Netgear Nighthawk M1 WiFi HotSpot Review
A Little History First
After spending 2 weeks onboard Knot At Sea with my new Nighthawk WiFi HotSpot connected to my iPad, I am very pleased with the performance of this little piece of technology. Back when we first started RV'ing, it was always a struggle to get a reliable internet connection with enough speed and consistency to do anything online. Trying to connect to and stay connected with a cell phone to a WiFi system that the RV campgrounds provide just wasn't usable. I bought a WiFi Repeater/Booster kit, thinking that would provide more throughput, but the real bottleneck was always the campground WiFi being bogged down by all the other campers logged in and sharing the bandwidth. Forget about streaming a movie or looking up something on YouTube...there just wasn't enough speed for anything useful.
Latest & Greatest Gadgets
There has been a lot of new technology and improvements in the past several years, especially in cellular data products. While I was researching what new products might be available to boost the WiFi signal from a campground provided connection, there are quite a few full-time RV'ers out there that recommended a stand-alone WiFi HotSpot with a cellular data plan that would provide a stable high speed internet connection capable of real office/work performance. The reviews I read and watched on YouTube pointed me to the Netgear Nighthawk M1 portable WiFi HotSpot. There are other hotspots that provide the same performance, but I liked the idea of the Netgear Nighthawk being portable with a rechargeable battery that you can carry with you where every you go. Some other hotspots have to be powered by a 110v power supply.
During my 2 weeks onboard and running the Nighthawk continuously, not once did I loose a connection or have to reboot it, there was just a continuous high speed internet connection for my iPad and our 2 cell phones connected to the Nighthawk. I really gave it a workout with my iPad, working back and forth with digital signature files and documents we were sharing with an associate on a business transaction. The Nighthawk didn't skip a beat.
Then one evening, as I was trying to find something worthwhile watching on our limited Antenna TV stations, I remembered the Fire TV Stick that was plugged into the back of our TV.
I had never been curious about these little sticks until now, and after setting it up and exploring what all these little devices have to offer, I WAS IMPRESSED. This is where my new Netgear Nighthawk M1 really shined. There's just about every channel you can imagine on the Fire TV Stick, including my favorites like, Netflix, YouTube, The Weather Channel, HBO and many other movie channels, including all the local networks to choose from.
Summary
At the end of the day, these 2 gadgets made our life in an RV feel more home-like. After all, in today's world, no matter where you are, you need reliable access to the internet, whether you're doing your banking online, sending your friends and family photos, emails and text messages, or looking for something to improve the RV on Amazon, watching reviews of the latest RV accessories, and even writing this blog. Our RV is now equipped with a high speed private WiFi hotspot that keeps us connected to the digital world. I've been doing speed comparisons using http://speedof.me and the throughput is variable at different times of the day, but the performance when streaming on the Fire TV Stick, which requires a high quality data stream, has been outstanding. One thing to mention here is that I have only been using the Nighthawk hotspot in and around an urban city location where cell coverage is maxed out. I am anxious to see what kind of performance I get when we are away from the big city data stream.
If you have any questions about this post, please put them in a comment to this blog post below.
Happy HotSpot Camping, see you on down the road somewhere.
Brent & Debbie Headberg
2016 Forest River Georgetown GT3 30x3
Knot At Sea
Amazon Links to the gear mentioned above:
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