I have a jetpack 7730 and am pretty impressed by it’s ability to pull in weak signals. In fact there’s a campground I go to which has “no” signal, but with a 11dBi Yagi antenna bounced off a mountain, I can get about 5mbps/1mbps even with -110dBM signal strength and a SNR of about 7db.
However, this is in a dedicated vehicle and the 7730 is not really vehicle friendly - there are wires & cords and velcro all over the place.
I already have a balance one so I’m happy with Peplink, but I’m interested in a dedicated device.
My questions:
would a Max BR1 Mini work with my Verizon 7730 Sim?
with an external antenna, would it pull in signal as good as the 7730?
I have regularly replaced Jetpacks and similar devices with Peplink Mini’s. The Mini has several significant advantages for your usage scenario. First, you can fix mount the Mini. Second, you can power the Mini via the DC power block using the vehicle’s power. Third, the Mini has standard SMA antenna connectors should you not want to use the included antennas. You should consider using a multi-element antenna with a fixed or magnetic vehicle mount for best performance. A Yagi is not a viable vehicle solution. Forth, the Mini uses standard 2FF SIMs like virtually all M2M devices while the 7730 uses 4FF “nano” SIMs. If you are interested in the Mini and antennas feel free to contact me.
Hello @soylentgreen,
You may want to reach out to your local Certified Peplink Partner for help, they have access to a detailed Antenna Selection Guide within the Partner section of the form to help you with selecting the most suitable antenna to go with the Pepwave MAX series.
For our customers (& yes it is the higher end of the range) we stick with the Pepwave MAX Transit.
Thanks for the info. One reason that I was interested in the SIM was that the vehicle is rarely used - so my idea would be to have one verizon account (normally on the 7730 at home), but when traveling would move the SIM to the Max BR1 Mini. It sounds like that’s not possible? Does anyone make 4FF to 2FF SIM card adapters I wonder?
There are lots of adapters available. Your local network shop will have a range of selections. We have used iSYFIX, they happened to be the first ones that came to hand the first time we needed such and have worked well enough (I.e., this is not a recommendation after a careful survey :-)).
