The release of Sensecap M2 Light hotspot was announced! (14th of March, 4PM_GMT).

We checked the differences between the first Sensecap M1 Helium (Full) Hotspot, and the Sensecap M2 - Light Hotspot. Which one is more convenient and what differentiate the new Sensecap M2 out of the "crowd"?

The comparison table between the Sensecap M1 hotspot and the Sensecap M2 Light hotspot.

Sensecap M2

General Review of Sensecap M2 Light hotspot:

Sensecap M2 is a robust LoRaWAN gateway with a special pricing options which can be very beneficial when we need to use POE (Power Over Ethernet) since it has such power input option available. It will need only the POE Injector or any switch which is POE compatible.
In the case of remote area connections, where the internet connection is through GSM (4G/LTE), the option variant with 4G slot active will save the 4G mobile Router and some power connection compared to M1 or most of other Hotspots from the market.
The disadvantages observed are the size of the package which is bigger and can affect the shipping costs from overseas. The amount of plastic used for the case, even if it is of very good quality. It is a kind of plastic and in 2023, EU is more sensitive and added an extra taxation for products containing plastics. Anyhow, most of the IoT connectivity gateways and WiFi routers cases in the world are made out of some kind of plastic since they are not getting any advantage from aluminum.
Pricing: it is the ´license fee´ + the Hardware. It is still a very good option since one can just buy 3months for example with 7.99$, or 12months with 19.99$ or Unlimited license with 49.99$. I believe that the best option is the 12 months license since it is only 20$.

Sensecap M1

General review of Sensecap M1 hotspot

On the other side, the Sensecap M1 can be repurposed in the future for other projects which are based on a Raspberry PI (ex: the RPI 8G version can be used for Flux Cumulus node together with a SSD). Any other projects which can run on a RPI4 can reuse this main component from Sensecap M1. The power adapter is an USB-C which, in the worst case, can be reused to power modern devices or charge mobile phones and newer power banks and future devices. The case is made out of aluminum instead of plastic, so it is easier to recycle or repurpose and also quite easy to repair and also great for heat dissipation.
If we add the fact there are more than 140.000 Sensecap M1 deployed in the world, that means there is a huge community of users; based on personal experience, Sensecap M1 had very good Support from both Sensecap support engineers, and community on Discord.
The advantage of M1 is that there is no software maintenance license considered to be added in the sales price, so you fully own the device and the Sensecap team is pushing the updates when they are needed.
Our suggestions regarding software updates for the M1 is to add Helium 5G option on a Sensecap M1, since the CPU, RAM is under used for the LoRaWAN gateway only, or at least to add the option to make a ´smart´ Wi-Fi router from it.

If you find other important differences let us know on our Telegram or Discord Channels.

The question which still need to get an answer: what will be the Helium gateway of choice to enable the IOT in the Wild in 2023 and in the future?

The links where you can find more technical details about each Sensecap Hotspots are found below.