NETGEAR Nighthawk - WiFi App 4+

Ok, I had a rant when this app first came out because it replaced Genie and requires a Netgear account where Genie did not.

I’m against creating accounts with vendors unless it’s for a very desirable service or one that you must have. As it turns out, for me, the Netgear service with this app fits into the “very desirable” category. That said an account with Netgear is still not necessary to provide external modem access. I remain unhappy about that.

Now that I’ve had my rant I can say that the app is very good. It has worked flawlessly for me and provides all the basic features you’d want to control from your mobile device. This includes checking network details of connected devices and disconnecting them if desired, router updates and reboots, managing parental controls and more. It is also presented in a very tidy looking user interface.

So, it’s four stars from me. The minus one is because of the need for an account, without Netgear having justified why this is necessary.

The app generally works well, but it’s feels a little slow, even on the 12ProMax. The interface is simple, but lacks a bit more fine tuning.
The device list is handy but needs a few more different icons to choose from to help customise and future troubleshooting. One gripe I really have is that the router tries to guess what the device is... please stop this, it gets it so wrong.
After I added all my devices I noticed that it seemed to label a lot of the devices the same, making it difficult to find what the device is.

FYI, the app kept saying I was disconnected from the router (I wasn’t, I tested it and also the wifi symbol stayed on) but when I turned off the iPhone setting ‘wifi assist’ this issue stopped. (My speed test was 53Mbps at the time so I know my connection was good).

The app remains in a vicious cycle of crapness. I can not access my own router. My family all have access but I am blocked. it will often gaslight my daughter by telling me her daily limit has been reached and it has not. My other daughter gleefully continues online well after her daily limits have been used but it doesn’t stop her. It makes zero sense and does not work. Now I am locked out of it and I am blocked from basic things online. I spent a significant amount of money to achieve 2 things: 1 ensure my internet network is good because we live in a mobile data blackhole so rely heavily on home internet and 2 be able to manage my children’s online activities. Speedtest consistently tells me that my speed is excellent. And checks to see if there is an outage in our area confirm there are none. The product and the app are abysmal. I’d love to use some more colourful language to tell you how I really feel and would love to rate it zero stars