Summary
- Phone hotspots drop on calls, drain battery, and overheat-unreliable for steady use.
- Dedicated hotspots give better coverage, support many devices, eSIMs, and long battery life.
- Hotspots can be cheaper with data-only plans and act as reliable backups during outages or travel.
Your phone does have a feature for turning it into a mobile hotspot, but it doesn’t work great as a router, at least not in the long term and for regular use. When you’re traveling or when you need a steady connection for work, a smartphone doubling as a mobile hotspot won’t cut it.
They’re Actually Reliable
First, the phone hotspot connection will drop when you’re making or taking a call. If you’re in an important meeting, enrolling for your university courses, or any situation where you need a steady, reliable connection, don’t trust your phone’s hotspot.
A dedicated hotspot device fixes that. They’re just as portable as phones, free up your phone, have a long battery life, don’t overheat, and don’t slow down when a lot of devices are connected.
They even offer better coverage in areas with spotty connections, and you can connect as many as 32 devices at the same time. So a dedicated mobile hotspot is perfect for traveling groups or teamwork.
They Give Better Coverage
Your phone is locked to a single network, but a hotspot device isn’t tied to a provider. Wherever you go, you can figure out which provider offers the best coverage in that area, pop in a SIM card from that provider, and you’re online with the strongest, most reliable connection available.
What this does is effectively free you from your phone’s data and free you from public Wi-Fi (which is incredibly unsafe), while keeping you online at all times, everywhere.
You don’t even need to worry about carrying and hotswapping physical SIM cards because you can even get hotspot devices that support eSIMs. It’s even easier to switch between carriers because all it takes is a QR code scan, and the coverage area is basically every provider on the planet that supports an eSIM.
Share the Internet Without Sharing Your Phone
An active smartphone hotspot will drain the battery fast. Even when no devices are connected, just toggling it on constantly consumes power. Worse still, the more devices that connect to your phone, the faster it loses its battery. Besides, the phone will probably overheat quickly, and that messes with performance.
If you’re traveling, and you have two or three friends connected to your smartphone hotspot, the phone will be dead before you even realize it. Even if you plug it in, the phone will overheat, which is also bad for battery health.
Dedicated hotspots are perfect for that scenario. Usually, you can get at least 6 hours and as many as 24 hours of continuous use out of these devices. And one device can support at least 15 connections at the same time without running into bandwidth bottlenecks. Their connections are stable, the bandwidth stays even, and if you plug a hotspot device into a power bank, it can run (indefinitely) without overheating.
Another reason you might want to share the hotspot itself with someone. I mean a situation where you will have to physically hand over your phone to someone so they can take it with them in order to stay online. With a dedicated device, you don’t have to hand over your phone or its password. Instead, your phone stays on your phone, and you can just give the actual hotspot device to the other person.
They’re a Solid Backup
Even if you’re not thinking of a mobile hotspot device as a primary router, it can still serve as a pretty solid backup. If a storm knocks out power, or your home internet goes down for some reason, or if you’re traveling and don’t want to rely on hotel or airport Wi-Fi, a charged mobile hotspot device will be a lifesaver in those situations. It’s doubly true if you work from home or if you travel often.
The same goes for the coverage map. The best backup for areas with minimal or spotty coverage is a hotspot device with eSIM support. Some of these devices can connect to external omnidirectional (when you don’t know where the nearest tower is) or unidirectional antennas (for remote areas where you know the location of the nearest tower), which provide a stronger, more reliable connection.
Mobile Hotspots Might Be Cheaper
Smartphone plans usually bundle text, calls, and data together, but mobile hotspots only run on data-only plans. That’s why they’re cheaper. At least, if your hotspot usage is heavy, and you tether data to laptops and desktops, the extra cost of the device and plan will be more cost-effective in the long run.
Plus, your carrier might have caps on hotspot data allotment, and it might throttle your connection after you exceed a specific limit.
If you often travel or if you need a steady backup when your primary router goes down, you can’t beat a dedicated mobile hotspot. It frees up your phone, keeps its battery healthy, and sometimes it’s better for your wallet too. You can check out some of the best mobile hotspots available this year.