Offered Virgin Media Hub 5

snowmen

Hi,
I am a current VM customer who is using the Hub 3.
Had a fair few problems last year with the service dropping out (both wired and wifi) but this seems (hopefully) to be resolved!
I got an email last week offering me the new Hub 5 at no cost and just wanted to know if anyone had any experience of going from the Hub 3 to Hub 5.
Googling seems to bring up mixed reports although i know you have to take these with a pinch of salt at times.

snowmen

Anyone any views/experience?

RumRat

Same mixed reports that the Hub3 has....I still have the 3 and have never had any problem with it...WiFi coverage in the house is very good.
I guess the 5 has all the necessary upgrades and latest WiFi capabilities, so, I'd go for it. However keep your old router for a while and you can always revert back.
Nothing ventured nothing gained...                

flaneurs_lobster

Does accepting a new router extend or renew your contract? Seen this happen when people have accepted a "no cost upgrade" box from Sky.

[Deleted User]

Can't be any worse than the very poor Hub 3.0 with the Intel Puma 6 chipset latency problems that resulted in a class action lawsuit in the USA. Hub 4 with the Puma 7 chipset which was also poor which is why that didn't catch on either.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/08/intel-coughs-to-puma-cpu-flaw-that-hit-virgin-media-hub-3-router.html

Sadly most UK broadband users don't know any better with our very slow ADSL/VDSL internet to compare their high speed cable connection against so didn't really complain. It was still better than most free ISP wifi router but the gamers noticed it. Instead consumers are all chasing the cheapest deal without realising what they are missing out on and pulling the quality of the whole market down with them.

The new Hub 5 has finally dropped the Intel Puma chipset in favour of the much better Broadcom chipset so it will perform better and will finally rid itself of those latency issues.

But personally I wouldn't use any free ISP box as my router / wifi and would recommend only using it in modem mode with Virgin and getting a proper wifi router for the best performance, especially on the much faster Virgin broadband speeds.

laurajones81

I upgraded from hub 3 to 5 and it works fine, occasionally the hub 3 would freeze on ours. The new hub hasn’t ever frozen.

snowmen

flaneurs_lobster said:

Does accepting a new router extend or renew your contract? Seen this happen when people have accepted a "no cost upgrade" box from Sky.

I don't think it does in this case but now you have mentioned it I will double check!

snowmen

[Deleted User] said:

Can't be any worse than the very poor Hub 3.0 with the Intel Puma 6 chipset latency problems that resulted in a class action lawsuit in the USA. Hub 4 with the Puma 7 chipset which was also poor which is why that didn't catch on either.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/08/intel-coughs-to-puma-cpu-flaw-that-hit-virgin-media-hub-3-router.html

Sadly most UK broadband users don't know any better with our very slow ADSL/VDSL internet to compare their high speed cable connection against so didn't really complain. It was still better than most free ISP wifi router but the gamers noticed it. Instead consumers are all chasing the cheapest deal without realising what they are missing out on and pulling the quality of the whole market down with them.

The new Hub 5 has finally dropped the Intel Puma chipset in favour of the much better Broadcom chipset so it will perform better and will finally rid itself of those latency issues.

But personally I wouldn't use any free ISP box as my router / wifi and would recommend only using it in modem mode with Virgin and getting a proper wifi router for the best performance, especially on the much faster Virgin broadband speeds.

Thanks for the reply.
Just out of interest what wifi router do you use/recommend?