With the development of LTE technology, LTE networks are evolving from basic to advanced, or LTE advanced Pro. To support the high-level LTE networks, many manufacturers are presenting their new LTE-A products to accomplishing the data transmission. Huawei, as the top telecom equipment supplier, had recently released the latest new LTE mobile hotspot E5788, the model number is E5788u-96a. The other Chinese competitor ZTE also has its own LTE advanced mobile hotspots named ZTE UFi MF980. You may ask what the difference between Huawei E5788 and ZTE MF980 is. And you want to select one between the two mobile routers, which one is better. In this article, you will find the answers.
Appearance
ZTE MF980 is earlier released than Huawei E5788. But the shape of the two LTE gadgets looks very similar. They are both in cuboids shape, but very thin. The Huawei E5788 has a 2.44-inch color touchscreen, where the user can easily set up the router on the screen. The screen of ZTE MF980 is 1.44 inch TFT screen, and the user can’t do settings on the screen. The Huawei E5788 screen is at the left part of the front while the ZTE MF980 has the screen in the middle.
The USB interface of ZTE MF980 is in Micro USB format while the Huawei E5788 using the USB 2.0 Type-C Interface. The MF980 has two connectors for external antennas while Huawei E5788 has no external antenna connector, which feature is a great disadvantage for the LTE Advanced Pro mobile hotspot. They both use SIM in Micro SIM size.
The batteries of both the two LTE mobile routers are non-removable. We think this feature is also not good comparing with another LTE-A pro mobile router Netgear Nighthawk M1, which has large battery capacity and could be removed for changing to spare battery.
As we know, the Huawei E5788 has many colors such as gold, black, blue etc. And the ZTE MF980 also has white, black colors which could be chosen for the customer’s preference. It’s good.
Specs
As the LTE advanced mobile hotspots, they both support high wireless download speed. ZTE MF980 supports LTE category 9 which could achieve download speed up to 450Mbps and upload speed to 50mbps while Huawei E5788 could support LTE Cat16 and could achieve download speed to 1Gigabit per second & upload speed more than 100mbps. They are both with WLAN standard on 802.11b/g/n/ac dual band (2.4Ghz & 5Ghz) and support maximum up to 32 wireless users. ZTE MF980 is with 2 x 2 MIMO technology while Huawei E5788 has 4 x 4 MIMO feature.
Below you will see the details for the Huawei E5788 Specs and ZTE MF980 Specs:
| Model | Huawei E5788u-96a | ZTE MF980 Ufi |
| Product type | LTE Mobile Hotspot | LTE Mobile Hotspot |
| Category | LTE Cat.16 | LTE Cat.9 |
| Chipset | Qualcomm MDM9250 | Qualcomm Cortex-A7 1.2GHz |
| Data rates | DL 1Gbps/UL 100Mbps | DL 450Mbps/UL 50Mbps |
| Supported 4G LTE frequency bands | * FDD-LTE: Band 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/19/20/28 * TDD-LTE: Band 38/40/41/42 |
* FDD-LTE: B1/B3/B5(26)/B7/B8/B20/B28/B32 * TDD-LTE: B40(or B38 or B41) |
| WiFi | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band 2.4GHz & 5GHz | 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band 2.4GHz & 5GHz |
| Max support users | 32 users | 32 users |
| MIMO | 4 X 4 MIMO | 2 x 2 MIMO |
| Connector for external antenna | No connector | Two, TS-9 jacks |
| App management | Huawei Hilink APP | ZTELINK APP |
| SIM type | Micro SIM | Micro SIM |
| Battery | 3000mAh | 2200mAh |
| Dimensions | 129 x 65 x 13.5mm | 122 * 65 * 10.6mm |
| Other features | 3CC+256QAM | |
| Price | 499.00USD | 259.00USD |
From the above, it’s no doubt that Huawei E5788 is more advanced than ZTE MF980 technically. However, the Huawei E5788 doesn’t have the connector for external antenna, which may not be a good news for the users who are located at the areas of weak signal. With the advanced features, Huawei E5788 price is much higher than the ZTE MF980. So if you just need a decent LTE pocket WiFi with high speed, ZTE MF980 is comparably budget one for most users. But we believe the price of Huawei E5788 would be down when 5G devices coming out.