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

Battery Life

One of the most important parts of the equation is how battery life compares both to the old MiFi 2200 product, the SCH-LC11, and the 4510L. Earlier I presented a table which included the actual battery sizes, note that the original 2200’s built in battery wasn’t all that large by today’s new standards, at 4.25 Whr. The 4510L comes with a 5.6 Whr battery which is very comparable in size to the one included by default with the SCH-LC11. 

Our test consists of four tabs of our standard page loading suite, two of which include flash content. Each loads through a few dozen pages every ten or so seconds. In addition, we also stream a 128 kbps MP3 audio stream to keep everything active. It’s a rigorous test that simulates considerable (but not unreasonable) use. 

The larger battery gives both newer 4G LTE hotspots an advantage over the old MiFi 2200, which used to get considerably warm as well. Unfortunately the 4510L comes in slightly behind the SCH-LC11, but the difference ends up being around 15 minutes rather than something substantial. This makes sense considering both have essentially the same reference design at their core and similar sized batteries. No doubt having more granular control over WLAN Tx power would help improve battery life, which at this point still seems excessive considering the device will likely always be within arms reach. 

Conclusions and Final Thoughts

As of right now, both portable hotspots seem like the best way to use Verizon’s 4G LTE network if you’re interested in a data only connection. They’re still more reliable and less finicky than the USB modems, which upon last visit were still in need of more stable drivers. What’s more, you aren’t limited to using just one device with that route. 

I guess that brings me to my current qualm with all of the 4G LTE hotspots - they’re both still limited to a rather arbitrary five users. If you go back, the concession always was that you could get unlimited data, but just a limited number of clients so you couldn’t completely abuse the connection. With unlimited data now a thing of the past on Verizon (which it always was for datacard plans on 4G LTE), it seems like the maximum client cap should go away - after all, you’re limited to a certain fixed amount of monthly bandwidth. The data plan pricing also seems exorbitant at this point. If it seems backwards that the price of data is going up at the same time as air interfaces are getting an order of magnitude faster, that’s probably because it is. 

Even on the highest plan, that one day of 16 GB of streaming and testing would have cost $140 - $80 for the first 10 GB (the entire month’s bandwidth), then $60 for the 6 GB of overage. Couple that with the 4510L’s data counter that doesn’t survive reboots, and it isn’t hard to see things getting expensive quickly. 

All said and done, I’m still looking for the perfect 4G LTE hotspot. The features that will win it for me are pretty basic - 5 GHz WLAN, device-as-modem, and some better web config pages that allow one to adjust WLAN power and better keep track of bandwidth. The 4510L isn’t very different from the SCH-LC11, and at this point it makes more sense to go for whichever is more affordable. That isn’t to say that the 4510L isn’t a good product, it just isn’t anything different from the already great SCH-LC11.