Review: Verizon 4G LTE MiFi – lightning in your pocket

Novatel has another mobile hotspot that supports 4G technology – the Verizon LTE MiFi. It’s much like the Sprint version we saw a few weeks ago with a few noticeable differences. For starters – and probably the most important thing here – it is much faster. The difference is really like night and day. If you’re looking for the fastest mobile hotspot on the market today, look no further than the Verizon 4G LTE MiFi. It has its drawbacks, but for the most part, it doesn’t get any better than this.

Hardware

The Verizon LTE MiFi looks almost exactly like its counterpart for Sprint in terms of form factor, shape, size and even weight. The Sprint version has a gunmetal bezel and a brushed face, whereas the Verizon MiFi has a chrome-colored bezel and a glossy, reflective face. It’s a bit of a fingerprint magnet and tends to get smudgy, but the thing is a workhorse — it’s meant to deliver fast 4G speeds, not sit there and look pretty. (Although sitting pretty couldn’t hurt; I found myself wiping it down occasionally.)
The face is emblazoned with the Verizon logo, and it’s clearly marked as a 4G LTE device. The power button sits just beneath an e-ink display, much like the one on the WiMax version. It shows signal strength, battery life and how many devices are connected to the mobile hotspot.
Unlike the WiMax version, however, the Verizon LTE MiFi does not support a microSD card for memory storage. It’s a small caveat, but this thing is primarily used for data connection, rather than data storage, anyway.
With the Verizon 4G LTE MiFi, you can connect up to 5 devices wirelessly at the same time. Thankfully, unlikely some broadband dongles, there is no software installation necessary for this device.

Speed and Battery Life

Now we’re getting to the meat of it. This thing is plenty fast, and in many cases, it performed a bit better than my home broadband connection – a paltry 15Mbps down and 0.75Mbps up courtesy of Time Warner Cable (whose 50/5Mbps plan will be hitting my home soon). With five speed tests performed in Manhattan and northern Brooklyn in New York City, the Verizon 4G LTE MiFi averaged 11Mbps down and 2.4Mbps up. It hit a peak of 17.2Mbps down in one instance, and the fastest upload I was able to get on it was 4.5Mbps. Definitely not too shabby when you realize you’re not tied down to your home Wi-Fi, or the coffee shop you’re in doesn’t have any Internet connectivity.
Now, that was all on 4G, mind you. 3G speeds, which is what this thing will default to when you’re not in an LTE area, were very sad. For some reason, I couldn’t get more than 0.75Mbps down and 0.2Mbps up. It was quite terrible, and when the indicator turned pink – letting me know that my device was currently feeding off of Verizon’s EV-DO network – my heart would sink. When the light indicator was blue, however, I was cruising along at peppy broadband speeds.
Battery life is rated for 5 hours of use, and the device will automatically shut off with a 30-minute timer (by default) to conserve life if not in use. In my experience, with full coverage and on a full charge, I was averaging about 3 hours of use before I needed to charge the MiFi. This was with some web browsing, e-mail, music streaming for about thirty minutes and a small handful of YouTube videos.

Value

Given the competition, the 4G LTE MiFi is actually a great deal at just $99.99 after mail-in-rebate with a two-year contract. For $50 a month, you get 5GB of data, which ought to get you through the month if you’re not using this thing as a home broadband replacement, something that I would not recommend. And it’s not just the competition’s pricing, either, that makes this a good value — it’s the speeds you’re getting when you’re in an LTE-covered area. If you’re in the market for a mobile hotspot, the only question you should be asking yourself is, “Do I live and/or work in an area covered by Verizon’s LTE network?” If not, you probably will be covered soon – Verizon is planning on a complete overlay of its CDMA network by the end of 2013, so be sure to check the carrier’s coverage map before buying this little guy. Otherwise, enjoy!