Hello NETGEAR Armor Community! Thank you to all who have activated your NETGEAR Armor trial and to those who have subscribed to our cyber security service. Since the launch of the service we have received valuable feedback on a variety of platforms. I am reaching out to you today to hear more about your experience with NETGEAR Armor. Please reply to this post and share your experience with NETGEAR Armor. Feel free to provide any additional feedback on the cyber security service in terms of what you currently enjoy and some possible areas of improvement. For those who would like to learn more about NETGEAR Armor please check out the links below: NETGEAR Armor Landing Page Products That Support NETGEAR Armor Your thoughts on NETGEAR Armor is greatly appreciated and we look forward to your participation in this discussion! All the best, Christian

My experience with Bitdefender is entirely negative. During the trial period I don't believe it gave me anything useful. At the end of the trial period I have not renewed it but it is now blocking websites I could access during the trial period. I have no ability to access the security controls. When I try to do so I am redirected to the Bitdefender renewal website. This is just outrageous and probably illegal under European law. I would describe it as electronic blackmail. I have had to revert back to using my Broadband router Wi-Fi to be be able to access my work emails and many other websites. Even the BBC weather site is blocked. The Orbi is currently not fit for purpose and I will return it and expect a full refund if this isn't resolved very quickly. Had I known about this before purchasing the Orbi I would not have made the purchase. I would strongly recommend people to not buy an Orbi while Netgear operate in this unscrupulous way.

Totally agree. The greedy implementation of Armour in the Orbi app leaves Orbi users not opting in with a Tile that says "Security expired" and cripples the entire Security section. This is ridicoulous and as a product manager I would be ashamed providing this to my customers. Opting in on add-on services should enhance user experience and provide extra functionality.

Experience 1: Bad: This morning i woke up with no WAN. Logged in to my RBR50 using IOS app and found out that Armor trial expired. Rebooted the router and reclaimed my internet connection.Experience 2: Bad: A month ago I enabled Armour and immidiately my upload/download speeds decreased with 15% and ping increased with 33%. When armor expired I am today back to 300/300 and a 12ms ping.Experience 3: Bad: With armor expired i have no security features in Orbi app. Just a tile that states ”Security expired” and pressing it leads to store. Should be basic security access available at least.

Why is this even a thing anymore. I had trouble of intermittent internet over six months, requiring many resets every day.Remove armor from the device, and am trouble free for 7 months.

Christian_R I like the basic concept of Armor.I dislike the auto-rollout to the older device. It seems like I find a lot of people on here who have issues with an older device running armor. From decreased speeds, instability, or even just the loss of features their router used to support. I know its to much work to support 2 forks on firmware with one having armor and one including the prior features and just getting security updates. so I'm not sure what a good compromise is to keep devices getting security updates but not getting armor. It'd also be nice to see a tiered system to Armor. Many router manufacturers have a basic security suite included for free and you pay for premium features. That'd be nice to see with Armor instead of the base level being a paid subscription. again, I agree with the concept of Armor but struggle when I see the impact that it has on older devices. And I understand that the forums are where we see the issues. We don't see all the devices that it works great on.

Share Your NETGEAR Armor Experience

75 Replies

BruKat
Aspirant
Aug 19, 2021
I have had nothing but problems with Armor and the Nighthawk itself.
Got rid of it in less than a year and went with Linksys with no issues.
Bye Netgear
MimiTN
Guide
Feb 02, 2022
Hi -

I'd love to share my Netgear Armor experience.

I have an RBR750, purchased 6 months ago to replace a Netgear Nighthawk to gain mesh and home device network security, firmware is latest. I have the same issue on all of my streaming devices - Armor on, buffering, Armor off, no buffering AT ALL. It is pretty clear Armor is causing the problem. And it's pretty clear from all of the posts in the forums that Armor is 1. confusing/frustrating to install/monitor (the app is horrid: very sparse Armor installation instructions, and Armor, when installed and on, the app doesn't even reflect devices correctly, yet the website does), 2. causes dropping or throttling of your internet connection or is doing some kind of scan that interferes with it and 3. that Netgear support has degraded to the point that now you actually have to pay them to get an answer to an issue they created if you've owned your product more than 90 days (and good luck then even finding a tech that can answer your question and even more good luck getting a solution because this situation has existed since this partnership). There is no amount of rebooting, uninstalling/reinstalling, etc. that fixes it and apparently, it's a known issue that they so far haven't been able to fix or are unwilling to address.

It is absolutely ridiculous that Netgear/Bitdefender released this device in this state. Netgear should offer refunds to their customers for this router, since a big selling point was the Bitdefender being built in and working. I am now not a fan of Netgear, nor Bitdefender. So unfortunate after probably 20 years of owning Netgear products, but my next router will not be a Netgear and I will definitely think twice before purchasing any Bitdefender product!
- John_Ba
  Luminary
  Feb 02, 2022
  Some other things are these posts are totally ignored and Netgear with Armor are pushing a really old version of Bitdefender. Bitdefender is a quite good product but give it to Netgear and Armor is what you get!
- BruKat
  Aspirant
  Feb 02, 2022
  MimiTN
  Excellent post. I tried also to no avail to get issues fixed.
  I have always had Netgear, for the first time i switched to Lynsky and it is an awesome router with no brain bleeds trying to figure things out
pgbachman
Aspirant
May 05, 2022
Very disappointed in the Armor for iOS / iPadOS (Bitdefender Mobile 4.0.0)

I'm seeing the same problem reported by other users - https://community.netgear.com/t5/NETGEAR-Armor/Armor-VPN-prevents-loading-most-webpages/m-p/2211239/highlight/false#M6098 - stalling frequently while loading anything that accesses. the internet.

It is impacting two iPads and two iPhones. Lately it has become so bad that one iPad won't go more than 15 minutes without getting into the stalling scenario. I finally had to permanently pause the web protection to get my wife's iPad and iPhone to where she can use them. My next step is to remove the app from the iPads and iPhones.

I have used other VPN-based apps before - CloudFlare's 1.1.1.1 Secure DNS app - and had zero problems. That suggests it isn't an iOS / iPadOS problem but rather an Armor / Bitdefender issue.

Devices: iPhone 10 Max Pro, iPhone 12 Max Pro, iPad Pro 12.9" 1st Gen, iPad Pro 11" 3rd Gen
OS: iOS 15.4.1 (both phones), iPad OS 15.4.1 (both iPads)

Problem has existed through multiple iOS / iPadOS releases over about the last year. Please advise if you are working on this?

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Share Your NETGEAR Armor Experience