Sierra Elevate 4G Mobile Hotspot for AT&T Reviewed
Performance Testing the Elevate Mobile Hotspot
The Elevate is unique in that it’s the fist hotspot to come with “Dual 4G” support. This means that it supports the AT&T HSPA+ 4G network, which are presently widely available in North America. The Elevate will support the forthcoming AT&T LTE network that will become available in a large number of major metro areas in the USA during 2012 to 2013.
Since the AT&T LTE is only available (as of Nov 2011) in Chicago, Atlanta, San Antonio, Houston and Dallas, mobilehotspot.com could only test the HSPA+ performance and usability in our (New York) area. If your curious about the AT&T 4G LTE performance, based on our research AT&T LTE is pulling down record breaking speeds in some of it’s installed cities. For example, PC Magazine reports download speeds in excess of 24 Mbps and upload speeds up to 11 Mbps in Houston, Texas.
These extremely fast 4G Speeds will likely slow down to some extent as the AT&T LTE network becomes more densely populated, but in general you should expect LTE download rates of about 5 to 12Mbps and uploads of 3 to 10 Mbps, which is similar to Verizon’s 4G LTE network. Verizon LTE has been up and running in over 100 cities since December 2010. As you might imagine, AT&T is probably pretty anxious to catch up to Verizon in terms of LTE deployments.
Our testing was conducted using the AT&T HSPA+ 4G network in the metro New York area, including Long Island, midtown Manhattan and Hoboken. Speed tests were measured using the Speedtest.net web based performance test. Testing was performed with one connected device, an HP Elitebook 8440P laptop connected over WiFi “N”. The laptop and hotspot were located 5 feet apart for all tests. Over the course of 15 tests in 7 locations, we discarded to low and high end values, and averaged the download, upload and network latency metrics.
Mobilehotspot.com test results for the Evevate Mobile Hotspot over HSPA+ 4G
Download: 3.93 Mps Upload: 1.33 Mbps Network Latency (ping): 68ms
Wi-Fi Performance and Radius
In an outdoor environment, with direct line-of-sight, the Elevate was able to extend outward to 107 feet before the Wi-Fi signal was undetectable. Signal strength diminished to 50% at a (outdoor) distance of 55 feet. During indoor testing, the Elevate was placed about 35 feet from the base test laptop and located 2 rooms adjacent, and one floor down. In this indoor environment, we pulled in a little less than 50% signal strength, but download speeds seemed to drop in a large proportion, going from 2.5 Mbps down to about 900Kbps.
The Elevate supports added external antennas and active signal boosters for the Wi-Fi and cellular radios that can dramatically boost signal range, strength, and quality. We will be doing a separate test of the Elevate with booster antennas in the near future.
Battery Duration of the Elevate Hotspot
The Elevate’s battery is rated to last 4 hours with continual use. In mobilehotspot.com testing, utilizing the LAPTOP battery test that simulates web browsing over Wi-Fi, we managed to get an extremely impressive 4 hours 41 minutes. This result was while connected to the slower 4G HSPA+ network, so the duration may be less when operating in LTE mode. Given the massive amount of onboard features (GPS, LCD Screen, MicroSD Card support) a battery life WELL over 4 hours is quite impressive.
The Elevate’s main competitors, the MiFi 4G and Samsung SCH-LC11 over Verizon LTE have a battery life of less than 4 hours. For users who want to extend the battery life to 8 hours or more, special custom fit replacement batteries are made for all the new 4G mobile hotspots. 3gstore.com is our favorite source for these extended batteries.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
The Sierra Wireless Elevate mobile hotspot is an extremely well engineered and thought-out mobile device. It’s apparent that Sierra really took time to incorporate user-beneficial features, like the data usage meter and dual external antenna ports. It’s not easy to design a high tech device that serves both simple novice users and heavy duty road warrior veterans equally, but the Elevate mobile hotspot appears to be one such device.
AT&T took a unique approach in making their new hotspot “future proof” – they build a device that is based on the network of tomorrow, but at the same time squeezes as much juice out of its current HSPA+ network as possible. AT&T has finally delivered a mobile hotspot that offer all the elements that we would hope to find: A huge number of built in features, a reasonably fast and widely available 4G network and the ability to evolve with the new LTE network as it becomes more widespread.
To summarize the advantages of the Elevate mobile hotspot:
- Lots of useful features: Superior LCD panel, GPS receiver, on board Micro-SD memory
- Fantastic LCD display panel that gives all sorts of info and feedback
- Dual external antenna ports for Wi-Fi and cellular radios
- Fair and equitable prices for incremental 4G data overage fees.
- Support for two types of 4G networks: HPSA+ (today) and LTE (tomorrow)
A look at the comparative disadvantages of the Elevate mobile hotspot:
- The AT&T LTE network only sparsely available as of 2011, no widespread roll out until Q2 2012
- Relatively slow 4G performance on the AT&T HSPA+ 4G network
- No lower priced/lower tier data plans under $50 per month
>> Click HERE to Purchase the AT&T Elevate Mobile Hotspot <<
