NETGEAR Insight Access Points Reviews

I have a large home LAN with multiple WiFi access points. I have four connected and I have a bunch of routers.

I only use the solution's app on the iPhone, version 6.2.20.

In terms of the WiFi, it has been easy to manage updates, but I'm having to find multiple solutions to manage the entire network, which is not what the goal was. The goal was to have one solution to manage the entire network. I do not have that with Insight.

From the WiFi aspect, it's very intuitive and easy to use. The solution enables me to manage my entire WiFi from anywhere in the world, but when it comes to port control management of the entire network, I cannot use it for that.

I have no problem with the actual workings of the hardware, including the Insight Access Points throughput speeds.

The biggest issue I've had is that it works very well with the WiFi, but it does not offer any assistance at all with the routers. You can't control them or manage them at all. As soon as you want to use anything on the network side—because I have multiple 28-port switches—you can't manage them using this app.

I can't manage everything from one place. I still have to log in to individual devices and work with them that way. I was looking for a solution that would allow one-stop management and I've yet to find it.

I've talked to their tech support multiple times and they've never suggested a way to manage everything. They said that they don't offer that solution. They gave me a list of items that are managed by the Insight solution and the routers are not in there.

I have been using NETGEAR Insight Access Points for a little over a year.

From the WiFi side, the stability has been fine.

I've never had a network this large. Prior to this, it was just very small networks.

Because of the large network I have, I had a third party—Network Advocates, out of Louisville, Kentucky—set it up, so it was easy to get done that way. My experience with them during the initial setup was very good. I'm actually waiting for additional hardware to show up, so they will be involved in continuing support.

We've got the initial setup accomplished within a day. We had a network topology laid out prior to installation and it was just a matter of bringing up the devices in the topology and bringing them online.

The only maintenance on the solution, from my side, post-deployment, is to accept updates.

There isn't a return on investment because I'm not a business. I have not had any additional cost outlay with technical support to keep the system up. From that point of view, I've not had an ongoing cost.

I looked at Cisco and some other large vendors for doing large networks. The primary reason I went with NETGEAR was cost. The others wanted to charge a premium for their solutions and I did not think it was necessary for the quality that I needed, for the quality I thought I was getting with NETGEAR. So I went that way. So far, I'm happy with that.

The biggest thing is understanding how you're going to do your management, and making sure that the solution you're looking at is an end-to-end solution for your network management needs.

Our use case is to provide WiFi access for my customers with remote management of their WiFi devices.

The feature I consider most valuable is to be able to configure the WiFi devices and to see utilization remotely, or from the cloud.

A con is the backend system which is very, very slow. I don't understand why that has to be so slow when this is 2021. There should be no web application that is slow, especially from a company as large as NETGEAR. I would suggest they speed up the backend portal.

Another con is with the Insight Portal, and I've heard other people talk about this before as well. It's not too user-friendly. It's a nice UI, very user-friendly to the eyes, but as far as usability, I think it needs to be revamped. I suggest giving it a little more functionality and  revamp the way that the user interface is designed to be a little bit more user friendly.

I've been using it for about a year.

I've had no stability issues with the solution. There a few instances when the switches will go offline and I'll have to ask the customer to reboot them. Everything else seems to be more stable than the switches and pretty much rock solid once they are set up and configured. They just run.

I think it's something you can scale easily with. The scalability is there because it's based on how many devices the client will need. The switches are, for example, the 24-Port and 44-Port and have SFP+ ports. So that's good and gives me 10 Gigabits between switches.

I think technical support leaves a little bit to be desired. I do get quick responses, but it's very difficult to come to a complete resolution with the support. I don't know if it's because I'm getting a first tier guy for something that may be needed a little bit higher tier, but the support definitely needs to be ramped up.

Prior to NETGEAR, I was using switches and WiFi devices from Open Mesh. I switched to NETGEAR because Open Mesh had a licensing model I did not like. Also, their production for newer technology was kind of stagnant. For example, they still don't have a WiFi 6 solution yet, and most of their switches don't even have 10 gig ports in them.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. I used the cloud backend to configure everything and then I either send the WiFi devices to the customer or I go on premises to install. Once you set up that first or second device then it's pretty quick and easy.

Usually when I get the device, like a switch, I'll bring it into my test lab and plug it in. I then register it under that customer in the portal backend, configure it, and then turn it off and ship it out. If it's just one switch and one AP it probably takes 30 minutes.

It's a well-priced solution for smaller businesses that have five to 80 devices. I definitely think my clients have seen a return on their investment.

In terms of pricing and licensing, the NETGEAR solution is reasonable. I usually get the Pro license, which is a little bit more expensive. Their pricing is perfect for smaller businesses who are money and budget conscious. There are a lot of other solutions out there that are two to three times more expensive.

Prior to NETGEAR, I didn't evaluate other vendors as far as testing them or anything like that. I just researched a few other vendors like Cisco Meraki. Meraki has excellent firewalls, which I use, but their switches and WiFi devices are too expensive.

I researched Ubiquiti Access Points heavily, but I do not like them because of the fact that one, you have to have a controller to control them and two, their support is email only.

I use the NETGEAR Insight management solution and in terms of user-friendliness, there are a lot of pros and cons. The pros are definitely that I can see a complete overview of all of my devices out there. The ability to configure the devices from the cloud is a huge plus.

The Insight management solution provides me with network management, monitoring and service deployment without having to go site to site. The solution enables me to manage my entire network from anywhere in the world. This increases my effectiveness. I have basically built my company to be mobile first. We rely heavily on taking care of our customers, via iPads and iPhones, versus having to run to a computer every time something happens.

It's awesome that the Insight management solution doesn't require additional cloud controller appliances. It's a big plus and one of the reasons I chose the solution. If I don't need another piece of hardware somewhere then that's a big plus for me.

One of the reasons I switched to NETGEAR is for their awesome Access Points throughput speeds. I was definitely using another brand before and I was getting twice the bandwidth through the NETGEAR devices.

We also use the Insight Pro management tool and it's great for managing multiple sites and businesses from a single interface and login. We can see an overview of all our customers on our phone or tablet screen. It's a great tool for us.

Being able to configure an Access Point and ship it to another location and then manage the device remotely definitely helped us a lot rather than having to truck out to somebody. It also allows me to have customers in various areas of the country where maybe I would not have had them before.

We use it for guest WiFi.

The most valuable features are

• online access
• easy to control
• easy set up.

Also, when multiple users get onto it, more than 100 folks, the internet does not crash. It's steady.

We use NETGEAR's Insight management solution to do off-property controls. It is user-friendly and provides network management, monitoring, and service deployment across multiple remote and local sites. That means I don't have to be physically at a location to do things if I want to make any changes to the network. It saves time and money. 

I also use the Insight management solution app on my phone. That's how I set up my devices. It's pretty quick for managing access points and it alerts me right away if something goes wrong. If the unit is down, you know right away. It's very important to me that I am able to manage my entire network from anywhere. This is a hotel and we have about 100 guests a day. People don't like it if the network goes down, and if customers don't like something they leave. We want to have a steady network for everybody to use, for business purposes or whatever purpose they need it for. It is a necessity.

NETGEAR's throughput speed is pretty good. It's better than what I was using before.

The hardware is great. Software-wise, they need to provide the ability to kick users out. If multiple users are abusing the system or the network, I should be able to block them for a time and, when I need to unblock them, I should be able to do so by using their MAC ID. That feature might already be there and I just don't know about it. But I haven't called NETGEAR about it yet because I just haven't had time.

I have been using NETGEAR Insight Access Points for about six months.

I was using Ubiquity's lower model, the one which is $100 a piece. I spent about $99 more for NETGEAR, but got better quality and a better device with better coverage. With Ubiquity I was having so many issues with users being knocked out from the login because of too many users logging in at the same time. I haven't seen that issue in the six months since we started using NETGEAR.

Each one takes about six minutes to set up.

I bought one to try out and I liked it and then bought about nine more.

Price-wise, it is a little too high, about $20 higher than what it should be, but it's worth it. It's cheaper than Cisco's access point, but the products are not apples to apples.

I looked at other solutions, including Ubiquity, but the performance of NETGEAR was better. I had been using a router and modem from NETGEAR for a long time. It's easy to set up and quick to respond, compared to Linksys or Ubiquity.

My advice would be to go ahead and switch to this one, because this is the best-performing device I have seen so far.

When you start doing multiple experiments, you end up with higher costs. I have learned from my mistake. I spent almost $2,300 to fix the internet for the hotel, and I could have done so for $1,000 with NETGEAR.

The solution provides full insight into the data being used but that feature doesn't affect me as much because I don't really focus on what people use the data on.

Overall, I would rate NETGEAR Insight Access Points at nine out of 10. The reasons it's not a 10 is because of the lack of user blocking and unblocking, and because the price could be a little bit cheaper.

I use it for a residential small business. I have a BR500 VPN Router and four WAC540 Access Points. I also have three GC108PP PoE Insight Switches and a fourth that is their bigger brother.

I now have the ability to remote access my network. That works extremely well. I can access it from any place. I don't need to be physically at the device. This saves me on time and travel.

I thought that the Insight management software would be more useful for me. It is a little difficult to navigate. I have ended up using the web GUI more than I do the Insight management.

I have some frustrations with the ease of use. It tends to be sluggish. The graphical interface is pretty, but not useful. They have this tree that shows connected devices, which makes no sense whatsoever because the labeling field of the tree truncates all the items to the point that it's almost useless. You can't even tell what it is. I would prefer a spreadsheet list of the gear as opposed to a graphical representation.

It is sluggish. If I go to reserve an IP address, it probably takes about 45 seconds, which doesn't seem like a lot. However, if you are trying to enter 60 devices, then it takes forever because each time you enter a device it has to reload and reset it, and that never takes effect until you reboot it. It just seems to be cumbersome.

I have used NETGEAR for the last nine months.

I have only had one concern in nine months. Some of the gear reset to default somehow. I don't know what happened, but that is what happened. I discovered it, fixed it, and it has never happened again. I live in a very old neighborhood. My house is 120-years-old. We have electrical issues. I don't know if it was caused by a brownout or blackout, but we have experienced both. So, it happened once, it cleared, and it's never happened again.

NETGEAR has been a very easy company to deal with. Everybody has been extremely helpful with whom I have crossed paths at the company, whether technical or sales. I wish I could afford to add a few more products to my system. Then, I would really love it.

I switched from Luxul based on my company's recommendation. Before Luxul, we were with Apple Enterprise.

NETGEAR Insight Access Points were far superior. That is kind of an unfair apples-to-apples comparison because I assume Luxul probably has managed switches and that sort of stuff, but I upgraded my class at the same time.

I found the initial setup straightforward. The product seemed to be self-discoverable. It also integrated well.

I deployed it in stages. I was replacing a competitive company's gear. I replaced the router first, then I replaced the access points, and then I replaced the switches. So, it was not all done at one time. This took about three hours.

I have actually had some concerns and problems with the setup. However, I am in somewhat of a unique location, which makes it pretty difficult.

The pricing seems to be reasonable.

Anybody who has the need or desire to move beyond consumer-grade, big-box, store available gear will be very pleased with this product.

For all the different models combined, I would give it an eight (out of 10).