Thinking about buying a LTE Hotspot / MiFi - Read This First

[oosillyoo]

First off, not all Hotspots are a MiFi. MiFi is a brand of mobile Hotspot made by Novatel. Calling every hotspot or even wifi tethering off of a phone a MiFi is like calling every phone that can run APPs an iPhone or every small car in the world a Beetle.

I have done testing with both available LTE Mobile Hotspots from Verizon and want to share my results to help with your purchase decision. Both of these devices get rave reviews on most tech websites and have been given awards at CES and other other electronic shows. I believe these reviews and awards were based on testing in "controlled" areas or paper presentations from their manufacturers. I have to believe none of these people would write what they have about these devices if they were normal everyday users.

Novatel MiFi 4510L

Pros-

Download and Upload speeds are fast when on 4G

Great external display to show signal strength, battery level, number of devices connected

4 - 5 Hours of battery power

Solid looking design

VPN Passthrough

Many custom client configuration changes through text file, some are currently not working

Cons-

Unable to roam from 4G to 3G and back to 4G without having to be rebooted

Thicker than older MiFi and Samsung hotspot

Unable to pass inbound UDP traffic to clients

3G seems slower than older MiFi

Unresponsive technical support

What scenario would make me pick this device?

There are two scenarios for which I would pick this one over the Samsung hotspot.

1. This device seems to work well as a stationary hotspot in a well saturated 4G area. If there is any possibility you might roam from 4G to 3G and back to 4G you can lock the device to 4G(LTE) only.

2. This device will work if you put it in CDMA Auto (3G) mode. The device will not look for a 4G signal even if in a 4G area. This might be great if you are buying new but as an upgrade from the MiFi 2200 this is unacceptable. This is some question on if this device will ever function properly with the Verizon network.

Samsung SCH-LC11

Pros-

Download and Upload speeds are fast when on 4G

Thinner than Novatel MiFi

Design is minimal

Extended battery available from Samsung

Able to roam between 4G and 3G with no problems

Cons-

2.5 - 3.5 Hours of battery power

3G seems slower than older MiFi

4G/3G Radio lockups sometimes over a period of time

Unable to passthrough VPN traffic

Unable to pass inbound UDP traffic to clients

Somewhat responsive technical support (they have released new firmware but almost 2 months ago and there are still issues)

What scenario would make me pick this device?

If you are going to be mobile with your device and you might roam from 4G to 3G and back to 4G. This devices seems to roam fine between network types without a hitch. When I had the radio lockup over the last two days was over a period where the hotspot was sitting on my desk at home in a well covered 4G area.

Which device would I pick based on my situation and what I have seen so far?

Right now I would pick the Samsung over the Novatel. I feel the Samsung is fixable through firmware and will be fixed over time. Novatel seems to have dropped the ball on their device and will tarnish the MiFi brand if they don't do something soon.

I will post a followup after some more testing with both devices.

[oosillyoo]

I've been very busy with family and work commitments lately so I haven't been able to post to this thread for a while. I've upgraded both hotspots to the newest firmware for each and will be testing them over the next few days. I've been using the Samsung firmware for a few couple of days and things seem much better than before so far. I will report back in a few days with my findings.

I have grown fond of the Samsung hotspot's size but miss the display on the Novatel.