Is the Nighthawk M2 able to charge its battery during operation?

[n3t]

My biggest gripe about the Nighthawk M1 is its inablitity to charge up its own internal battery while being used — unless you place it on a block of ice, that is.

This is because it includes a temperature sensor, and if the battery gets warmer than about 42° Celsius not only does the charging stop, but under heavy traffic the battery will even get discharged. There are quite a few threads here in this forum about this problem.¹

Monitoring the battery temperature is a good thing in general, but for the M1 the threshold was clearly chosen too low; allowing e.g. 52° Celsius should still be perfectly safe — and much more practical.

So how about the M2? Does it charge while being used?

¹) Yes, it's a problem, because it makes the M1 impossible for mobile/nomadic scenarios where one e.g. uses it a home, plugs if off from the charger to commute to work, connects the charger back again at the office, and so on. It is possible to operate the M1 stationary with the battery removed, but that's not exactly what I buy a mobile router for.

[W1lliam]

M2 has same problem as M1 to charge the battery while using it as the temperature goes high very quick and that would stop charing the battery, suggest to buy a charger which can accommodate the battery, both for W-10(M1) and W-10A(M2).

[griffo3287]

So am I correct in thinking that even if the battery fully discharges over time while plugged into a wall socket (which seems to be happening), it will continue to operate on mains power? We are a very small home office and I wouldn't describe us as heavy users, but until I saw this post couldn't figure out why the battery charge was diminishing even when plugged into mains power.

[W1lliam]

when your battery is drained completely, suggest you to charge the battery with external charger as it will be taking long hours to re-charge it, if it still alive. When you have complete drained out battery inserted into M1/M2, it might still able to re-charge but that would take longer hours, even longer than external charger, as you are using the machine while charging it.

[n3t]

The problem with the Nighthawk M1 (see above in the opening message of this thread) was solved by a firmware update which came out in autumn 2019 and which changed the charging behaviour so that the charging does now take place also with higher battery temperatures.

I.e. the Nighthawk M1 does now properly recharge even while being fully used and thus getting warm.

I don't have any insider knowledge but suppose that a similar firmware change will probably also be released for the Nighthawk M2 now that Netgear has addressed this problem on the M1. Maybe they already have with the most recent M2 firmware, I don't know.

If not, it might or might not be possible to operate the M2 continously with the battery being inserted and the M2 being connected to an external charger. One would have to try this out to be fully sure.

For the M1, it was definitely possible to operate it continously WITHOUT the battery. With the battery, it seemed that the M1 did somehow "refuse" to draw more than about 7W of power from the charger if the battery temperature was measured to be too high, and apparently (judging from posts in this forum) this was not enough for a 24/7 stable operation as it seems that load peaks may temporarily cause a higher power consumption, and if the battery was empty at such a moment the M1 could crash.

Without a battery, and connected to a Quick Charge capable charger which can deliver 9V at 2A (i.e. supply 18W or more of power; Quick Charge 2.0 and 3.0 work equally well), the M1 has always been able to run 24/7, and with the current firmware is will also work with the battery inserted.

For the M2, one would need to ask users who do run the M2 24/7 to be sure, but I suppose the situation should perhaps be the same as for the M1.