Unlike many other airports around the world, places selling SIM cards at US airports are not common. Some airport do have them, either via resellers or kiosks/vending machines, but even when they do exist they are generally relatively expensive. Doing something in advance is always a good option. (I can't speak for Vegas specifically - I'm normally in enough of a rush to get out of the airport zoo there that I've never even bothered looking to see what they have!)

Several good options have already been mentioned, but I'd also suggest looking at US Mobile. $12.50 for their "Unlimited Starter" for the first month on an eSIM and you're set. It's prepaid, so just cancel the auto-pay and/or delete your credit card using either their app or their website and you won't pay more than that.

Non US airport stores are not very helpful for esim activations. I couldn’t imagine airport locations being any better with esim activations.

I would purchase the esim before arriving in the US if buying from a US company since foreign credit cards have reportedly been declined.

I always buy mine in the lounge before I head to said country.

My experience with getting a SIM in the US is that in the stores they try to sell you a subscription and don't really understand you're a tourist. One thing the Americans are really good at is squeezing the last buck out of your pocket, so even the prepaid offers are kind of expensive and have some automatic renewal options active. On the positive side, when buying a local SIM is that it comes with a number and usually much more GB than the eSIM providers give.

Luckily my home subscription includes free roaming in the US these days. But if I would want to get a plan for the US I would use Airalo or similar. However not the Asian ones (i.e. 3HK) as with them data moves around the globe and the latency is noticeable.

I've just returned from a US trip and used a "Change" eSIM purchased through Airalo.

It was the first time I've used Airalo. I was impressed with the ease of installation and with the reliability and quality of data service. That said, on this trip I didn't travel outside of New York City, so this is a location-specific data point.

I actually have used my 3UK PAYGO SIM in the US fine. Since I am based in the US and they have a "fair use" policy, I can't use it all the time.

Mobile roaming in United States - Support - Three

Since he has an iPhone 14 which is eSIM only he has multiple options for US prepaid providers using the website to order the service.

Visible has a 15 day trial for esim iPhones which is an online only MVNO owned by Verizon. US providers have almost no restrictions on LTE iPhones but maintain an approved list for Android phones.

T-Mobile has (had?) a test drive option with an eSIM installation too. It might require an SSN or some other local information that would preclude a non-resident from getting the service.

Typical stumbling blocks for people not living in the US are a requirement to have a US billing address and/or payment method, as well as satisfying credit score requirements (which is indeed hard if you don't have an SSN/ITIN). So prepaid will probably be the only option.

T-Mobile's current page for a three-month free trial via eSIM links to the US stores for iOS/Android apps: https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/free-trial

No payment or credit required for the test drive. You have to sign up from a US IP address and you have to give a service address in the US but you don't have to live there--so use the airport wifi and congrats on the new home at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW.

The bigger hurdle is that the test drive app is only in the American App Store/Play Store, so you can't download it without switching your country. Apple requires you to add a payment method with a billing address in the 'new' country and Google makes it such a pain it's easier just to create a new account (though once you've created the alt account, you can access both countries' stores by switching).

It's so easy to buy a month of prepaid for $15 or less now that it's probably not worth the hassle for most visitors.

I had a strange experience recently with an Airalo eSim I bought for Portugal. The eSim made Google come up in Polish. Also when I went to some sites like hotels.com the prices came up in Polish currency. I could change the language for Google but only to Portuguese which wasn’t much use to me. I think I could have changed language to English if I had signed in to Google but I didn’t do that. Also it is hard to navigate the menus in Google when they are in Polish or Portuguese. I have used Airalo many times, not had this problem. Problem went away as soon as I turned off the eSim. Also I noticed a change in the installation process for that eSim and for one I just bought for Spain. I use the QR code to install. Hit enter twice. The eSim installs but then tries to initiate. After quite a long wait it says unable to initiate. When I arrived in Portugal and turned the eSim on it initiated itself quickly and worked normally.

Many travel eSIM are actually from a different country than the one you've bought them for - which is why you need to enable roaming for them to work. It sounds like your eSIM is actually for a Polish provider, roaming in Portugal. When a SIM is roaming, all data is backhauled to the country that the SIM is from before being dropped on the internet - so from the perspective of anyone doing geolocation on the resulting IP address, you were in Poland (there are exceptions where this backhaul doesn't happen, but they are rare).

Google is unfortunately shocking at handling this if you're not willing to login. You can change the language, but it frequently reverts. If you're using a web browser you can try going to https://www.google.com/en which used to work perfectly in years gone by, but now days seem to be a bit hit-n-miss.

This isn't necessarily a SIM issue. I needed to access a Google form while in Europe, and used the hotel's Wi-Fi. Google translated the form to the local language for me. I had one browser tab open to Google Translate and another tab open with the form and did a lot of copy-and-paste to find out what information the form wanted. (Apparently Google Translate is not one-to-one and onto. I did confirm with the form creator that the form was in English, but some of the translations were pigeon English at best.)

I am sure it was an eSim issue. The problem started when I turned on the eSim, occurred consistently while the eSim was on and went away when the eSim was turned off. The eSim was bought from Airalo but it was originally from Orange and as the poster above said, it was probably from Poland. It was very annoying but I have used multiple Airalo eSIMs without this issue, and have bought another for my trip next week, so hopefully it is a rare problem.

Any good offers for Australia?