Emma Lunn | July 25th, 2022

Virgin Media Ultimate Volt bundle review

Virgin Media currently has over ten all-in-one broadband, TV and phone (and mobile if you want to add it on) bundles available right now. The Ultimate Volt Bundle (previously known as the Ultimate Oomph Bundle) is the top-tier offering and, as you might guess, also the most expensive.

If you want it all, then the Virgin Ultimate Volt bundle is for you. With hundreds of TV channels, Sky Cinema and Sky and BT Sports in HD, a TV 360 box, Talk More Anytime and an unlimited 4G SIM – plus Gig1 fibre broadband (that's an average download speed of over 1000Mbps) – this really is the ultimate package. But the Ultimate Volt bundle doesn’t come cheap – is it worth it? Read on and decide.

Quick overview

Here’s a quick look at what you can expect to find.

Broadband

The Ultimate Volt bundle offers Virgin Media's fastest broadband speeds – and the fastest widely available in the UK. And its “slower” speeds aren’t exactly slow – Virgin’s slowest offering is faster than the entry-level fibre offerings of almost all other UK providers – so just imagine how fast the very fastest is (clue: it’s very, very fast).

Fibre with average speeds of 1130Mbps is ridiculously quick and naturally also comes with unlimited downloads. Even if you have enough kids to field a football team, the UK’s fastest domestic broadband speed is quick enough to cater for you all to be doing different things on the internet at the same time. You could all be streaming high-definition movies in different rooms, on different TVs, and you'd still have bandwidth left over to influence your Instagram followers.

You're more likely to get the speed you're paying for with Virgin Media too. Ofcom's 2021 figures show that the median average download speed for Virgin Media’s 1.1 Gbit/s service is over 1 Gbit/s.

However, it’s not a given that you’ll be able to get Virgin Media in your area – you can enter your postcode on Virgin Media’s website to check availability. Best to do that before you set your heart on the Ultimate Volt bundle.

TV channels

We’ve found that the way Virgin Media represents its channels on its own site can be a bit confusing. You can check out a much easier to manage, up-to-date list of Virgin channels here on Cable.co.uk that also allows you to see what you’re getting in each bundle side-by-side.

Anyway, here’s what you get with the Ultimate Volt bundle. The Ultimate Volt Bundle is the most comprehensive TV package Virgin Media offers – you get everything.

This means you get all the Freeview channels – channels you could be watching for nothing either via your TV’s own tuner or through a bargain basement Freeview box. But you also get BT Sport in 4K HD, Sky Sports in HD, Sky Cinema in HD, Sky One, Two and Living, Discovery and a load of kids’ channels.

In fact, there’s more than 230 channels in total – far too many to list here. If you can’t find anything to watch on the 230+ channels, there’s also players including BBC iPlayer, All 4, YouTube, Vevo and Sky On Demand, TV box sets, and Catch-up TV. Likewise, Virgin now bundles a Netflix subscription into the Ultimate Volt plan, which is good.

All those channels could lead to squabbling about what to watch with your family or housemates, so it’s lucky you can add 2 extra Mini boxes so you can stream and view all over the home. And the TV 360 box, as we discuss later, is pretty awesome.

Compare Virgin packages

Equipment

The Virgin Hub 5 router

In our opinion Virgin Media’s router and set-top box, as a free hardware proposition, are second to none. The Virgin Hub 5, the latest, is compact and, as a result, easy to place in an ideal spot. It's the first Virgin broadband router that supports WiFi 6, delivering peak WiFi performance.

It’s also universal across all Virgin Media’s bundles, regardless of your choice. This means that if – heaven forbid – you choose to downgrade further down the line you’ll be able to do so instantly.

Sky and BT, on the other hand, offer a lower-end router for their entry-level bundles, meaning if you want to upgrade or downgrade, you might need a different bit of kit

Read more about Virgin Media routers

Virgin’s TV 360 set-top box

Then there’s the TV 360 set-top box. It’s Virgin Media’s smartest, fastest box yet and it’s one of the best free ones out there.

The remote allows you to search by voice for TV shows, open apps, skip, forward and back and so on to your heart's content. It can also output in 4K (ultra-high definition or UHD), which is something you’ll see only in the top-end packages from the likes of Sky and BT. Additionally, you can set up profiles for each member of the household, so everyone gets individual controls over pause points, favourite channels and even tailored recommendations.

You can also add up to 2 Mini boxes, meaning you can watch in 4K HD in more rooms, plus, with the Ultimate Volt Bundle and the Virgin TV Go app, you can watch 70+ live channels on your mobile or tablet, anywhere there’s WiFi, 3G or 4G. And recording can be shared between boxes around the home.

You’ll get a landline thrown in, if you need it

By default, Virgin Media will throw in a landline with the ‘Talk More Anytime’ add-on. This gives you inclusive anytime calls to UK landlines and mobiles, plus 0845/0870 numbers.

You can opt out of having a landline but this won’t, unfortunately, bring the price down. A physical line will need to be installed at your house and ‘line rental’ is for that, irrespective of whether you use it for broadband, phone, or both.

You even get an unlimited SIM

As if all that wasn't enough, Virgin also throw in a truly unlimited data O2 SIM card. This'll give you access to endless superfast 4G data along with unlimited minutes and texts, plus the ability to roam in 75 destinations.

Conclusion

What’s not to like? The Ultimate Volt Bundle has it all, you’ll be the talk of the town if you sign up. However, you only really need it if you’ve got a busy household obsessed with watching telly and doing various things on the internet. The high-spec TV 360 box will appeal to gadget nerds but, to be fair, you get the same box with all Virgin’s packages.

1130Mbps makes this quite likely the fastest broadband speed you'll find. No other widely available provider gets close and, with unlimited downloads, you’re free to stream your socks off. And Virgin Media have recently made Gig1 available to their entire network – currently around 55% of UK households. And that's a figure that's climbing all the time.

All in all, Virgin Media’s Ultimate Volt Bundle is an awesome deal if you can justify the excess. The only downside is it’s pretty pricey and there’s a substantial jump in the monthly price after the first year.

If you change your mind, remember you’re tied in for 18 months but Virgin’s decision to offer only one type of router and set-top box across its whole range means downgrading to cheaper services should be easy. Highly recommended.

See all Virgin deals