ZTE Falcon Z917 (T-Mobile) - Review 2022

What practiced is a hotspot in today's globe? In an era when virtually everyone has a hotspot mode on their phone, it'southward worth looking at why you would want a dedicated hotspot at all. Simply if you lot're an RVer or a frequent traveler, you can get bigger tethering buckets per dollar on a dedicated hotspot plan than yous can become on your phone plan. The ZTE Falcon Z-917 ($79.99) is the simplest 4G LTE hotspot I've seen in a long time. It's Internet access stripped downwards to its bare essentials. It's also your gateway to the best deal for mobile broadband out there right now, and T-Mobile'south coverage is much amend than it used to be.

Plans and Coverage
T-Mobile gives the nigh bang for your buck of any hotspot provider. Information technology offers 6GB of data for $35, 10GB for $50, 18GB for $80, or 22GB for $95. That concluding bucket is enough to serve every bit a home ISP, if y'all're not big on watching video. To compare, Water Commodities, which runs on AT&T'south network, charges $70 for 7GB; Verizon charges $60 for 5GB; and AT&T charges $l for 5GB or $75 for 8GB.

ZTE Falcon Z-917 (T-Mobile)

In that location are two cheaper deals on Dart'south network (through MVNOs), but they both have major trade-offs. Karma'south Neverstop program offers 15GB for $50, but it's capped to 5Mbps and only allows three devices online. Freedompop offers 500MB for free, but prices don't calibration well to higher volumes and I've been barraged with complaints about the company'due south customer service and reliability.

Up until recently, we wouldn't have recommended T-Mobile as a hotspot provider because its coverage was the weakest of the four major carriers, but the past year has really changed that, as we saw in our testing for the Fastest Mobile Networks. The company's buildout of 700Mhz LTE has dramatically improved coverage. It nonetheless isn't at Verizon levels, simply information technology's a lot meliorate than information technology used to be.

For example, this summer I rode the Usa-64 corridor through eastern North Carolina and encountered huge swathes of no T-Mobile coverage; ditto for the northwest suburbs of New York City. Now, T-Mobile says information technology has strong coverage forth Us-64, although information technology still has expressionless spots to fill in other parts of North Carolina, and it has outdoor coverage north of New York City, although not necessarily indoor coverage. So check the coverage map, but don't make assumptions based on what you may have heard a year or two ago—things accept changed.

Performance
At that place's non a lot new about the Z-917 hotspot itself. Information technology's a pocket-size plastic box that measures 4.1 by two.4 by 0.6 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.23 ounces. It's basically a less expensive version of the old Z915; T-Mobile dropped the cost from $109 to $79 in exchange for getting rid of the front console display. Instead, now you just have four slightly cryptic lights that tell y'all if you have battery and signal, and if the Wi-Fi network is on. I really like having a front console display on hotspots, because they tell you lot what the password is (and thus let you use really strange passwords). They also give you more granular betoken and battery information than the Z-917's lights do.

ZTE Falcon Z-917 (T-Mobile)

The Z-917 has a removable 2,000mAh battery, a micro SIM bill of fare slot, and a micro USB port that's used both for charging and connecting to PCs. I connected the hotspot as a wired modem to a Mac and a Windows 10 PC and information technology connected instantly. There'south no external antenna jack, which will be frustrating for rural users who want to improve coverage.

Inside, the Z-917 has the same Qualcomm MDM9225 chipset every bit the Z915. The 9225 is an LTE Category 4 chipset with maximum speeds of 150Mbps downwards; that's two generations before the latest standard, but it's even so decently fast. With only LTE bands 2/four/12, it'southward designed to merely work on T-Mobile'due south LTE network, not on AT&T's or any foreign networks. It supports 802.11n with WPS pairing, but not 802.11ac or the 5GHz band.

I compared the Z-917's performance with a T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy Note 5, which has very skilful RF performance and a technically faster, LTE Category 9 modem. I checked 4 locations around the PCMag function in Manhattan, New York, and the fastest location got about 19Mbps down, which doesn't push the maximum of either modem.

That said, the hotspot got slightly better reception, speeds, and range than the Note five did—although not enough to make a major difference in daily utilise. In a low-bespeak surface area, the hotspot performed a tiny -2dBm meliorate on signal. In another location, from a base of operations of about 9Mbps downwardly, the hotspot attenuated to 5.5Mbps at 25 feet and 3Mbps at fifty feet, while the Note five dropped to 4.75Mbps at 25 feet and one.67Mbps at l feet.

Like all hotspots of this kind, the Z-917 has a Web-based management console that lets you lot change its relatively basic router settings. You can gear up MAC filtering, port forwarding, port filtering, and UPnP; y'all tin also run across exactly how much data you've used and practice some minor signal troubleshooting.

Bombardment life, at 6 hours and 4 minutes of constant LTE streaming, is fine if not extraordinary.

Conclusions

There are ameliorate hotspots out in that location. The Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE AC791L has better coverage, amend battery life, external antenna ports, and an informative display. It'll accuse your smartphone, and information technology works globally. H2o sells a version of the AT&T Unite, which also has a handy touch screen. Simply hotspots are ane area where we're even so stuck with the ones each carrier has decided to sell, and nobody beats T-Mobile's dollars per gig. The ZTE Falcon Z-917 is a boring hotspot, but it gets the chore done. If you desire to use a lot of information or but don't want the data on your own personal telephone nib, this is a very affordable manner to get at that place. Just check the coverage map offset.