T-Mobile Prepaid

Reviewers say T-Mobile Prepaid (formerly known as T-Mobile To Go) offers an excellent combination of voice quality, phone options and flexible-rate prepaid wireless plans. The cheapest option is 30 minutes for $10. A $25 purchase buys you 130 minutes, which don't expire for 90 days -- making this a good option if you don't plan to use your phone very often. There are also packages for $50 and $100. (The $100 package gives you 1,000 minutes, good for an entire year. See our review of T-Mobile's Prepaid Annual Plan.) If you replenish your account before your minutes expire, the unused minutes roll over. You can either do this online or at one of 90,000 retail locations nationwide. T-Mobile also makes it easy to get a prepaid smartphone: if you already have an unlocked GSM phone, you can insert T-Mobile's $7 prepaid SIM card and use your phone on T-Mobile's prepaid network. T-Mobile also sells a prepaid Sidekick smartphone with unlimited text and data for $1 per day plus 15 cents per minute for calls, or a prepaid BlackBerry Curve bundle with unlimited talk, text and data for $80 per month. However, T-Mobile's unlimited monthly plans cost more than Boost Mobile Monthly Unlimited (*Est. $50 per month), which reviews say is the best choice for heavy cell phone users.

Prepaid wireless cell phone services such as T-Mobile Prepaid can be judged most effectively by customer surveys in which users are polled about network coverage, circuit overloads, dropped calls and customer service. ConsumerReports.org, J.D. Power and Associates and PCMag.com all run annual polls, ranking T-Mobile against other prepaid providers. PrepaidReviews.com and Amazon.com both post comments directly from users, but the reviews posted at PrepaidReviews.com are the most up-to-date.