A smartphone and USB cable is all you need for fast 5G data on your laptop

One of the most useful features of a modern mobile data plan that gets overlooked is hotspot data. While public Wi-Fi is fairly ubiquitous these days, having your own data to use on your tablet or laptop can be very helpful, especially if you work from home. If you just need to hit the road a lot for your work, having an internet connection on deck can be essential for making it to a virtual meeting on time, or responding to an email quickly enough that the customer believes they’re the most important account you’ve got.

Hotspots don’t have to be all about work, however, and can be good for helping the kids finish up their weekend homework in the car or just making sure all of your games can be accessed on your Nintendo Switch or Steam Deck. If a console like the Switch goes without an internet connection for too long, some of your downloaded games may become unplayable until you connect to the internet again.

USB-C makes mobile hotspots easier to use than ever

Share your connection and charge your phone with one wire

If you have the right Android phone and tablet or laptop, you can use Instant Hotspot to use your phone’s network connection. This works, for example, between Android phones and Chromebooks, or Samsung phones and Windows. Naturally, Apple also has a feature like between Macs and iPhones as well. While these software solutions make it quick and easy to use your hotspot, there are some drawbacks. For one thing, if your phone isn’t plugged into power, using a Wi-Fi hotspot on it for a significant period can drain the battery.

With USB-C firmly taking over for charging and data transfer on both mobile tech and PCs, simply plugging your phone into your PC can be a quicker and easier way to share your internet connection. It may even be faster depending on the quality of Wi-Fi on your phone. Using a high-quality USB cable with a proper USB 3 data connection (often the one that comes with your phone) can give you a fast connection to your PC not only for moving over photos and video but to share the network connection.

With USB tethering enabled, when you plug your phone into a laptop, for example, it will show up alongside your Wi-Fi adapter and Ethernet adapter in your available network connections on Windows. One of the nice things about this is that it also charges your phone while in use, so you don’t need to worry about your hotspot usage taking away precious battery life from your phone. Besides that, it works like any other hotspot method using the same data with the same limits. Plus, USB-C tethering allows you to use your phone’s Wi-Fi connection on a PC, which can be helpful if you don’t have Wi-Fi on your PC.

Standalone hotspots can also use USB-C

Source: T-Mobile

While I’ve focused mostly on using your phone’s connection over USB, many standalone WI-Fi hotspots, including many of the best mobile hotspots, also support USB-C connections. If you work from the road, simply plugging in a wire could save you precious seconds while talking to a client. T-Mobile and TCL even recently launched a USB-only hotspot device called the Linkport IK511. Its simplicity, small size, and low price make it a great choice for a laptop bag for a traveling worker. When it comes to working from the road, every little bit of friction you can remove can save you time, which saves you money.

The right hotspot plans come down to how much data you need, and who’s paying

A slower unlimited plan could be a better fit

If your phone plan supports hotspot data, it’s doing it one of three ways. The first way is shared data, which essentially treats all of your data in the same way whether you use it on your phone or not. This is how data-bucket carriers like Mint Mobile do it with only a single pool of data to draw from. This is common for prepaid carriers and can be good for lighter users, but if you use your hotspot a lot, you could compromise data usage on your phone.

Next, many carriers give customers a separate pool of hotspot data to use each month. Even on unlimited plans, one of the main differentiators between different tiers of unlimited plans can be high-speed hotspot data. For example, Verizon’s Unlimited Plus plan comes with 30GB of hotspot data while Unlimited Ultimate comes with 60GB. Once you use this up, your hotspot connection is slowed down, but the unlimited data used on your phone itself is unaffected.

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Finally, there are unlimited (but slow) hotspot connections. Prepaid Verizon carrier Visible uses this approach with unlimited hotspot data at 5Mbps on the base plan and 10Mbps on the Plus plan. T-Mobile is another one that offers unlimited 3G-speed hotspot data with some of its postpaid plans. While this doesn’t seem like much, this is enough speed for basic streaming, browsing, and even some downloading if you’re patient. In fact, one of my good friends wound up in a hospital for over a month and his 5Mbps Visible hotspot connection allowed him to download new games on his Switch and keep his laptop up to date while the slow hospital Wi-Fi had frequent connection drops and low speeds. Sometimes downloads took overnight, but the fact that he didn’t need to worry about a data cap was one less thing to think about during that tough period.

Hotspots aren’t a replacement for a real home internet connection

They can be essential for life on the road, like on an RV vacation

Source: TravlFi

Hotspot data is great in a pinch and with 5G, the speeds could even feel fast enough to use full time. That being said, there are some things you shouldn’t do on your hotspot connection. First and foremost, if you allow your PC to download system updates on your hotspot, you could burn through your available data very fast with some updates easily exceeding 1GB. When you connect to your hotspot, no matter which way you connect to it, you can limit the amount of data used on it by setting it as a metered connection in Windows, or by enabling low data mode in MacOS.

While gaming on a hotspot connection is possible, and I’ve done it, you’ll quickly learn a lot about latency spikes, inconsistent pings, and prediction code. While all internet connections are shared, your LTE or 5G connection could be using the same tower as hundreds of other people at once. Usage can be inconsistent, but if enough people use the tower at once, your speeds could fall and your latency could spike, even if you’re on a premium plan. If you’re trying to play an online game, that looks like lag or odd opponent behavior depending on how the game handles player prediction in its net code.

Don’t forget to use your hotspot data

While many of us pay for hotspot data without phone plans, much of it goes unused as most people only use it very occasionally when Wi-Fi isn’t available. If you’re out in public, don’t forget you can have a quick internet connection in just a few seconds with your mobile hotspot data. You also don’t have to agree to any internet usage terms or provide personal information like you do connecting to a Wi-Fi connection at a place like Starbucks.