I love Visible, but I wish I knew one thing before I joined

A little over a month ago, I made a big change in my cell phone world; after 10 years of being a T-Mobile customer, I jumped ship and joined Visible. Not entirely sure what to expect with such a dramatic transition, I’ve been very pleased with Visible so far. The sign-up process was easy, my service has been great, and I’m really happy with the price I’m paying.

As well as things have gone, there has been one hiccup that I wasn’t expecting. It’s far from a dealbreaker, but it’s something I didn’t realize until after my first month with Visible — and I wish someone had told me about it sooner.

Visible has three plans you can choose from: Visible, Visible Plus, and Visible Plus Pro. The last two plans are Visible’s more premium options, offering features like faster 5G speeds, better hotspot performance, and more extensive international coverage. The plan you choose also dictates the kind of video streaming you can do on Visible’s network.

If you sign up for the basic Visible plan, video streaming is capped at just 480p SD. However, if you have Visible Plus or Visible Plus Pro, video streaming quality increases to 1080p HD or 4K UHD, respectively. Simple enough, right? You’d think so, but that’s not all there is to it.

While digging through the Visible app one day, near the end of my first month of service, I stumbled across something interesting. On the Account page under the Get the most out of Visible section, you can swipe through to see your various benefits, such as any Global Passes you have and your smartwatch service. At the end of the list is an option for HD Video.

I assumed this would just be an informational page about the 4K UHD max streaming quality that comes with my Visible Plus Pro plan, but lo and behold, there was more to it — specifically, an option to enable said streaming quality.

By default, Visible plans with HD/UHD video streaming quality apparently don’t have this feature enabled by default. Instead, you have to manually enable it yourself … in a sub-menu buried deep in the Visible app … one that the company never tells you about.

I started digging around online to see if I had somehow turned this off by mistake when setting up my account, but that’s not what happened. As it turns out, a few users in the r/Visible subreddit have also reported needing to enable HD streaming for their accounts.

It seems like something Visible added fairly recently (within the last six months or so), and as thankful as I was to find that Reddit thread, I really wish Visible had informed me about this itself. One of the main reasons I chose the Visible Plus Pro plan is for its 4K UHD video streaming, and to have gone a month without that because I didn’t tap a toggle Visible never told me about is just silly.

In Visible’s defense, it isn’t the first carrier or MVNO to pull something like this. T-Mobile had a similar setting for my old ONE Plus plan, and Verizon and AT&T do this, too. It’s annoying and unnecessary, but from the carriers’ perspective, that’s why they do it. They’re still providing you with the high-quality video streaming you signed up for; they just aren’t turning it on for you, and they’re banking on the fact that you’ll forget to do it or won’t know how — thus saving them network resources and money in the process.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that Visible also does this (it is owned by Verizon, after all), but it feels at odds with Visible’s otherwise consumer-friendly approach to almost everything else it does. I’d expect an annoying hoop like this from one of the big carriers, but part of me thought Visible would be better. But hey, maybe that’s what its owner, Verizon, is banking on. If so, you got me.

Going a month without the best video streaming quality is ultimately just a small bump in the road, and once I realized what I had to do, it took all of five seconds to activate my plan’s HD video capabilities. No harm, no foul.

Still, I would have liked to have known about this sooner. If you’re thinking about joining Visible or have recently signed up, at least I can give you the heads up I wish I had gotten.