Nighthawk® M1 Mobile Router

Hi Albo3li,

Yes, early firmwares for the MR1100 in the USA and Europe have been pretty buggy -- which I wasn't expecting given that the Telstra version had already been out for more than year so I would have thought these early issues should have been addressed already.

But the firmware versions which have been released in the past month or two have been significantly better.  If your interested in trying it again, be sure to update the firmware first.  There are a few European users on this board that seem to be doing okay.

Additionally you may need to disable the 2.4Ghz Wifi and just use the 5.8Ghz as the power envelope of the device is pretty limited and under heavy load, with both Wifi operating, it used to panic.  Perhaps this is better in newer firmware versions as well -- haven't tried.

If you are out of country from where you purchased, and on a different carrier, you might need to set the APN back to the original so the device detects the firmware update.  Or have them do it for you while you are in the store.  Since the firmware is carrier specific -- Netgear doesn't offer it for download from their website (which is dumb).

So far, in the USA, the MR1100 has been okay.  Slightly faster than my two ZTE devices (one on AT&T and one on Tmo).  But the ZTE devices have much better wifi range, are much more reliable, and my newer one (on AT&T) can easily run both Wifi bands without crashing.  And it (Velocity 2) has a touch screen and was only $80.

I have to agree that overall, I'm not that impressed with the MR1100.  I bought it hoping for top of the line speed, and Ethernet out, but I probably should have gone with one of the more commercial solutions.  I used to have Netgear Wifi Router (non cellular -- R7000) which had great hardware at the time.  But every successive version of firmware just kept getting worse and worse.  And support was equally abysmal.

Given the premium price of $200, it's far from being a premium product in my opinion.

-Jonathan