Verizon Jetpack 4620L MIFI (9275)
For two years I
have been packing a Sprint 3G MIFI around with me. Sometimes it worked great. Most of the time it was useless or very
slow. This lead me to drop the Spring
account and then just use my iPhone as a hotspot. The Verizon Jetpack will support up to
ten devices at 4G or LTE speeds. The
initial cost was around $60 (Internet special) with a monthly cost of around
$50 for 5GB.
My service for my
iPhone is AT&T. While AT&T
cellular data service is improving data services is spotty like the Spring MIFI
but not quite as bad. My iPhone 4S
sports 4G or so they claim. While it
shows 4G it often cannot even get data service at all. All carriers when they are overwhelmed will
prioritize voice over data and either throttle back your data or cut the data
feed altogether. Don’t believe me? Go to any large gathering of people like a
concert or sporting event and try to use data services.
Using my iPhone 4S
as a hotspot is fine where I have great service and I don’t connect more than
one device to the iPhone. Two devices
will bring it to it’s knees even with great service. So,
when I read about the Verizon Jetpack MIFI which is capable of not only 4G but
LTE I was very interested.
Many folks like me
have been confused about 4G and LTE. I
actually thought that LTE was a watered down version of 4G. Not true.
Let’s just say that LTE is what you want to see on your device not
4G. In comparing speeds in the real
world on my devices 4G will run from 5Mbps to 7Mbps up and down at it’s best on
a good day.
LTE, on the other
hand, will peg the needle on any of your speed test tools with my tool topping
out this week in Boston at around 55Mbps up and 60Mbps down. No kidding.
I have now tested LTE in Salt Lake City, Dallas, Jackson MS, Portland
OR, and Boston. In all cases the 4G was
good but LTE was great where it worked.
Not all cities had LTE yet. I am
sure that they are all moving to LTE quickly.
I learned about LTE
by activating LTE on my new iPad which supports 4G/LTE. When 4G shows it will get 5/6 Mbps. When LTE shows it will peg the speed tests
anywhere from 38Mbps to 60Mbps. From
trying to read various standards on LTE it appears that the standard will
support up to 73Mbps. This is enough to
run a small business.
Even when the
service falls back to 4G it still appears to be stronger than AT&T’s
4G. The device is smaller than the new
Spring 4G device and comes with a wall adapter.
I have also found I can power the device from any USB port. Note, you will not charge from a USB only run
the device which is just fine. Battery
run time with average use appears to be around 5 hours.
So, bottom
line. Is the Verizon Jetpack 4620L MIFI
worth the money? Absolutely the best
Internet connection device I have ever owned.
