Pros & Cons
The Ellipsis Jetpack MHS815L ($149.99) is a cute, rugged little hotspot for Verizon's network. But it's the weakest of the three hotspots currently available from the carrier. It has short battery life and lacks 5GHz wireless, which is critical for good speeds in crowded Wi-Fi areas. For these reasons we recommend the AC791L or 6620L Jetpack hotspots instead.
Design and Service Plans
The 815L is the smallest, lightest hotspot available on Verizon right now. It's made by Franklin Wireless, which is also behind Sprint's R850. It measures 3.1 by 2.2 by 0.5 inches (HWD) and weighs 2.9 ounces. It's made of
The button and small display work together to deliver all the basic info you
The MHS815L supports up to eight connected devices, fewer than the 10 or 15 you'll see with most other hotspots. You can connect to it with a USB cable and use it as a USB modem as well.
Verizon's hotspot service plans have always been the most expensive of the major carriers. It charges $60 for 5GB, while AT&T charges $50 for 5GB, Sprint charges $50 for 6GB, and both Boost and T-Mobile offer 10GB for $50. I'm less critical of Verizon than of AT&T here because Verizon has always had a premium-quality network to go with its premium prices (see our Fastest Mobile Networks test results for speeds where you live and travel), but any difference between the price of this and a more expensive hotspot will quickly be eradicated by the high monthly fees you're paying.
Performance
Our test lab in midtown Manhattan doesn't get particularly good speeds on any of the four major wireless networks. But we saw roughly the same reception and speeds of 10-20Mbps on Verizon's XLTE network on the MHS815L as on the 6620L hotspot. That doesn't tell the full story, though.
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The MHS815L is missing 5GHz wireless. That won't matter if you're out in the woods, but in a crowded urban environment, there's a lot of clutter on the 2.4GHz channels and a 5GHz option (which Verizon's other two hotspots have) can really speed things up. At 75 feet, which is the range limit for both the Ellipsis and the 6620L, both hotspots slowed to a crawl on 2.4GHz in testing, while the 6620L on 5GHz still pulled in 5-8Mbps of download speed.
Ellipsis is a Verizon brand for 4G LTE products that don't include 3G. That isn't actually much of a loss, as Verizon's 3G network is slow and its 4G coverage is excellent. A bigger problem is that the 815L's modem doesn't support carrier aggregation, which Verizon brands as LTE Advanced. In good network conditions (unlike those in our office), that will allow the AC791 and 6620L hotspots to achieve much higher speeds than the 815L does.
The MHS815L also has no international roaming capabilities beyond North America. Verizon's other two hotspots have international 3G and they're unlocked, so you have a lot of flexibility in choosing your provider on trips to Europe and Asia.
And battery life on the hotspot's small 2,100mAh cell is disappointing, with 4 hours, 33 minutes of video streaming time. The other hotspots offer at least double the usage time.
Comparisons and Conclusions
Verizon currently has three hotspots on offer: the MHS815L, the 6620L, and the AC791L. Both of the latter options have 5GHz Wi-Fi, global roaming, carrier aggregation, and larger batteries. Both also have bigger, more flexible color displays that let you change options without logging into a Web page. And that makes either a better choice than the Ellipsis Jetpack MHS815L. The price difference also isn't huge: While the MHS815L retails for $149.99, the other two models go for $199.99. We think the better battery life, better Wi-Fi, and other improvements are well worth the difference in price.
Final Thoughts
