The Simify Japan Unlimited eSIM can be good value, though speeds can be quite variable.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Easy to set up | ”Unlimited” might not mean what you think it does |
| Speedy and responsive customer service | Data routed through external countries, which may not suit all users |
| Decent speeds for the most part… | But it does seem to depend on which network you land on |
Score: 3.5/5
Ethical disclaimer: The Simify Global eSIM used in this review was provided to me by Simify at no cost to me.
This is in NO way a sponsored review, and honestly, it’s mostly been driven by my own curiosity around network speeds. Yes, I sometimes really am that dull.
My experiences, opinions and statements are 100% my own without any input from Simify at all, but I do strongly feel that ethical disclosure upfront is important.
For more on ART’s Ethics position, see here.
A couple of months ago, I wrote up my experiences using and testing a Simify Global eSIM across multiple worldwide destinations.
It’s a fair enough product if you are hitting up multiple countries as part of a trip, but for many of us, especially in these tighter economic times, the need for data connectivity in a single location is more likely.
My experiences there in the UK and Australia were quite mixed, but generally decent, but the speeds I saw with the global eSIM and some limited testing in Japan were… less impressive, to put it mildly.
I’m a curious type, and I do love travelling to Japan; I’ve done so countless times over the past 20 years – if you want to know who to blame, her name is Lesley, and she knows why — and with a trip planned where I was taking a relative around their first trip to Japan, I figured I could also do a little testing across a multitude of sites; my own limited time and travel plans earlier in the year meant that I really only tested in Tokyo at a handful of locations.
Is the Simify Japan Unlimited eSIM good value?
In order to test a Japan eSIM, one must first travel to Japan. This takes some time, but at least the view is nice.
Pricing on eSIMs can vary over time, and in this case also over the length of time you want an “unlimited” Japan eSIM for.
Simify does also sell a straight data package variant with varying time and data inclusions, but for the unlimited package you specify the number of days you’re buying and it calculates the price accordingly.
At the time of writing, if you wanted a 7-day package that would run you $37.80 AUD (or $5.40/day), while a 14 day package would run $71AUD (or $5.07/day). If you’re really stretching out the limits of a Japanese tourist visa (at the time of writing), a 180 day package costs $395, but that does bring the daily price down to just $2.19/day.
Is that good value?
Here’s where I’m going to very much prove this isn’t paid copy, because there’s no way that Simify is going like what I’m going to say next.
Shop around. Compare provider pricing, and do your own homework, because the pages on some comparison sites may not be 100% up to date or indeed include your “best” deal.
Seriously, shop around because there’s a lot of competition in this space, spot deals are not uncommon and (as I’ll get into in a moment) an “unlimited” plan might not be your best deal depending on your precise usage patterns.
At the time of writing, Simify’s pricing is broadly in line with the market norms across other providers, but again that can vary depending on seasonal sales and your precise needs.
Is the Simify Japan Unlimited eSIM fast?
The Shinkansen is fast. The Simify Japan Unlimited eSIM? Well…
Having discussed pricing, let’s get into the real world speeds.
Setup of the Simify Japan Unlimited eSIM was no different this time to the prior Global eSIM, and honestly, most providers do handle this much the same way, via QR codes to get your eSIM-capable Android or iPhone device up and running.
I have no complaints there, given I installed the Japan Unlimited eSIM while walking off the plane at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport and had workable signal before I even reached the baggage carousel.
Not that I’m taking photos of that, you understand, because I don’t fancy getting arrested… but I digress.
Having worked my way through the mechanics of getting through immigration and into Japan proper, it was time to start testing.
Literally, it was time to start testing, because I ran my first speed test of the Simify Japan Unlimited eSIM on the Monorail platform at Haneda station while waiting briefly for a train.
Here’s the monorail platform in question for those curious about my precise position… but you should probably stop stalking me quite that closely!
Here’s how the first test ran:
This was decent but not super-fast, and it did reveal one detail about how Simify manages the data usage on this particular eSIM product, because data gets routed through Japanese mobile networks, because of course it has to, but then via Singapore and what appear to be Singtel’s servers.
This kind of routing is very common for eSIM providers, and depending on your usage and privacy needs it does raise some issues around privacy and the jurisdiction of where data may be flowing to and from.
Recent reports point to a number of providers routing through Chinese telecom providers even when outside China, which does raise the spectre of who exactly is watching your data and usage patterns.
Singapore isn’t quite in the same concern category as China might be, but this isn’t exactly made apparent upfront to Simify customers per se. To be clear, this isn’t unusual; most eSIM providers don’t make this kind of detail transparent to their customers. While it’s not the entire silver bullet it’s often made out to be, using a trustworthy VPN in these cases might be a good step for you, especially for more data-sensitive uses.
Still, it was quick enough, and I headed to my hotel that night and didn’t particularly bother with hooking into that hotel’s Wi-Fi system, because hey, I had an “unlimited” eSIM and it didn’t feel like it was worth it for a single night.
I actually fell asleep with streaming video playing, albeit the catalogue of programs made available through the Singaporean arm of Amazon Prime Video, again because of that routing issue.
A problem occurs… but it’s not the one I thought it was
Godzilla is a persistent problem for Tokyo. My problem was… a little smaller.
I woke the next morning, grabbed some breakfast from a Combini (because I’m still on a freelancer budget, nothing fancy for me, sadly) and almost immediately hit a problem. Here’s an example of the speeds I got that day from the Simify Japan Unlimited eSIM compared to that first test on the night I arrived.
That’s quite the drop, and while you might think that it’s due to me being on a train and therefore in a big metal tube full of other phone users, the reality through the day was similar and sometimes worse, with a lot of tests simply failing to complete at all.
I thought at first that this might be as a result of the way that a lot of “Unlimited” data plans work outside of Australia… which needs just a little explanation.
Here in Australia if a telco calls a data product “unlimited” then it absolutely has to be just that; a product with no data or speed limits. That’s how the word “unlimited” works, right?
One of the benefits of being a veteran tech journo is that I can remember quite well when this happened, and the telcos involved in testing the waters this way – and the ACCC’s response to it.
Internationally, however, it’s not at all uncommon for an “unlimited” plan to have a limited quota of full-speed data and then “unlimited” slow-speed data for a period (typically within the same day) once that quota is exhausted.
Simify’s FAQ on this point notes that:
“For unlimited eSIMs, high data use in a day may slow your speeds until the next morning.This policy resets daily, so speeds will be restored the following morning if you are affected.”
I cursed the fact that I’d fallen asleep with streaming video playing, figuring that I’d blown past an acceptable usage limit policy while dozing, and that I’d just have to put up with sub-par speeds until the next day.
I gritted my teeth, thanked prior me for already having downloaded maps for some of the more obscure parts of Tokyo I was exploring that day and got on with my travels for the day.
I wonder what they sell? Time for some cultural inspiration, I think.
The next day dawned and… my speeds were still lousy.
Simify has support channels online, so I jumped onto those to see if there was anything I could do, because as far as I could see, while I might have overused data accidentally over one morning (while asleep), that shouldn’t carry on beyond the next day as per their policy documents.
I was very impressed with the support I got, even over what was a seriously slow connection at the time. Simify support staff checked the account and stated that in fact I hadn’t exceeded the usage policy at all.
I’d already run through the basics of resetting the connection and rebooting the device several times, so their suggestion was to try to switch networks.
At the time, the default connection was to the KDDI network, and while I couldn’t get the NTT Docomo network to play nice, I could register on the SoftBank network.
The results were quite immediate in terms of speed:
That’s a lot better, and a whole lot more usable for a wide array of apps, services and web sites in 2026. Is it as fast as 5G can go? No, it isn’t, but I’m in a city of over 33 million people with test data also routing through a secondary country. It certainly isn’t bad… as long as it was going to last.
Is the Simify Japan Unlimited eSIM fast across a lot of the popular tourist destinations in Japan?
To test this out, I travelled and tested quite extensively around a number of destinations popular with tourists.
Because I was showing a family member around Japan, I hit a lot of the more popular tourist destinations that I wouldn’t typically hit myself; partly because some tourists that flock to such places are just utterly abhorrent, and also because in many cases these were sites I’d already visited myself.
Mind you, I’ll never pass up the opportunity to visit Hiroshima or Osaka.
I would have tested here, but honestly, I was kind of distracted… playing pinball.
Here’s my full suite of test results over a multitude of days, noting where I can where other factors may affect network speeds.
I should note that like most airports, once you’re inside the big metal tube that is a plane, you’re generally lucky to get any signal at all, though I’m leaving that result in there mostly because many people do like to send out a few last “I’m on the plane” messages to friends and family before the plane takes off.
Getting any kind of signal from here is not typical at all.
Simify Japan Unlimited eSIM: Alex’s Verdict
I always leave Hiroshima happy — and generally a little heavier. Okonomimura is a large part of why.
The overall average speeds I hit in my testing aren’t the peak of 5G performance, but you’re honestly not likely to hit that with any travel eSIM provider anywhere on the planet.
An average of just over 40Mbps down is certainly going to be adequate for most tourist needs, at least at a single user level. There’s no obvious prohibition on using a device as a hotspot beyond taking the risks with whatever the actual data limit might be, though sharing 40Mbps down might get tricky if you have a lot of data-hungry fellow travellers with you.
I still fall back on my central premise here; it’s worth shopping around at a price level first for this kind of service, while also keeping an eye on which networks a given eSIM provider operates on.
It’s quite useful really that Simify allows for some level of network swapping, even though it doesn’t publicise this, but I’d still advocate for checking your options and prices before you travel.
About the Author
