4G. A number and letter thrown around way too much these days but none-the-less when it is thrown around it means 1 thing: speed. Does the LC11 live up to the 4G speed claims? How’s the battery? Let’s dive in and answer all of these questions and more!
Unboxing
Let’s be honest, unboxing a new device is something that never gets old. Here’s a quick unboxing video to show what’s included.
Hardware
If you have used/seen a MiFi you have basically seen this device, very similar form factor. The device itself is roughly the size of a half deck of playing cards. It has 3 lights: 4G, 3G and WiFi. The device really needs a battery level indicator as it’s a pain to have to log into the admin interface just to see how much battery is left or wait for the power button to indicate you are almost out of juice.
This is what you get for 2 years of contract. Oh and 20+Mbps of speed.
Software
Just how customizable is it? The LC11 has some very basic settings for you to peruse. It does support VPN and some very basic packet filtering and port forwarding. If you need it to do something specific I suggest you check the manual out online before you dorp the coin.
The pretty barebones control panel.
Speed
So let’s get down to it, if you are buying this you are buying it for the speed, does it live up to the hype? Well we decided to test all the hotspot options we could to give you a comparison for just how fast VZW’s LTE is at least in Los Angeles.
There's a new speed champion in town.
Sprint Overdrive 4G
We’ve been using the Overdrive 4G for over a year now and been pretty happy with the speeds and the fact you get UNLIMITED internet when you are in a 4G area. All the tests below were conducted from the same location connecting via WiFi. Each test was run 7 times to get a good aggregate total to base our findings.
With full bars on Sprint’s WiMax we saw a maximum speed of 5.76 mbps down, a minimum of 4.1mbps down and an average was 5.13mbps. For upstream we saw a maximum of .97mbps a minimum of .93mbps and and average of .95mbps. The maximum ping we saw was 140ms, a minimum of 111ms and an average of 124ms.
AT&T
Although we didn’t have access to a “4G” AT&T hot spot, the fact is short of using an HSPA+ phone as a hot spot (and right now there are none on AT&T that are updated to work properly) so we settled for testing with both an AT&T iPhone in hotspot mode and an AT&T MiFi device. With full bars on both devices we saw a maximum speed of 1.44 mbps down, a minimum of .57mbps down, and an average of .98mbps down. For upstream we saw a maximum of 1.19mbps, a minimum of .37mbps and an average of .85mbps. The maximum ping we saw was 232ms, the minimum was 194, and the average was 203ms.
Verizon LTE
So what you are reading this whole article for right? How’d it fair? Well let’s just say looks like I am canceling my Overdrive. the speeds are almost unbelievable. With full bars (according to the admin interface) we saw a maximum speed of 23.11 Mbps down, a minimum of 21Mbps down, and an average of 22.71Mbps down. For upstream we saw a maximum of 5.22Mbps, a minimum of 4.76Mbps and an average of 4.89Mbps. The maximum ping we saw was 48ms, the minimum was 33, and the average was 40ms. This is absolutely a replacement for your home internet connection assuming you don’t have access to fiber or some regional point to point wireless network. The ONLY caveat I can even come up with is the data caps. At $50 for 5GB you would hit that cap way too fast if you used it day in and day out for a month. If VZW had a 50GB – 100GB cap I wouldn’t hesitate to cancel my cable modem and use this, the speeds are just that good. Sprint’s main advantage is that it’s unlimited 4G data so while it doesn’t match Verizon’s in speed it does let you not worry about overages so it boils down to a couple things:
- Usage scenario: Do you consistently use more than 5GB of data? If so Sprint still may be a better option
- Are speeds the most important thing? If so there no questioning that Verizon’s LTE is roughly 4x faster than Sprint’s WiMax
- Coverage: all of this doesn’t matter unless you live or travel to a 4G city. Make sure you check out Both Verizon’s and Sprint’s coverage maps to best evaluate who will have the coverage you need.
The landscape is changing fast and by this time next year AT&T will have deployed it’s LTE network and Sprint may have switched to LTE or perhaps even WiMax 2. It is indeed an exciting time in the wireless space! Want to pick one up for cheap? Head to Amazon here to get one for only 19.99!
The Ups
- The incredible speeds. Seriously fast!
- Great form factor easy to pocket or toss in a gear bag
The Mehs
- No ubiquitous 4G coverage… yet
The Downs
- Lousy 5GB data cap
- Pricing 5Gb for $50 10GB for $80