Samsung Galaxy S20 and Galaxy Tab 7 not connecting to Nighthawk MR60 5GHz wireless

[HenryW9264]

I have recently purchased the Nighthawk MR60 mesh system. I noticed that my Samsung phone Galaxy S20 5G FE and Galaxy tab S7 both connects to the 2.4GHz wireless network only. How do I make them connect to the 5GHz wireless?  I know both devices are 5GHz capable because they can connect to my other 5GHz wireless network.  I have plow through the app and web GUI and cannot find anyway to tell it to use 5GHz instead of 2.4GHz.   Even my Google Minis are connecting to the 5GHz so I'm surprised that my phone and tablet are not.  I did talk to the support and their answer is that the router automatically determines which one to connect.  If I want to have finer control, then I need to get a non-mesh model. Does anyone have experienced similar situation?  Any advice is appreciated.

[plemans]

Support was correct. 

its half the point of a mesh system to have the smart roaming and the bandsteering. It moves devices between router/satellite and bands as needed based on distance and bandwidth needs. 

[HenryW9264]

I'm deeply disappointed with this. My phone and tablet are sitting just as close to the router as the Google mini and yet the devices that require high bandwidth are forced to a lower 2.4GHz network.  I won't call that smart. 

[FURRYe38]

It's also up to devices to pick and choose where they connect too. 

[HenryW9264]

Umm, that contradicts to what the support said. Besides, there is only one SSID for both 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz so there is no way for me to tell the device to choose the frequency.  I just want to bring awareness of this and see if there are other Samsung owners out there seeing the same issue.  If there are netgear employees watching for feedback, I would like to see improvement on algorithm in the mesh system for determining the best connection for the devices or have an advance feature that allows the users to decide.   Thanks

[FURRYe38]

The one behavior and design about signal SSID name for both 2.4 and 5Ghz is something called SmartConnect. Something that came out years ago prior to MESH appearing. MESH systems just adopted this feature and for NG MESH systems they employ this for both there frequencies. I don't have this model, however, i presume it maybe same is the Orbi systems which use same feature. NG does not allow users to separate the SSIDs between the frequencies. So users do not have the ability to manipulate where devices connect to. So again, between the MESH system AND devices, it's up to devices where they connect too. Most phones AND pads are dual band and most prefer 5Ghz. If some are not connecting to 5Ghz, then there maybe a problem with the MESH System, FW or with the client device. 

One can try to help this some by turning down the power output of the MESH system to see if the device will migrate to 5Ghz by lowering the 2.4Ghz radio signal from 100% to 25%. Disable the wifi on the device for 5 seconds then back ON. At a distance, the device should conenct to the 5Ghz radio. 

Good Luck though.