Mobile speed test for Ireland

How do you test mobile data speed properly?

Turn WiFi off, check the phone shows 4G or 5G rather than H+ or 3G, and run the test twice in the same place. Then test once outdoors or by a window. Mobile speed changes a lot from room to room and with the time of day, so one result says more about where you stand than about the network.

• WiFi off: otherwise the test measures your home or work broadband.
• Look at the network icon: on H+ or 3G you will see a few Mbit/s at most.
• Same place, two tests: the first one can be lower while the phone wakes up its connection.
• Indoors and outdoors: walls cut the signal, so compare a room with the garden or a window.
• Busy times: evenings can be slower where many people share the same mast.
• Slow everywhere? Turn Airplane Mode on for 15 seconds and off again, as Lidl advises for connection problems, then test again.

What do ping, jitter, download and upload mean?

Download is how fast pages, videos and apps arrive; upload is how fast your photos, videos and video-call picture go out. Ping is how long a tiny request takes to go there and back, in milliseconds, and jitter is how much that time jumps around. Low ping and jitter matter most for calls and games.

Lidl Connect speed test: how fast is Lidl Connect?

Lidl estimates up to 1 Gbit/s download on 5G and up to 400 Mbit/s on 4G, and says real speeds depend on location, device and network. In the first weeks, Lidl Connect users on boards.ie posted results from under 10 Mbit/s indoors on one bar to over 700 Mbit/s outdoors on 5G.

Lidl Connect uses eir's masts, so a place where eir is weak is slow on Lidl Connect too: check eir on ComReg's coverage map ↗. The coverage page has the network facts.

• One user measured under 8 Mbit/s indoors on one bar and 525 Mbit/s on the balcony.
• Another user measured 1 to 3 Mbit/s at home at worst and 450 at best, up to 760 elsewhere, but never more than about 20 Mbit/s upload.
• A Pixel 9 user measured about 4 Mbit/s at home on 4G, a tenth of what they had on GoMo in the same place, and 90 Mbit/s three kilometres away. Pixel phones stay on 4G with Lidl Connect for now.
• A Samsung S26 Ultra user measured about 700 Mbit/s on 5G.
• Users report that resetting the APN to default, or turning Airplane Mode on and off, brought slow speeds back up. Full steps: Lidl Connect not working.

Why is my mobile data slow?

Most often because of the signal where you are: thick walls, a far-away mast or a busy cell. After that come the phone's settings, such as an old network type, a wrong APN or a phone that does not support the network's 5G yet. If it is slow everywhere, contact your network: it can check your line.

• Weak signal: compare indoors and outdoors; check your network on ComReg's coverage map ↗.
• Phone settings: allow 4G and 5G under the SIM's network settings, and reset the APN to default.
• 5G missing: some phones only get a network's 5G after an update from the phone maker. WiFi calling, VoLTE and 5G has each network's details.
• Old phone: after the 3G switch-off, a phone without 4G gets little or no data.
• Still slow: customer service numbers for every Irish network.

Does a speed test use my mobile data?

Yes. This test downloads and uploads real data: up to about 160 MB on a fast connection, far less on a slow one, because it stops as soon as it has a reliable result. In Ireland that is no problem on an unlimited plan. Abroad it counts towards your roaming allowance.

On Lidl Connect, data in Ireland is unlimited and the EU roaming allowance is 50GB a month, so a few tests abroad are fine. On a plan with a small allowance, test on WiFi first, then once on mobile data.

Ookla vs IrishSim speed test: why do the results differ?

Because each test measures to its own servers in its own way. Ookla's Speedtest uses one of its own testing servers, FAST.com downloads from Netflix servers, and this test uses Cloudflare's. A different server, route or number of connections changes the result, so only compare results from the same test.

• Speedtest vs FAST.com: FAST.com runs its downloads and uploads to Netflix servers, so it shows how well Netflix streaming can run on your connection.
• Ookla's Speedtest has its own network of testing servers around the world and picks one for each test.
• This test runs against Cloudflare's speed servers near you, with the measuring engine Cloudflare publishes as open source.
• For a fair picture of your mobile data, choose one test, turn WiFi off and run it at the same place a few times.

Who runs this speed test?

The measuring is done by Cloudflare's open-source speed test engine, against Cloudflare's speed servers near you. IrishSim does not receive or keep your result, and the engine's result reporting to Cloudflare is switched off. IrishSim's own server only tells the page which network you are on.

Results from different speed test sites can differ because each measures to its own servers in its own way. For a fair comparison, use the same test in the same place.