HTC's 5G Hub for Sprint ($600) is a mobile hotspot from the future.
It's really a home or office modem for people who intend to use Sprint's 5G network as their primary internet connection.
That's a good thing, as we need more broadband competition in the US.
But Sprint's network and service plans aren't quite there yet.
I think they will be next year, but not as of this writing.
So for now, a more conventional hotspot, like the new MiFi 8000, looks like a better bet.
Design and Features
The HTC Hub looks like Amazon's Echo Show or Google's Nest Hub.: a compact, handsome smart display.
With a 5-inch screen and gray fabric surround, the Hub looks attractive and professional.
It measures 5.08 by 3.94 by 1.70 inches (HWD) and weighs 12 ounces, which is much larger than your average hotspot.
It's perfect for a desk, but not great for a pocket.
It's powered 7,660mAh battery and comes with a big, chunky power adapter to charge it with.
On the back, there are both a USB-C port and a full-scale Ethernet port that can even attach to external routers.
Interestingly, the Hub is running a full copy of Android 9.0 with all Google services onboard.
While it starts up to a status screen showing how it's doing as a hotspot, you can swipe right and run any arbitrary Android app.
A lot of weird things about the Hub, like a lot of weird things about other 5G devices we're seeing right now, are dictated by the weird hardware requirements around early 5G equipment.
Specifically, there's no working 5G "thin modem" that would enable 5G in small, light devices.
Instead, every 5G Qualcomm X50 modem must be paired with a costly, top-of-the-line, 2.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset.
Even the 5G Moto Mod that Verizon sells has the independent power of a flagship Android smartphone.
HTC decided to lean into the idea.
The Hub works like a small Android tablet, with a 5-inch, 1,280-by-720 screen, no cameras, and no traditional phone dialer.
You can run video services on the Hub and cast them to Chromecasts or compatible TVs.
You can run arbitrary music services and use the Hub as a speaker.
Or you can install Pocketshare and use the Hub as a NAS.
It has 32GB of onboard storage, 10GB of which is taken up by system files, but you can add a microSD card for additional storage.
Apps think the Hub is a phone, so sometimes they rotate into portrait mode, which is awkward.
But the kinds of apps you're most likely to use, like music services and NAS apps, display properly after they've been set up.
Running full Android also means running full Google Assistant, but things are strange here again, as it's the phone version of Google Assistant, not the smart display version.
That means sometimes it flips into portrait mode, and sometimes it tries to answer questions in a way that requires some on-screen interaction rather than in the voice-first, boldly graphical, card-based way that smart displays use.
That makes it useless for asking for recipes while cooking, for example, because it requires lots of tapping and swiping to actually get to.
As a speaker, it's clock radio quality.
Asking for music through Google Assistant is a little frustrating—it plays the music, but the screen stays on the Google Assistant screen and doesn't flip over to album art.
That big battery is pretty great, though.
Just as a hotspot, we got about 32 hours of 4G audio streaming to one device.
You can also use the USB-C port to charge other devices, with Qualcomm's QuickCharge 3.0 onboard.
A Pretty Hot Spot
The Hub is designed to turn Sprint's 4G and 5G networks into Wi-Fi.
By using traditional cellular frequencies, Sprint is able to offer broader 5G coverage than AT&T and Verizon do right now.
Sprint showed us download speeds of up to 700Mbps during a bus ride on the networks' launch day in Dallas.
Still, though, Sprint's 5G coverage is only in a few cities.
Our 5G tests have also been studded with network configuration errors that mean we can't make any real statements about how the network is to use on a day-to-day basis.
So you're probably going to be on 4G for a while.
The good news there is that Sprint's 4G has gotten a lot faster than previous years; in this year's Fastest Mobile Networks tests, Sprint had the best download speeds in 9 out of 30 cities.
That's the best it's done in a long time.
But Sprint's network is geared toward content consumption, rather than creation; upload speeds are much slower, which makes the Hub (and any Sprint hotspot) less appealing for businesses that upload or share a lot of data.
Purely as a Wi-Fi hotspot, the Hub is very good.
Its high-end equipment and large body give it excellent dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi performance.
I got 150 feet of range with the Hub, where portable hotspots and phone hotspot modes tend to give about 100 feet of range.
It also provides Wi-Fi to 20 devices, more than most portable hotspots.
The Hub supports LTE bands 2/3/4/5/7/8/12/13/26/26/41/66/71 and 5G band n41.
That means it could actually work as a hotspot for T-Mobile's and Verizon's 4G networks, although it's locked to Sprint.
There's no consistent 5G network where we test in New York yet, but the device had very solid 4G LTE reception.
It's missing one thing that could make it a slam dunk, though: external antenna ports.
That means the smaller MiFi 8000 may get better LTE reception than the Hub, if you attach a large external antenna to it.
For Wi-Fi management, you're either stuck or gifted with Android's built-in tools, depending on your point of view.
You can kick the hotspot offline at certain times of day, do MAC filtering, attach a hotspot, or switch your DNS.
For parental controls, you need to download and try third-party Android apps.
The Hub also works as an 802.11ad hotspot for up to four devices.
802.11ad, also known as WiGig, is a short-range, very high speed networking system that Qualcomm is trying to promote right now.
There are no mainstream 802.11ad clients available.
At the moment, it's a rather orphaned technology.
I'd rather have seen 802.11ax, which will become widespread much more quickly and improves performance in a more standard Wi-Fi context.
Sprint's monthly service plan is capped at 100GB, even on 5G; that's a lot more data than other carriers offer on hotspot plans, and it's fine for people who don't stream video, but it's less than the 174GB monthly average for US homes right now.
Sprint's CTO, John Saw, is an old hand at offering wireless service to homes and businesses: He used to run a wireless ISP called Clear.
But any further steps in that direction for Sprint are currently stalled in the fog around the Sprint/T-Mobile merger.
Sprint is very invested in sending the message that it can't offer enough capacity without the merger, whether or not that's true.
If the merger does go through, the Hub will only support one of the merged carrier's three 5G bands.
If it doesn't, well, we'll see how Sprint deals with that.
Is This Hotspot Hot Enough?
The HTC 5G Hub is a product for a business that Sprint isn't quite yet willing to commit to.
It's a great device to let you cast off your home or business ISP, to use at a country house, or to set up an office anywhere.
However, Sprint's limited 5G coverage so far, and its capped data plans, don't quite offer an alternative to wired internet.
The real question is: Is it better than Sprint's $240 Inseego MiFi 8000, which you can actually fit into your pocket, which accepts external antennas, and which also works with a $60 per month, 100GB hotspot plan? Right now, the answer is a resounding no.
Merger confusion is the biggest problem here.
If the merger goes through, Sprint will have access to T-Mobile's upcoming 5G network, which the Hub doesn't support.
You would probably want to choose a different, future product, in that case.
If the merger doesn't go through, we're simply not sure what Sprint's strategy will be.
That isn't a reason not to buy Sprint services.
It's a reason to not spend a ton of money buying Sprint's services.
We haven't tested the MiFi 8000 yet, but we will soon, and we've reviewed and liked the Verizon model of the hotspot.
Considering the strength of Sprint's 4G network and the carrier's roomy service plans, the less-expensive MiFi seems the smarter buy right now.
The Bottom Line
The HTC 5G Hub is the first dedicated hotspot for sharing Sprint's new network with up to 20 devices, but it's not a viable alternative to traditional internet just yet.
