Hands On: Novatel Wireless Merlin XU870
We recently jacked someone for got some hands on time with the new Novatel Wireless Merlin XU870. This bad boy runs off of full HSDPA/UMTS/EDGE/GPRS and supports all 5 bands of service. After opening the package I was happy to see how compact the device was. No giant nub hanging out of your laptop with this unit folks, just a small antenna with a flip up extender. My first go at this was on a Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo. Since a few days ago Apple officially released support for this on its website, I had high hopes for performance before I even popped it in. All I did was slide the SIM card into the bottom of the data card, pop it in my Mac and instantly bars of service appeared in my finder bar in the top right. From there just hit connect and there it was, live 3G HSDPA access. After testing the transfer speeds a million few times I found the average speed to be about 1.2 megs a second and the upload speed to be around 320k per second. Not bad at all! Next I attempted the card on a newer Dell XPS and after installing the included software I connected with about the same speeds. Novatel has made an incredible device which boasts future proof access via firmware updates (so says on the box) for up to 7.2Mbps support. The only complaint I have so far is the location for where the SIM card is placed. It just seems too easy to get to and is even accessible while the card is in use. Afterall though this is a small price to pay for this kind of portability. Hopefully Cingular at&t will start branding this thing and officially supporting it soon so more people can partake in its HSDPA goodness. Check out the rest of the shots after the jump.
Leave a Reply