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How much data does hayu use?

Concerned that your Kardashians fix is going to chew up your mobile or broadband data? Here are the numbers you need to keep on watching hayu without breaking the bank.

Alex Kidman
Alex Kidman

Updated

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Streaming service hayu serves up a rich feast of the finest reality TV for fans of the genre, whether your particular guilty pleasure has a Kardashian surname, happens to be a Real Housewife or you enjoy peering over million dollar homes all over the world.

However, like any other streaming service, watching TV through hayu can chew through data. That means it's smart to know how much you're using, especially if you binge on a mobile device where data costs can be higher.

How much data does hayu use?

That very much depends on the speed of your connection and the video quality that you select within the hayu app. The service advises that if you're watching over a Wi-Fi connection, it will detect the quality of your connection and automatically adjust to give you the best quality video you can get, up to HD resolution. As such, if you're watching on your home Wi-Fi connection, your data usage is likely to be higher than on mobile devices.

On mobile devices, hayu uses adaptive streaming appropriate to the configuration of your device and data streaming ability, with the suggestion (but not the absolute guarantee) that data usage may be lower. If you're concerned about visual quality you can opt within the hayu app to watch in HD only, at the cost of yet more data.

It's also tricky because hayu doesn't specifically advise its streaming data usage figures, but it does note its downloaded data usage figures, which sit at 300MB for an SD episode and 700MB for an HD episode.

Given that its download episodes are the same content as its streamed episodes, that's a good ballpark to work from. It's feasible that hayu may be further optimising its streams below these levels, but if you figure on an episode costing you either 300MB or 700MB of data, you're unlikely to get data bill shock as a result.

How can I minimize my hayu mobile data usage?

The easiest way to minimize the usage of pricey mobile data when using hayu would be to download the episodes you want to watch in advance from your home fixed-line broadband connection. Most home broadband connections have much higher data quotas, and in many cases unlimited data quotas, so you're only limited by the storage capacity of your chosen device.

If you pre-load an episode to watch on your device, you don't even need an active Internet connection to watch your favourite reality TV programming, and you won't incur additional data charges, because the content will already be present on your device. You are limited to 25 episodes downloaded at a time, but that should be enough to sate your reality TV desires, at least for a while.

Ready to get started with hayu? Begin your free trial by clicking the link below

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