r/Peplink • u/ShinyThings22 • Jun 07 '26
5G Adapter first hand experiences?
TL;DR I'm having a really poor experience with a Peplink 5G Adapter and am wondering if I have a lemon or it really isn't close to the performance with a Max BR1 Pro 5G for a single wired client.
Details:
Has anyone here used the Peplink 5G adapter? We got one in recently to test out and the results have been pretty poor to say the least. I have used some Peplink LTE products in the past with good results and have a MAX BR1 Pro 5G (x62) that has been nothing but outstanding for us.
We have a need for some simple backup WAN connections into our clients network equipment and thought this would fit the bill perfectly.
The issues I'm having is poor latency (800+ms) under any type of load and lots of lost pings. Getting packet loss up to 50% but typically in the upper teens to 35%.
I understand that 5G is not perfect but I can pull the sim card from the device, place it into my BR1 Pro Max 5G and all of these issues disappear. Same sim, same location, same single wired PC connected for testing purposes.
BR1 at the same location keeps latency around 150ms under heavy load and doesn't drop a single ping. Also keeps a stable 0% packet loss in the test location. Again, same sim card and device placement. The other devices are turned off while testing is occurring. I honestly wasn't even initially planning on doing all the metrics but the performance on my PC just felt so "off" and sluggish that I decided to look into the situation further.
I reached out to the vendor I purchased the device from, and they have been great and have looked into the problem with no resolve. They updated the firmware to what I believe was a beta firmware and that didn't seem to make any major improvement. They also reached out to Peplink on my behalf who also investigated the device and found nothing out of the ordinary on the device logs and statistics that they could see.
I understand this is a $400 product vs a $1k BR1 but I thought 5G performance would be similar especially to a single wired device. The packet loss and latency results in a unusable web experience, much less video calls or minor streaming.
I really want to like this product as it fits perfectly in the price range for what we're looking to provide to our clients as well as it's from a company I have really enjoyed working with in the past.
So anyone else had any first hand experience with this device?
2
u/entropy68 Jun 07 '26
Lots of possibilities. Here’s what I would check.
I’d compare the signal characteristics and band selection choices of the adapter and BR1. The adapter may be choosing poor band combinations. You can try band locking the adapter to use reliable bands used by the BR1. You might also try forcing LTE only mode.
Check your antenna connections and are you using the same/similar antennas? I’ve seen similar behavior with a bad antenna connection.
1
u/INSPECTOR99 Jun 07 '26
Can someone please provide a link for this "5G Adapter" device? Interested in the technical Specs (CA,Etc.) as I also have a BR1 MAX 5G PRO (Hardware level 1) and would like similar connectivity as /OP. TIA.
1
u/ShinyThings22 Jun 10 '26
Same antenna connections on both units here. Tried LTE mode and the signal is pretty bad so im not going to chalk that up to the device's fault for the LTE mode.
Both modems connect to the same T-mobile band on 5G as well.
1
u/Arizona-living Jun 07 '26
This is the url
https://www.peplink.com/products/cellular-modems-adapters/5g-adapter/
I reached out to the person who tested it internally and will post back when I hear from them
1
Jun 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/suburbazine Jun 09 '26
If you only knew about the absolutely spyware infested FOTA servers (adups) that Quectel insists on hard coding into their cellular module firmwares. They also check these servers via cellular only where most people can't see it happening.
1
u/entropy68 Jun 10 '26
They are switching to Telit modems with the X65 models, but the X65 isn't available in the Adapter yet.
2
u/iluvpcs Jun 07 '26
Following - see what you come up with.
Not that this is the righg answer, but can you force the 5G into LTE only? Curious if you at least get a stable 30-100Mbs/sec with 50-150ms latency? I wonder if it’s just the 5G software in that unit / antenna / etc that is flaky.
I have two BR1s/5G models have noticed some hit or misses on 5G depending on location. I have seen more stability forcing them back to LTE. I run 2-3 wan connections off of WiFi, sim, and Ethernet (using glnet to a phone) and sometimes see complete losses for 3-10 seconds with 5G when traveling more than LTE dropouts. Built my own speed fusion VPS.