Tenda 4G180 — 4G LTE-Advanced Pocket Mobile Wi-Fi 6 Hotspot Router

Buying it, and when not to

The 4G180 is a 4G LTE-Advanced pocket mobile Wi-Fi 6 hotspot router. It takes a SIM, it runs on its own battery, and it fits in a pocket. That is the whole proposition: internet that goes where the person goes.

It sells to people who move - a sales team, an engineer doing site surveys, a consultant working out of client offices, a trader who needs data at the market and at home on the same subscription. It is also the right thing to hand a customer as a stopgap while their fixed line is being installed or repaired, which turns an awkward two-week wait into a billable service. Because it carries a Wi-Fi 6 radio, a handful of modern laptops and phones share it better than older pocket units managed.

It is the wrong product for a fixed premises. A pocket unit's battery, small antennas and single SIM are not designed to be the permanent connection for a shop or a flat - for that, use the 4G06 or 4G08, which are mains-powered desktop SIM routers with proper radios and Ethernet ports. And if a reliable fixed line is available at the address, a SIM router of any kind is a compromise on both price per gigabyte and consistency; quote the fixed service first and keep the pocket unit as the backup.