehe.
Next entry nga....