During the past days, I had the pleasure to test a couple of Huawei mobile boardband USB sticks and one of them was the Huawei E1750. The E1750 is one of Huawei's latest low-cost entry market sticks but by low-cost entry market it doesn't means that the stick is missing any important features but far from it. At a size of 75 x 26 x 11.5 mm the stick weights 35 gram only and is based on a Qualcomm 6290 chip. The E1750 supports quadband GSM/GPRS/EDGE Class 12 as well as singleband UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA at 2100 MHz with HSDPA support up to 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA support up to 5.76 Mbps.

Quite typical for a Huawei USB stick is a the micoSD card slot which allows to use the stick as USB drive as well.

Unfortunately, and this makes the stick somewhat cheaper but therefore also an entry market HSPA stick, the design is somewhat more basic. While the overall quality is rocking solid, the plastic feels somewhat cheaper. Nevertheless, what I completely dislike, but what's also typical for entry market USB sticks, is the protection cap which has a real potential to be lost pretty fast.

Like all the latest Huawei sticks, the E1750 supports Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista and - even not officially mentioned yet - Windows 7 as well as Apple Mac OS and Linux and the installation on a Windows PC is plug-n-play, as expected. After the stick is plugged-in, Windows recognizes the stick and installs the drivers and connection manager software, which Huawei calls "Mobile Partner", straight from the USB stick. There's neither a CD-ROM delivered with the E1750 nor is one needed. After the Mobile Partner is installed, the stick can be used immediately since a reboot isn't necessary at all.

The used Mobile Partner version is the one Huawei uses for most of its HSPA sticks and offers a connection and profile manager, real time statistics overview, and SMS interface and a phonebook which can be used to edit, add or delete contacts on the SIM card. However, the stick cannot be used for circuit switched voice calls (except VoIP-based calls).

Final Conclusion

As mentioned before, the E1750 represents Huawei's latest generation of low-cost entry market WCDMA sticks, now featuring HSDPA and HSUPA. As always, the stick isn't available directly from Huawei but through carrier partners only (often under a different name). Since it features the latest available HSPA speeds (UL 7.2 Mbps/DL 5.76 Mbps) technology-wise it's a worth purchase! However, design-wise there are similar fast but better looking (but also more expensive) sticks available from Huawei.

Anyway, all together it's an interesting full featured, cheap and fast HSPA stick which is already - or soon - available from carriers around the world.

Cheers ~ Arne