This article is a complete Internet on the Go Review and is based on using the device over a period of 3 weeks.

If you’re not entirely certain what is Internet on the Go let’s take a moment to briefly describe what it is, what it does, and why you might want one.

Now, we can say right off the bat that if you have a smart phone with Internet capability and/or Internet capability that you can share with your laptop or tablet PC etc then chances are good you won’t be too interested in this product. All Internet on the Go does is it allows you to have 3G Internet access on your portable laptop, Wi-Fi, or other devices, anywhere in the country where there is coverage, such as tablet devices, when there aren’t alternative Internet access services available.

So for example, let’s say you are at a hotel (or campground) but the hotel charges you a fee to access the Internet (we’ve paid $15 per day at a hotel before – ouch), if you have Internet on the Go you can potentially forgo paying the hotel fee and save money using this personal hotspot. (we say potentially because there’s no guarntee this will have coverage at every location)

How much does Internet on the Go cost?

We paid $80 plus sales tax for the small credit card shaped device. Yep, it slips into your shirt pocket if you want to. And, we found the battery, which is just like a lithium battery you’d typically find in a cell phone, lasts around 4 hours. The manufacturer claims you can surf while charging the battery and although we attempted to do so we were unable to confirm this.

After paying the $80 and bringing the little device back to the office we had to setup our account online. We used our office Wi-Fi to log in and create our personalized Internet on the Go account. In doing this we were also required to buy some, what we like to call, “Internet Time” and because we were just trying this device out we opted for the $10, never expires unless you use it, plan. The cool thing is once you’ve used up your $10 of “500 MB of Internet Time” you automatically get an additional credit of time equal to $25. We figure they want you to hand over your credit card number for automatic additional Internet time billing if you ever run out.

We know our $10 won’t run out until we use it but we aren’t sure if the $25 bonus time expires 30 days afterward. We posted the image at the top of this page so you can see some of the useage during the 735 mile road trip which went from rural roads to small city highways through major metropolitan cities such as Atlanta Georgia. Later in the article we are going to disclose what we found about the “coverage map,” one hint, just because you see blue don’t assume you can surf or even surf fast. The speed and coverage varies and we figured it out.

Setting up an Internet on the Go account

We unboxed the device and found the following included items: 1 lithium battery, 1 credit card shaped hot spot device (pictured above), 1 battery charger, 1 protective cloth sleeve for the device, and 1 Quick Start guide.

We first charged the battery by installing it into the device and plugging it in. We walked away for about an hour just to help ensure the battery got a good full charge.

Next we worked on the setup. It took around one hour… if you can believe that. It took this long, in part but only in part, because the device itself (although it clearly shows as being well within the “coverage map”) was barely getting a signal, the signal would often switch between 1 bar and no bars (1 bar out of 4or5 potential and the bars dont show up on the device – we downloaded a FREE app to our ipad and tracked it that way)

We concentrated on setting up the account. We do want to point out that if you buy this device, patience is called for during the setup up. And, if you follow the directions carefully the set-up should go fairly smoothly; the exception being however, your device doesn’t get a solid signal (without the free app the signal strength is hard to determine resulting in increased user frustration).

How fast and how reliable is Internet on the Go?

We tested this over a 739 mile road trip (all in the blue), driving through every imaginable geographic area from flat land, small rural populations and through mountains and as well as heavily populated areas.

The closer we got to major metropolitan areas the device performed well including on major highways. It was so fast sometimes that it performed similar to our office Wi-Fi. Other times however it was super slow or we simply weren’t able to surf the Internet. But in all cases we were ALWAYS clearly well within the blue coverage map.  

Internet on the Go can connect up to 5 Wi-Fi devices to the Internet simultaneously so long as they are within the 30 foot device broadcast range. The WiFi can be secured or left open and it can be managed similar to a home or office Wifi router. Trying to stream online content however would not be practical with this or similar hotspots.