The Best Mobile Hotspots for 2022

Most modern smartphones have a hotspot mode, but cellular modems and Wi-Fi hotspots have historically been your best and most flexible option if you have a lot of devices that need web access.

Hotspots can connect more than just laptops to the web. They also work with a tablet, a camera, and pretty much any other Wi-Fi-enabled device. They support more devices at one time than your phone’s hotspot mode, don’t drain your phone’s battery, and can hook up with the better antennas from your phone. Your company might even cover its service plan.

With that in mind, here’s what you need to know to pick the right service and hardware, along with the top-rated hotspots we’ve tested.

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More About Our Picks

Inseego 5G MiFi M2000 (T-Mobile)

Best T-Mobile Hotspot

Bottom Line:

T-Mobile’s first 5G hotspot delivers incredible speeds with an affordable $50/month 100GB service plan.

Pros

• Full 4G and 5G speeds
• Wi-Fi 6 support
• Touchscreen interface
• Affordable 100GB service plan

Cons

• No external antenna ports

Nighthawk LTE Mobile Hotspot Router (AT&T)

Best AT&T Hotspot

Bottom Line:

The Nighthawk LTE shows solid 4G speeds on AT&T, although it can’t access the carrier’s 5G network.

Pros

• Fastest hotspot hardware available.
• Excellent access controls.
• Long battery life.

Jetpack MiFi 8800L (Verizon)

Best Verizon 4G Hotspot

Bottom Line:

Since Verizon’s 5G coverage is so limited, this 4G hotspot makes a reliable and affordable business partner.

Pros

• Fastest 4G LTE technologies.
• Long battery life.
• Easy-to-use touch-screen UI.

Netgear Nighthawk M5 (Unlocked)

Best Unlocked Hotspot

Bottom Line:

It isn’t perfect, but the Netgear Nighthawk M5 is by far the most powerful and flexible 5G mobile hotspot currently available in the US.

Pros

• Works on all three major US carriers
• First C-Band hotspot available in the US
• Solid management options

Cons

• No mmWave support
• Middling battery life
• So-so Wi-Fi range

Verizon Orbic Speed 5G UW Mobile Hotspot

Best Verizon 5G Hotspot

Bottom Line:

Despite relying on a last-gen modem, Verizon’s Orbic Speed 5G UW hotspot can get up to 30 devices online via the carrier’s latest mid-band 5G network.

Pros

• Only hotspot that works with Verizon’s latest 5G
• Clear, simple on-screen interface
• Ethernet port for network output

Cons

• No external antenna ports
• Big and heavy
• Battery life is short on fastest 5G

Best Low-Cost Prepaid Hotspot

Bottom Line:

The ZTE ZMax Connect hotspot works with a wide range of low-cost and prepaid carriers, but it doesn’t take the best advantage of AT&T’s or T-Mobile’s 4G networks.

Pros

• External antenna ports
• Unlocked, works with any AT&T or T-Mobile based carrier

Cons

• Poor LTE speeds in testing

The Best Mobile Hotspot Plans

Hotspots are available from all three nationwide carriers, as well as several virtual operators that use the larger carriers’ networks.

Along with the three major carriers, you can get hotspots from Boost (T-Mobile), Cricket (AT&T), H2O (AT&T), Karma (T-Mobile), Metro (T-Mobile), Net10 (Verizon), and Simple Mobile (T-Mobile), along with other minor players.

Jetpack MiFi 8800L
(Credit: Zlata Ivelva)

Hotspot plans change all the time. On AT&T and Verizon, your best bet is to add your hotspot line to your existing carrier’s phone plan, as a separate line. That gets you the most data for your dollar. If you add a hotspot onto an “unlimited” phone plan, you get up to 50GB of high-speed data with Verizon, up to 40GB of data with AT&T, and 40GB with T-Mobile. After that, the carriers deprioritize your data or throttle it unpredictably. (T-Mobile’s Magenta Max plan says it has truly unlimited data, but it isn’t designed for use on dedicated hotspot devices and so you may get cut off unexpectedly.) You can find more details on the carriers’ constantly changing hotspot plans at RVMobileInternet.com(Opens in a new window).

What Is 5G?

Hotspots Can’t Replace Home Internet

Hotspot plans aren’t designed for primary home use. They cost much more per byte than a home DSL or cable setup.

The median US home broadband subscriber uses more than 355GB of data per month(Opens in a new window), mostly because of video streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix. All of those Zoom calls for work and school are likely to eat up a data cap quickly, as well. So, if your needs don’t involve video or music streaming, a wireless hotspot may be a viable alternative for your home. But if they do, you are going to quickly run up against those data bucket limits.

There is such a thing as wireless home internet, however, and it’s differently from hotspots. It relies on larger, less portable routers that generally stay in one location. Recent wireless-internet plans are more likely to have truly unlimited data than hotspot plans. AT&T(Opens in a new window), T-Mobile, and Verizon(Opens in a new window) all sell wireless home internet in various parts of the country, along with a wide range of smaller, local wireless internet service providers (WISPs).

So, who’s using hotspots, for now? Before COVID-19, it was road warriors—business people who need reliable connections on the go that support multiple devices and don’t drain their phones’ batteries. Now, food trucks and other outdoor-dwelling small businesses use hotspots to light up their POS systems and get their Seamless orders. Vacation home and RV owners might also use hotspots for their roaming, part-time homesteads. And folks who can’t get the carriers’ dedicated wireless internet plans may still find they fall back on hotspots. Now that road warriors are out and about again, these devices are more important than ever.

Inseego 5G MiFi M2000
(Credit: Sascha Segan)

The Best Hotspot Hardware

The three big carriers have been frantically upgrading their networks recently, and in many cases, network capabilities have now outstripped the quality of older hotspots running on them. That means recent phones will get better speeds than older hotspots do.

Quality 5G hotspots such as the Verizon Orbic Speed 5G UW Mobile Hotspot and Netgear M5 use the Qualcomm X55 modem. That’s two generations behind the latest phones, but it’s the best you can get right now.

The best 4G hotspots, including the MiFi 8000 and MiFi 8800L, use the Qualcomm X20 or X24 modems. Other hotspots out there, including everything the virtual carriers currently sell, use three- or four-year-old modems that have lower speeds and worse signal strength than the best new phones. That means you may get 5Mbps to 10Mbps whereas your phone gets 25Mbps to 30Mbps, for instance.

Many high-quality hotspots have TS9 external antenna ports to help you improve your signal using inexpensive antennas you can purchase online. TS9 is a standard, and these antennas cost much less than a cellular signal booster does. Unfortunately, 5G hotspots that support millimeter-wave generally don’t have external antenna ports.

Make sure your hotspot supports 5GHz Wi-Fi, which is typically faster and less congested than 2.4GHz Wi-Fi. Some hotspots also support guest networks and access controls, such as MAC filtering and time-based access controls. Those features are on pretty much all dedicated routers nowadays, but you can’t take them for granted on mobile hotspots.

You can use hotspots with big batteries as power banks to charge your phone or hotspots with microSD card slots as tiny servers to share media over Wi-Fi. That said, we’ve never found a real use for that media server functionality.

We really like the displays on the front of many current hotspots. They often report the strength of your signal, your hotspot’s name, data usage statistics, and the network password right on the device.

Netgear Nighthawk M5
(Credit: Sascha Segan)

To Tether or Not to Tether?

If you decide to make the jump, hotspots and cellular modems aren’t the only options. Smartphones have a Wi-Fi hotspot mode, and if you have a 5G phone, you might get better performance in that mode than you would with a 4G hotspot. That said, phones support fewer devices at once, have fewer network management features, and can run out of battery quite quickly.

To help narrow down your decision, head over to our explainer on the tethering vs. dedicated hotspot debate. And check out our tips on how to turn your phone into a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Beware: Overseas Surfing Will Cost You

US hotspots generally allow you to roam in Canada and Mexico, although rates may be high—make sure to check with your carrier in advance to find out.

One of the only good unlocked hotspots with international bands available in the US is the Netgear M5, but it’s quite expensive. If you plan to buy a local SIM to take advantage of much lower local data rates, you may want to buy a cheap Android phone abroad and use it as a hotspot, instead.

Finally, before you commit to a hotspot or a plan, make sure to check out our most recent hotspot reviews.