Gabriel Vanca | May 16th, 2022
Virgin Media is one of the UK’s leading ultrafast broadband providers, offering speeds from 100Mbps all the way to 1Gbps, in both broadband-only packages as well as bundled well with phone, TV or O2 mobile SIMs.
The M350 package is one of their mid-tier broadband packages, but still faster than what most households can get from other providers. In this quick guide, we’ll take a look at what the package is offering and help you figure out if it’s the right deal for you.
Here’s a quick summary at what you can expect to find with Virgin Media M350.
Price | £34 per month |
---|---|
Download speed | 362Mbps |
Upload speed | 36Mbps |
Broadband | Fibre to the premises (FTTP) |
Home phone | None, Evening & Weekends, Anytime |
Parental controls | Yes: WebSafe |
Router | Hub 3.0 |
Packages available | Broadband only, Broadband & phone, Broadband & TV |
Contract length | 18 months |
With Virgin Media, customers can choose any package between the entry-level 100Mbps package and up to the super-fast 1000Mbps. The M350 sits in the middle and is going to be a good fit for many households. You will have no trouble videoconferencing, streaming videos, movies and music or gaming.
Here’s a quick rundown of who should especially be looking to get the M350 broadband package:
M100 | M200 | M350 | M500 | Gig1 | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Average download speed | 108Mbps | 213Mbps | 362Mbps | 516Mbps | 1.1Gbps |
Average upload speed | 10Mbps | 20Mbps | 36Mbps | 36Mbps | 52Mbps |
Router | Hub 3.0 | Hub 3.0 | Hub 3.0 | Hub 3.0 | Hub 4 |
Contract length | 18 months | 18 months | 18 months | 18 months | 18 months |
Prices from | £26 per month | £30 per month | £34 per month | £38 per month | £60 per month |
As it most UK providers, you’ll get unlimited downloads and uploads with no quotas or data restrictions.
The service comes with the 6 years old SuperHub 3 router. It has many basic networking features, but doesn’t provide the latest generation of WiFi 6 technologies, still relying on the almost decade-old WiFi 5. That is still going to be fine for most of your devices for now, and the SuperHub 3 offers surprisingly good wifi coverage for even larger homes. However, if you’re looking to connect multiple devices, better wifi, or more advanced networking features, you may wish to consider buying and adding your own additional router.
Virgin Media’s broadband services come with Web Safe, which acts as both parental control (known as Child Safe) and protection against dangerous websites known to host malware (known as Virus Safe). Child Safe is customisable and can also block social media platforms or any other websites, or can be used to time-control access to certain websites and online services. It should be noted that, as Web Safe is a router feature, it only works on the broadband at home and it will not offer any protection when using Virgin Media WiFi, the somewhat confusingly named public wifi service.
Also included with Virgin Media’s broadband packages is a three months trial of Virgin Media Internet Security, formerly known as F-Secure SAFE. Usually, this costs £3 per month or £30 per year. The software is installed on your devices and scans for viruses and blocks access to dangerous or parental-restricted websites. The parental control can be set to work at the device-level rather than for the entire household, as is the case with Child Safe. The software can be installed on an unlimited number of devices running Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS.
Virgin Media WiFi is an on-the-go public wifi service that allows you to connect to over 3.5 million wifi hotspots around the UK, including cafes, bars, restaurants, airports and, notably, almost all London Underground stations and most Overground stations.
Compare Virgin broadband deals
All the Virgin Media broadband packages come highly recommended. Virgin Media provides good value for money and often far higher speeds than other competitors. That’s provided of course that you live in areas where Virgin Media services are available (over 50% of UK households). The speeds are great, and there are far fewer service interruptions than most of their FTTC-based competitors.
Virgin Media’s broadband can also be packaged with a landline, Virgin TV, and/or a mobile SIM that comes with a generous amount of data and takes advantage of O2’s network, including 5G support. You should also keep an eye on Virgin Media’s frequent discounts on their packages as sometimes a package including phone service might end up being cheaper than a broadband-only package, while, other times, they might offer shopping vouchers.