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Forum Discussion
New Smart Parental Controls (from the V4.6.3.16_2.0.51 firmware on RBR850/RKB853)
Last night, my Orbi AX (RBK853) got updated with the new V4.6.3.16_2.0.51 firmware that has the new Smart Parental Controls. Being a Circle and Circle Plus user for years, I was really curious to se...
We just got a trial of the SPC with our latest upgrade - and it is not working well at all for us. We have been using it for 5 days, and it seems to be tracking internet use according to the history, but the time that is actually shown in the children's usage total is way below how long they are actually spending. For example, today it was saying that my daughter had been online for a total of 30 minutes, when she had been on for close to 2 hours. The history showed sites being visited, but it just want not adding up all her usage time.
The only time so far in this trial where it actually said that my two kids had reached their time limits, it did not actually stop my son's access to the internet on his laptop, despite indicating that his time was used up.
So it is definitely not reliable for us so far!
We will be contacting netgear support and hopefully we will be able to get it functioning as intended. I love the features that it is supposed to have.
While I love the integrated functionality of the parental control (and not having to run a separate app), compatibility and and better performance (when compared to running Circle Plus in compatibility mode on the RBK853), the limited features may be a deal breaker. For instance, I added "discord.com" as one of websites to block yet my son is able to continue using discord on his laptop. On Circle Plus, Discord shows up as an app and when I block Discord, it is blocked. But not on Netgear's Smart Parental Control feature.
WIth all these limitations, I am seriously considering now paying for the premium subscription when the trial ends. What sucks is that I paid for the Circle Plus premium (almost $200 for lifetime subscription) only to find that I had to run it in compatibility mode with the RBK853 and it drops the connection speed from 500+ Mbps down to less than 20 MBps!