Image Gallery: Sprint Overdrive 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot

I recently purchased a Verizon Wireless MiFi and then saw that Sprint rolled out a 4G WiMAX network in my local area. I said I wanted a MiFi-like device to access this network and Sprint now has such a device available with their Overdrive device from Sierra Wireless. Sprint also lowered the price to $59.99 per month and if the 4G connection is not available you bounce back to a strong 3G connection. Observed download speeds were easily twice as fast as that seen on the Verizon Wireless MiFi so this looks to be the king of high speed wireless connectivity.

After removing the paper sleeve you will find a glossy black plastic box that matches the look and feel of the Overdrive in a larger form factor.

The Overdrive is a glossy black device with corners that have angles to take away from sharp edges. There is a single power button on the front with Sprint logo.

The back easily slides off to reveal a battery so you can carry extras and keep connected for hours at a time.

There is a volume switch to toggle notification sounds.

microUSB is used to charge and connect the Overdrive while a microSD card slot supports up to 16GB microSD cards to share with devices.

The Overdrive is a square block compared to the rectangular slimmer MiFi.

As you can see the Overdrive is about twice as thick as the MiFi.

Here you can see both the thickness and height of the two devices.

Both are quite small and pocketable devices that you can carry with you anywhere.

A small color display is used to show status of the Overdrive. The number in the parenthesis is the security connection code for the Overdrive.

You can connect your Sprint Overdrive to your PC or Mac and manage it via a webpage interface.

There are a large number of settings available on the Overdrive and I was quite impressed by how customizable it actually was. Every setting you can imagine for a wireless router can be found on the Overdrive.

One of the status pages shows the signal quality details of the Overdrive.

This was the fastest 4G connection speed I personally observed in an area where the signal was reported with a 40% strength level.

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