Tag: ZTE MF980 UFi

Huawei E5788 VS ZTE MF980

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.

Vodafone R230 4G LTE Cat9 Hotspot Presented

With the development of the LTE network, Vodafone offers a new 4G/LTE mobile WLAN hotspot R230. The R230 pocket router supports speeds of up to 450 MBit/s in the downlink and up to 50 MBit/s in the uplink (LTE category 9) and is manufactured by the Chinese manufacturer ZTE. For a fast connection to wireless and wired devices, there are dual-band Wi-Fi and USB 3.0. With the unlocked Vodafone R230, users can use it with any SIM cards in Europe and take it for global travel.

Vodafone R230 — Successor to R226

The Vodafone R230 is the successor to the Vodafone R226 LTE hotspot in the product range. Improved mainly the maximum downlink speed in the LTE network, further improvements are minimal or barely noticeable.

 

Vodafone R230: Fast LTE modem

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X12 LTE chipset in the Vodafone R230 hotspot can technically reach up to 450 MBit/s in the downlink and up to 50 MBit/s in the uplink, but Vodafone Germany only advertises the device with a maximum download speed of 375 MBit/s. The following LTE frequency ranges are supported: 800 MHz, 1400 MHz, 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and 2600 MHz.

 

Of course, the Vodafone R230 router can also support UMTS/3G and GSM/2G networks, in the UMTS network, up to 42.2 MBit/s in the downlink and up to 5.76 MBit/s in the uplink are reachable. In the UMTS network, the bands are supported by 850, 900, 1900 and 2100 MHz, in the GSM network the bands can be used at 850, 900, 1800 and 1900MHz.

Vodafone R230: WLAN and other technology

On the front of Vodafone R230, you will find a small color display, on which the most important information about the Internet connection and device status are displayed. These include, for example: reception status, mobile phone technology, WLAN status and used data volume. On the side of the R230 MiFi, in addition to the USB port for charging the battery, there is also the slot for the SIM card as well as two connections for an external antenna. On the other hand, there is a power button and a function button. The battery has a capacity of about 2,200 mAh and is not changeable, according to Vodafone, the R230 provides an operating time of about 10 hours.

 

The WLAN works both on the 2.4 GHz frequency band and in the 5 GHz frequency range. The WLAN standards 802.11b/g/n/ac are supported, ie the fast LTE Internet connection should also arrive at full power at a connected terminal. As an alternative to WLAN, a USB 3.0 port can be used. The approximately 105 gram is very light, which makes it very easy to take in hand or pocket.

 

Vodafone R230 Availability

The Vodafone R230 LTE hotspot comes pre-installed with Vodafone software and is offered by Vodafone in conjunction with the DataGo data plans. It’s a customized hotspot from the ZTE MF980 4g mobile hotspot. We can provide the unlocked Vodafone R230 without the data plan. You can get unlocked R230 and use it with any network providers’ SIM cards in Europe. The unlocked Vodafone R230 would soon be available on www.4gltemall.com. We will keep updating the news. If you prefer the pure R230 without Vodafone customization, you can choose the factory model ZTE MF980 UFi, which has same specifications and functions.

ZTE UFi MF980 VS UFi MF970

With the upgrade of LTE network to LTE Advanced or Advanced PRO, the vendors are also trying to upgrade their wireless gadgets so as to meet the market demand. As we introduced the ZTE MF970 UFi last year, ZTE presented a new 4G LTE Router ZTE UFi MF980 as a successor. In this article, we will see what has been improved on the new ZTE MF980 UFi comparing to ZTE MF970.

Appearance

As we showed the images, ZTE MF970 UFi is in white color and the screen is on the middle of front with “ZTE” and “UFi” listed at each side of the 1.44 inch screen. Following this design, ZTE MF980 UFi also has a 1.44 inch screen and the same two words ZTE and UFi, but MF980 is in black color. But ZTE MF980 is thinner than MF970 and has long body.

ZTE MF980 has power and func button on the top edge, which is same to ZTE MF970, but the SIM card slot is also with the two buttons in MF970, while the SIM card slot is at the opposite edge in ZTE MF980. The two connectors for external antenna for ZTE MF980 are located together while the MF970 has two connectors located at each side of the USB 2.0 port, where ZTE UFi MF980 has USB3.0 port. On the back, UFi MF980 has ZTE logo on while the MF970 shows some information about certificate for CE, WiFi and RoHS.

Technical Specifications

As we introduced before, the ZTE UFi MF970 is a LTE Category 6 mobile router which could support peak download speed to 300mbps and upload speed to 50mbps. In real product, it may be the Vodafone R226 or R226Z model. As the upgraded model for LTE advanced network, ZTE MF980 UFi supports LTE category 9 technologies and peak download speed to 450Mbps and upload speed to 50Mbps. They both support the common LTE FDD & TDD networks with 3G UMTS and 2G GSM networks backward. On this point, there is no doubt that ZTE MF980 UFi is more powerful than ZTE MF970 if working on LTE-A networks.

ZTE UFi MF970 could support up 14 wireless terminals to access internet when working with a valid SIM card, while the new MF980 UFi can support almost double of the qty to 32 WiFi-enabled devices. They both provide the WLAN standard to latest 802.11 ac with dual-band.

 

Battery

Like Huawei E5786 4G Mobile Hotspot, the ZTE MF970 and MF980 are both with the built-in battery, which can’t be removed for change. One question that we don’t understand is that the newer model ZTE UFi MF980 has battery capacity to 2200mAh when the predecessor MF970 has larger battery to 2300mAh. Many of the current 4G mobile router with same level are with 3000mAh battery or even more. What frustrating is the battery can’t be removed for backup battery. So if you would keep them working for long time, you’d better to take a bank power with large capacity. On this point, the latest Huawei E5885Ls-93a seems more powerful with LTE-A support and built-in large battery.

Summary

There is no doubt that the ZTE MF980 UFi is powerful on technical features, especially working on LTE advanced Pro networks for multiple users with group activities. But the decent battery would limit its long term performance. ZTE MF970 UFi is also good if you don’t quite need the LTE advanced pro network and just need a budget mobile pocket router. After reviewing the two ZTE LTE UFi, which one will you buy?

 

 

Difference between ZTE UFi MF980 and Netgear Aircard 810s

Since more and more network providers deployed LTE advanced networks, many vendors over the world are providing new LTE gadgets to support the latest new LTE networks. The US vendor Netgear Wireless and Chinese vendor ZTE are two of them. Netgear presents the Aircard 810s with support of LTE Category 11 and ZTE provides the UFi MF980 with support of LTE Category 9. In this article, we will check what the difference is between the two mobile 4G Routers.

Appearance

The Netgear Aircard 810s has a 2.44 inch LCD touchscreen, user can do simple settings like operating a smartphone. However, the ZTE MF980 UFi’s 1.44 inch TFT screen is not a touchscreen, so it can be operated by the power and func button, web interface or by ZTELink APP. Of course, the Aircard 810s could also be operated from web interface and Netgear aircard APP. The ZTE UFi MF980 is very thinner than Netgear Aircard 810s, so the feel in hand is better.

They both have two connectors for external LTE antennas and the connector type is TS-9. The connectors in Aircard 810s are located at the two sides of the USB ports with small caps, while the connectors of ZTE MF980 are together. And they both use Micro SIM.

Battery

The battery of Aircard 810s is removable and the SIM card slot is in the battery slot. The battery capacity is 2930mAh, which could support 11 hours for continuous use. The battery of ZTE MF980 UFi is built-in and can’t be removed. And its battery is 2200mAh, which is enough for daily use, but can’t be changed to backup battery. But they both don’t have slot for Micro SD card.

Technical Specifications

With Qualcomm Snapdragon X12 chipset and the support of LTE Category 11, Netgear Aircard 810s could support peak download speed to 600mbps. ZTE UFi MF980 could achieve download speed to 450mbps and upload speed to 50Mbps with the support of LTE Category 9.

 

Netgear Aircard 810s could connect up to 15 wireless users simultaneously while ZTE UFi MF980 could support up to 32 wireless users to access internet, on this point, ZTE UFi MF980 seems more powerful than Aircard 810s. Regarding the WLAN feature, they could support latest Wi-Fi 802.11ac with 2 X 2 MIMO on dual band(2.4GHz and 5GHz).

Other feature

The Netgear Aircard 810s has an extra function called Jump Boost, which makes it could work like a mobile power bank to charge other electric devices such as smartphone, Pads etc..ZTE MF980 UFi doesn’t have this function per the official description.

Conclusion

Comparing the features and specifications of the Netgear Aircard 810s and ZTE UFi MF980, it’s not doubt that Aircard 810s is better than ZTE MF980. With higher configuration, Netgear Aircard 810s can provide better performance for internet connection, but price would be higher. ZTE MF980 UFi is also good for most users with budget price. But the built-in battery may not be a good feature if you want it to work for long time.

 

Actually, there are many more 4G Routers for LTE advanced networks, if you want to check more devices, welcome to check on www.4gltemall.com .