Mobile Hotspot for gaming...

Will be traveling a 6 hour car-ride from Az to Cali tomorrow, and I want some kind of mobile hotspot that I can buy and hook up to my comp for online gaming along the way. Bear in mind we will be heading into uninhabited mountains and such, I still want a strong signal though. Need something that can be purchased from a local retail store without online order. Any suggestions?

 

You can tether your smartphone/cellular-enabled tablet to your laptop via Bluetooth/wireless/USB. I think there are also USB dongle/stick mobile hotspots for sale. And if your laptop has the capability, you can install a WWAN card to connect to cell networks on the go.

Keep in mind this'll probably only work for turn-based gaming, e.g. Civ or Hearthstone. For any other type of game, the latency over cell networks will be completely impractical.

 

I play the Left4Dead games online while tethered and signal is always more than good enough, not sure how well it would work for more complex games with lots of data traffic or in regions where signal may not be consistent though. If you have constant 4g then I would imagine anything would be fine.

Pretty much keeps me sane when I take my daughter to an indoor play area!

 

For online gaming while moving, you can pretty much forget it. The latency will be all over the place as you move from tower to tower. Playing single player games or turn based online strategy are about your only options.

 

Like others have said, your wants of a constant strong signal through mountains while driving unfortunately aren't realistic with current technology.... I game with my 4G phone as a hotspot occasionally, and it works ok when stationary while I sit at a jobsite, but like mentioned above, as you go from area to area when driving the signal/connection quality is all over the place. It's great for general browsing, and maybe turn based stuff if it's solid enough when bouncing between towers, but overall not going to be very good for a gaming session.

Single player is a much better option.

 

Right. Fixed connection might be OK, if you have a decent signal with decent latency. Would be nice to eventually cut the wire altogether and get anywhere wireless with fast transfers and low latency. But we're probably still a far 10 years from that yet.

 

Move to South Korea.

 

Yeah, their land mass is so small they probably only need one tower. J/K

S.K. is so advanced with technology it puts most other countries to shame.

 

Japan isn't far behind tbh... Although you guys are right.. SK is really so far in the front that it makes the stuff here in Europe, US, most of Asia look like ****e..