Novatel Wireless MiFi 4510L Review - The Best 4G LTE WiFi Hotspot?

Cellular Performance 

Because the underlying hardware inside the 4510L is almost exactly the same as the SCH-LC11, in practice the two should perform almost identically given the same cellular environment. Specificially, the two use the same MDM9600 which is a category 3 device capable of downstream throughput of up to 100 Mbps on a 20 MHz channel. We’ve already comprehensively covered Verizon’s 4G LTE network in another piece, which I’d encourage interested minds to check out for more detail. 

I tested the 4510L for a long time in Phoenix, AZ; San Diego and Los Angeles, CA; and Dallas, TX. I ran just north of 300 tests connected to 4G LTE and just shy of 100 connected to EVDO, both while moving and standing still in almost every kind of cellular RF environment. As usual, I’ve created histograms to show network performance on the 4510L for both 4G LTE and 3G EVDO.

Verizon 4G LTE Performance:

If  fact, the SCH-LC11 and 4510L do perform very similarly on the downstream side of things, showing a nice distribution with some occasional tests over 20 Mbps. On the upstream side, I found that the two CA markets I tested had substantially faster upstream throughput of over 10 Mbps at times. Latency is sub 100ms almost all the time, except for a few odd outliers.

I didn’t explore EVDO as much because we’ve shown Verizon Wireless 3G speeds a number of times, and the 4510L doesn’t deliver anything out of the ordinary here. On average, downstream throughput on EVDO isn’t very fast, usually between just shy of 2 Mbps and 500 Kbps. Upstream is usually south of 1 Mbps, and latency is usually above 100 ms.

Verizon 3G EVDO Performance:

EVDO is definitely showing its age in an era of LTE, and I find myself psychologically avoiding it at all costs after being spoiled by 4G LTE for any length of time. 

The cellular side of the 4510L is rock solid and completely stable, most of the instability reported online likely stems from the WLAN configuration. I never experienced any disconnects or problems that were periodic or recurring, save one errant powercycle. Then again, I didn’t have any such problems with the SCH-LC11 either, again probably because I changed the WLAN configuration to something that makes sense for me personally and seems much more stable. 

I also wanted to explore what other things work over 4G LTE that I didn’t get a chance to do before. Chief among those were how well an Xbox 360 would deal with the hotspot. I explored online gaming using Halo: Reach (which worked perfectly) and also Netflix.

Watching Netflix HD (720p30) content on the Xbox 360 over the 4510L is completely possible, though it’ll eat bandwidth like no other. With the 2 GB plan and a 3.6 Mbps 720p HD Netflix stream, for example, the MiFi can blow through the month’s data in an hour and a half. It does work, it’ll just be expensive. I burned through over 16 GB in one day using Netflix.