Virgin Mobile - Overdrive Pro 3G/4G No-Contract Mobile Hotspot

Model: Overdrive Pro 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot

SKU: 5512805
3.4 of 5 3.4 of 5 (25 reviews)

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Provide Internet access to up to 5 Wi-Fi-enabled devices with this Virgin Mobile Overdrive Pro 3G/4G mobile hotspot that features data transfer rates up to 6 Mbps for enhanced efficiency. The microSD memory card slot allows shared network storage.

Product Features

  • Compatible with most Wi-Fi-enabled devices
    For wide-ranging use.
  • Provides 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity
    For up to 5 wireless devices (additional fees may apply).
  • 3G/4G speed
    Delivers up to 6 Mbps data transfer rates for fast operation.
  • microSD card slot
    Offers shared network storage for connected devices.
  • Auto sensing and auto detecting
    For simple connection.
  • LCD display
    Provides an easy-to-read design.
  • Web user interface
    Helps simplify use.
  • Integrated RF ports
    For expanded connectivity.
  • 1800 mAh battery
    Offers up to 4 hours of typical use and up to 4 weeks of standby time.
Product images, including color, may differ from actual product appearance.

Customer Reviews

Virgin Mobile - Overdrive Pro 3G/4G No-Contract Mobile Hotspot (16 out of 25)
Budget Friendly
4
Posted by: from on 03/08/2013It's like this walk in and 165 dollars later I've got internet anywhere round town also only paying $35month

1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

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Terrible quality device
1
Posted by: from Virginia on 03/02/2013returning the second device in less than a week. Virgin Moble coverage has proven sporadic and spotty. Virgin Mobile blamed the poor performance on the cell tower and when asked when it would be repaired they said "whenever we get enough complaints," that was the extent of their "help." The device being returned tomorrow will not even turn on after being on the charger. Connection kept dropping out when it was working and speed was extremely slow.

3 out of 3 found this review helpful.

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Useless!!
1
Posted by: from on 02/24/2013I purchased this item yesterday. I was excited for nothing. I was told that it has unlimited data, which it doesn't unless you live in an area which has 4G service, otherwise you only get 5 gb on a 3G network at $55 a month. The product may work but the service for the internet definitely doesn't allow it to perform like advertised or to a persons minimum expectations. For installation you will need customer service for step by step instructions on installing the device. I was on the phone with a representative at least 2 hours, mainly due to the service not working so that the product could register and install. Overall this is a waste of money and time. Do not purchase, do not recommend, do not buy for an enemy.

2 out of 2 found this review helpful.

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Little broadband adventures
3
Posted by: from on 02/23/2013Having been gifted with a new IPad, it was necessary to obtain broadband. Since the majority of my work is done away from home, Internet access at home was not an ideal budgetary option. The sales staff at Best Buy have always been courteous, helpful & knowledgable so I trusted their advice to purchase the little broadband box. Ugh! Poor little thing never worked, kept dying, would not hold a charge, gave up the ghost. Tried taking it back, only to learn that Sprint was messed up and having some serious problems. More ugh! The salesperson was so helpful and did everything he could to try to resuscitate the little box. He advised me to wait till Sprint was back up & running. Yesterday I was sick at home and tried to get some work done. HAH! No such luck, the little box blinked then faded away. I spent the day trying to get info from my phone (another sad story!) and played games on the IPad that did not require broadband. Like anything sick can benefit from a good nite's sleep, both the little box & I have recovered! Yay! For the moment---LOL! We are online and we're spinning on greased grooves. Waiting for Sprint to get the 4G up, maybe by March 2013, maybe later.

1 out of 2 found this review helpful.

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Decent Primary Home Internet Connection
4
Posted by: from El Segundo, CA on 02/22/2013I purchased the Overdrive Pro because I needed temporary internet for a place I was moving out of soon, and I didn't want to sign a contract. I wanted something that was hassle-free, low-cost, high-speed, no-contract, and unlimited. I also wanted to be able to easily set up this same internet service at my new place that I'm moving to. I searched and searched, read many reviews, and after ten days of deliberation, and having no internet, I decided that my best option was the Sierra Wireless Overdrive Pro for Virgin Mobile. So far, I have had this mobile hotspot for ten days, and it has been a bittersweet experience for me, but I am mostly happy. I want to be as helpful as I can in this review, and I will offer my best advice based on my experience. This device and its service is a decent replacement of basic DSL service, though it's not at all comparable to Cable or FIOS. Although the 4G internet is unlimited, the connection will usually be too weak and the latency will suffer greatly, but the speed will still be decent. 3G, on the other hand, will usually have a good to excellent connection, so the latency is decent, but the speed is a bit slower. This will cause you to find yourself switching between 3G and 4G quite often, based on your needs. Unless you plan on using this on-the-go, it is best to not insert the battery into the device, because the battery causes it to overheat. It works just fine at home when it is plugged in without the battery. Activating the Overdrive Pro was frustrating because the instructions that came with it did not provide all the information I needed to properly set up my device. First of all, even if you do not have any internet, you will still be able to access the online activation wizard once your computer is Wi-Fi ready and you turn on your Overdrive Pro. You do not need any pre-existing internet service to activate the Overdrive Pro. The password for connecting to the internet is displayed on the LCD screen of the Overdrive Pro. None of that was made clear when I was activating the device, but things went pretty smoothly after that, until I ran into another problem. When it came time to choose a plan, my experience was completely different from the set-up guide's instructions. It says in the instructions that a new browser window will automatically launch that will take you to your account portal. This did not happen for me at all. So I ended up going to virginmobileusa.com and selecting "Manage My Account" in the upper right hand corner. I then entered my account number and the 6-digit password I created and I chose a new plan from there. If you want to access the Overdrive Pro Home Page to adjust settings for the device, go to virginmobile.hotspot and you will be redirected to the Overdrive Pro Home, and the URL will display your IP address. This is important: you will notice you're unable to change any settings because only the administrator is allowed to. You will need to log in as the administrator with the following password, "password". That's right, the password is password, and this is nowhere in any instructions. The Overdrive Pro Home Page is very useful because it gives you complete control over the device, and gives you many ways to set up your device. To change between 4G and 3G, click the area on the Overdrive Pro Home Page that says 3G (or 4G) Connected, and you will be given a list of preferences. It's best to choose either 3G only or 4G only. In my experience, I have been unable to quickly access my account from the Overdrive Pro Home, where it says, "My Account". Instead, to access your account in the future, simply go to virginmobileusa.com and select "Manage My Account" in the upper right hand corner. If you're like me, you will have a hard time trying to find a strong 4G connection. This is probably why it's "unlimited". I have found myself switching to 3G quite often, just because the 4G connection is unreliable and sometimes totally unavailable. Even if you're in an area that has 4G coverage, you may still find that you have a weak connection and the 3G connection will usually be much stronger. From my experience, the 4G connection was so unreliable that I was unable to use it for online gaming. I mostly play Call of Duty and other first person shooters, where a strong connection is mandatory. The weak connection of the 4G caused poor latency and disconnections. If you're gaming online, you will find tons of lag and server connection timeouts. Because of this, it is best to use 3G when playing video games online. If you're worried that you will hit your data limit, rest assured. Online gaming, surprisingly, does not use much data. I played for six hours straight and only used about 100MB. DO NOT USE 3G WHEN STREAMING VIDEO, ESPECIALLY NETFLIX! Virgin 3G has a data limit of either 2GB or 5GB, neither of which are anywhere near enough to support streaming. Look at this way; typically, only one hour of watching Netflix will use up about 300MB of data. That means in about three hours you will have already used about 1GB of data. In six hours you will have used almost all of your 2GB of data, and in 15 hours you will have used about all of your 5GB of data. If you do end up reaching your data limit with 3G, there are ways to improve the performance of 4G so that it is more usable. First, make sure you live in an area that is covered by Sprint 4G WiMax. Second, make sure your mobile hotspot is in a place where it gets the strongest signal. Third, go to virginmobile.hotspot (Overdrive Pro Home Page), then log in as the administrator with the password: password. Go to advanced settings, then to the router tab, and enable port forwarding. Go to portforward.com to learn more about port forwarding. It will give you specific instructions on how to forward your ports for specific programs, gaming consoles and video games with your Overdrive Pro. Port forwarding basically improves the speed your internet connection. Finally, I know this may sound crazy, but try placing a sheet of aluminum foil underneath the Overdrive Pro. This may reflect your signal better, and improve signal strength. It improved my signal strength by 10%, which may not sound like much, but it made a huge difference. The 4G Connection works just fine for web browsing and streaming on Netflix, although you will notice the resolution on Netflix will tend to bounce between High Definition and Standard Definition, but you shouldn't have any problems with buffering. I have been able to watch Netflix and other online videos such as YouTube and Hulu perfectly without any buffering, pausing, loading screens, etc. I wasn't going to write this review until I had used more than 10 GB of 4G data, because I wanted to see how bad the throttling would be. Virgin says they may reduce speeds after 10 GB, and I have read that they cap the speeds to 2 Mbps. Well, I am happy to say that I have used about 23 GB of 4G data. I passed 10 GB two days ago, and so far there has been no throttling. I still get the same speeds I used to get, which is around 3 Mbps or more. Maybe Virgin hasn't caught up to me yet, and they might need to manually throttle my speeds, but my speeds obviously have not been reduced automatically after passing 10 GB. If you're wondering how I was able to track my 4G data usage, the best way to do this is to go to virginmobile.hotspot, log in as the administrator, go to "Advanced Settings", and on the "Device" tab, go to "About" and it will tell you how much data you have used for both 3G and 4G (It will say "Total Bytes:"). You can also track your 3G data usage by going to "My Account", but it only tracks 3G on that page, not 4G. Another way to get an idea of how much data you are using in a current session is to either look at the LCD display on the Overdrive Pro, and it tells you how much data you are currently using in the bottom left corner, or to go to the Overdrive Pro Home Page, and it will tell you how much data you have used, followed by the length of the current session. It only displays how much data you have used since the device last connected to the internet. If you turn off the device, or if there are any interruptions in the connection, it will reset the data tracker down to zero. It's best to start noticing how much data you are using while doing different online activities, and adjusting your device between 3G and 4G accordingly, as well as adjusting your plan to fit your needs. If you're doing something that doesn't use much data, but is important to maintain a strong connection (such as e-mail, online gaming, filling out applications, taking surveys, taking tests, etc.) you need to be using 3G. If you're doing something that consumes a lot of data, but you don't mind having a weak connection, (such as watching Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, listening to music, etc.) you need to be using 4G. I don't travel with this device at all. It works great as home internet. However, the biggest drawback of the BroadBand2Go service is that it's extremely difficult to download large files. Some files are larger than 5GB, so there's no way to use 3G to download large files. The only other option is trying to use 4G to download large files, but you will find that the connection may drop somewhere in between the download because the signal strength is so weak. This is the only real problem I have with this service. There was no solution to this problem other than going to my friend's house and using his internet to do large downloads. The BroadBand2Go service is still a pretty decent alternative to DSL or Cable home internet because of the unlimited 4G. I didn't like having to pay about $100 for the actual mobile hotspot, but it was worth it for the affordable service that comes with it. I am satisfied with my purchase and I highly recommend the Overdrive Pro because of how versatile it is.

16 out of 16 found this review helpful.

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Returned to store
1
Posted by: from Iowa on 02/22/2013Service are very limited. Some programs wouldn't open

0 out of 1 found this review helpful.

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Does what it is supposed to do ... easily!
4
Posted by: from Connecticut on 02/08/2013I purchased the hotspot to use on a Amtrak train trip from New York to Miami. Found that I had service at least 90 percent of the time I wanted to use my newly purchased Samsung Chromebook. I did not notice any particular problem when the train was operating at speeds around 100mph. Also was able to use the hotspot at all the hotels I stayed at without the need to inquire/learn how to use their wifi. With my normal e-mail/web surfing I did not reach the monthly usage limit. It was very easy to set-up and use. I would like to see a level of service priced between the one day ($5) and the one month ($35). Suggestion $10/week with 25% of the monthly service allocation. This would be idea for weekend and short trips. Works very well with my Chromebook!

4 out of 4 found this review helpful.

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Ok device poor service
1
Posted by: from Atlanta, GA on 01/30/2013I have used this device for a little over a month. First two weeks no problem, easy setup decent price. However over two weeks ago 4G service stopped. I called service and after an hour of annoying hold music a CS rep finally answered. I was assured the outage would be resolved by the following day. The next day I made the same call this time a 1.5 hour hold time, with same response. More than two weeks later it still isn't resolved. Customer service is a joke for such a well advertised and marketed company. I should have researched before buying, outages on their data network are very common even though they use sprints network and I have never had any issues with them using the same model device.

2 out of 4 found this review helpful.

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Super Fast 4G LTE Connection
5
Posted by: from Long Beach, CA on 12/10/2012For a portable hotspot, this is a fantastic option. Don't hesitate making this purchase if it is something you really need/want.

8 out of 12 found this review helpful.

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Great value
5
Posted by: from Macon, Ga on 11/30/2012This product serves the purpose for basic user. I love it.

3 out of 4 found this review helpful.

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