Vodafone Mobile Wi-Fi R206 – Setup & Review

An upcoming holiday in a lovely little cottage with no fixed Internet access forced me to upgrade my old Vodafone USB Dongle (They stopped support for it). I was orginally planning on going “Off the grid” for the week, but that isn’t wise, practical, or advisable if you run your own business!

Initially I was just going to buy the upgraded model of the USB dongle, but before I went on the Vodafone site I had wondered why there wasn’t a mobile wifi dongle, or something that I could connect multiple devices to it. So once on the site I was pleased to find exactly that, the “Vodafone Mobile Wi-Fi R206” – perhaps I’d seen it advertised somewhere?

Anyway, a quick chat to an online representative and I ordered the device to be delivered to my local Vodafone store. Confirmation email came through shortly afterwards, followed by an “Out of stock” notice … which slightly concerned me. However, a received a text from Vodafone the next day to say it as ready to collect. I picked it up that day and all was sorted.

On to the Setup

Unpacking the tidy little box presents you with the guides, and all necessary parts, as you can see below:

Setup is simple, unpack it all, take the new sim card, pop the back case of the Wifi unit, and insert the sim and battery. Plug into the charger to charge it up, and turn it on. You get a little card with the wireless name and password on, which you can change and modify should you want to. But as soon as it’s charged, it recommends charging for 3 hours before using on battery use, you can then start using it.

Once it’s turned on, use your device to search for the network, then connect, the same way you’d connect to any other wireless network. The dongle has lights which indicate signal and battery, among other things. Once it’s on in battery mode, it flashes periodically which I initially mistook for it going into sleep mode. It’s not, it’s just preserving battery, you can still connect and use it. If you have signal that is 🙂

There you have it, very simple to use and a nice little device. I’ll be updating the post again soon once I’ve had a full chance to use it on my travels. But, so far so good.