Nighthawk M1 battery flat and offline in morning

1. How many WiFi devices are connected overnight?

Zero

2. Is there any device also connected over Ethernet overnight?

Yes about 8, doing Windows Updates on hired computers machines and pretty much constantly syncing about 1mbit/s of data back to a central server.

3. Do you have a MicroSD or USB thumb drive plugged into the M1 constantly?

No.

4. Are you plugged directly into the wall socket or using a power board with the supplied wall plug?

Using the supplied 1amp Netgear wall plug.

5. How much data is being used over night?

About 100GB per night.  I bought it to use it, not to look at the pretty lights.

So far I've discovered ditching the standard wall plug and plugging into a USB port with 2.4amp capacity made a big improvement.  I'm yet to run it to the point where the battery + power = flat.

I can't with certainty say the 2.4amp USB supply is the solution, I'll need more time before I can prove that scientificly.  However my gut is telling me the supplied wall plug is NOT powerful enough for regular use.

I don't get it, why is it only designed to be for intermittent use, I know many customers will use it that way.  However there are also many who can't get good Internet via land facilities and those who need a portable device for event work (all day conferences etc where Internet at from the conference location is EXTREMELY expensive and hard to organise, ie no cables to your assigned area etc).

Hopefully they consider those who use it as a better ADSL connection or a workhorse for an event when they make the next one and/or future firmware updates.

For me the unit is an NBN speed portable solution.  I often see speeds of 40mbit - 200mbit down and 20-60mbit up.  I can't get a fibre connection where I need the Internet and I'm not at the location for more than a week.  So it's perfect that way.  Data costs a fair amount, but setup fees for a connection this fast are often several thousand dollars.  So the high price of data is not really an issue it's cheaper than the setup fees for the temporary connections in the long run.  I also take advantage of Telstra ability to "share" data on a business plans.  That softens the blow on a large account with 30+ other mobile devices you can borrow from other people's data for this large events.

20GB x 30 plans = much data, avoiding excess charges.

I guess if you call doing 200GB+ in 2 days a heavy user that's how I use this thing.  It's not much data nowdays people get 1TB+ per month on a home plan pretty easily.  Sure it's possibly quite a lot of mobile data, but there will be more of this in the future as prices for mobile data drop so design products around doing 3TB of mobile data a month, that might be the norm by the time the next generation is released.