I finally made the jump to 1Gbps broadband, but was it worth it?

For me, ditching an overpriced Virgin 300Mbps package for a 1Gbps deal about 40% cheaper was a no-brainer. I get more, pay less – and I wouldn’t pay much less than that for 500Mbps right now.

Like with my Pixel phone upgrade earlier this year, I pounced on a bargain – even if the tech might be a bit surplus to requirements.

So I crunched some numbers and spent a few months living with gigabit broadband – downloading games, streaming films and working from home. Here’s what I’ve learned about 1Gbps broadband.

Long story short: for most households, it's probably overkill, but it's also very cheap right now (see our 900Mb+ broadband top picks), so it's not a bad time to give it a go.

First things first: day to day, I barely notice any difference between 1Gbps and the 300Mbps I had before. Websites don’t load faster (certainly not three times faster), 4K Netflix didn’t buffer before and still doesn’t, and video calls work just as they did. If you switched me back to 300Mbps without telling me, I’m not sure I’d notice – other than that I’ve now got a white router instead of a black one.

Lightning-quick uploads aren't a huge boon for me personally, as I don't do that much uploading, but if you regularly work with large video files or you're backing up a serious amount of data, faster uploads are arguably the more useful half of the equation – and one that rarely gets mentioned in ads.

But it's worth remembering that upgrading to even a 500Mbps or 300Mbps symmetrical up/down package would eclipse your current upload speeds if you're on one of those '10% upload speeds' packages (which packages on older Virgin and Openreach infrastructure tend to be). So if upload speeds matter to you, this is less a case for 1Gbps broadband as it is for a broadband package that has symmetrical upload and download speeds.

Crunching the numbers

But now to get more objective, here’s a table showing download speeds for a variety of file sizes across four different broadband speeds:

A 1Gbps connection sounds dramatically faster than a 500Mbps one, but when you look at actual download times in the table, the gains quickly taper off because download speeds follow the law of diminishing returns. A jump from 50Mbps to 150Mbps can cut well over an hour off a large game download, but once you're already at very high speeds, the real-world savings become much smaller, so a jump from 500Mbps to 1Gbps only saves you about six minutes.

Each of us will have different ideas about what counts as good time-saving, but generally speaking, it's probably fair to say that you'll only start appreciating 1Gbps if you're regularly downloading large files such as games, TV shows, video projects, or particularly big updates. Below is a graph illustrating the results in the table. I actually had to compress the y-axis, otherwise the results merged too quickly into the same line and became indistinguishable:

The more people online, the stronger the case for faster broadband

One caveat worth flagging is that all the above times assume just one person doing demanding online activity. In my two-person household that's usually the case, but it won't be for everyone.

If your household frequently has several people using the internet simultaneously, then you can scale the above results accordingly. For example, if two people are downloading a 50GB game at the same time, then it will take about 13 minutes to download instead of around six. Realistically, though, that's not how most households use the internet. Far more common is a few people browsing, scrolling, and watching videos at the same time, and that sort of thing will barely register in others' internet speeds: we're likely talking fractions of a second, not minutes.

Your advertised speed often isn't the problem – your Wi-Fi is

If your broadband feels slow or you’re not getting the advertised speeds in a speed test, it’s often better to fix the issue at home first rather than upgrade. If your speeds are lower than advertised, try to address that and see if you’re happy once it’s running optimally before committing to an upgrade. Test your speed using our broadband speed checker below:

For example, if your Wi-Fi struggles to reach the spare bedroom, upgrading from 150Mbps to 1Gbps probably won't fix that. If your router is hidden in a cupboard, your home has thick walls, or you're relying on a weak wireless signal upstairs, the issue may be your home network rather than your broadband package. See How to improve your broadband speed.

What broadband providers are reluctant to tell you is that even for top end 4K video streaming, the internet speed requirements are surprisingly modest. Netflix recommends around 15Mbps, YouTube roughly 20Mbps, and BBC iPlayer 24Mbps.

At the extreme end, HBO Max recommends a stable 50Mbps connection for its 'Premium' tier (which includes 4K and HDR) – still far below anything like a 500Mbps connection, let alone a gigabit service.

This is affected by factors like your in-home setup, whether you’re on ethernet or Wi-Fi, and how far you are from the game’s servers. Whether you have 150Mbps or 1Gbps has almost no impact – unless your home network is congested with lots of people using it at the same time.

So is gigabit broadband worth it?

Right now, our top broadband deals show gigabit broadband costs virtually the same as 500Mbps (after intro rewards). So if you were going for 500Mbps anyway, there’s little reason not to try it – though check the table to see if you need that speed.

But treat 1Gbps broadband as what it is: a trial. When your two-year deal ends, don’t let inertia keep you there. If the price gap widens between gigabit and lower speeds, be ready to reassess and switch as soon as your contract’s up (or earlier if rivals will cover exit fees).

And if you're not ready to switch firms, or you haven't switched in a while, see if you can haggle a faster deal out of your current provider first.