NETGEAR Nighthawk M6 Pro Mobile Hotspot 5G mmWave, 8Gbps, Unlocked, AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon International Roaming 125 Countries, WiFi 6E, Portable Device for Travel, Modem Wireless Router (MR6550)

Excellent source of emergency internet...with some "Netgear things". My caveats are as follows: 1) I have fiber as my primary internet, this review is NOT for the LM1200 as a "daily driver". 2) I do not YET have an external antenna so this review is NOT to discuss performance. 3) I use GoogleFi, so my experience is limited to Tmobile network via googleFi. The Good: 1) It is small, my 5 port switch, and GoogleWifi route nest nicely on top of this unit. 2) Powered via USBC! and although the manual specifically says to use their adapter...it works fine as long as your power brick outputs enough watts per port for all your connected devices. I have one power brick powering my 5port switch, GoogleWifi router, and the LM1200 - each device draws <20watts and each port can output >20watts continuously. This saves plugs on my battery backup. 3) It supports failover* its just not very graceful in my application (see the bad). 4) you can turn the LEDs off! (a horribly underrated feature and something I wish would catch on). 5) Supports external antenna connections. The bad: 1) My unit did not support failover outright; needed a firmware update. My quick install pamphlet did at least say that failover would be implemented in a software update. 2) In typical Netgear fashion, the auto firmware update failed to find an update and I had to download it onto my PC then upload it to the device. 3) I did my tests with the LM1200 in bridge mode. When failover occurs, the LM1200 reboots when switching to LTE and then reboots again when returning to broadband; so you will have 30-60s disconnects when switching. This may not be an issue when the LM1200 is acting as the router...but GoogleWifi wont work at all if it is double-nat'ed so I did not attempt to troubleshoot this. The indifferent: 1) No built-in antenna and therefore unassisted speeds are poor. A warning should be more obvious that an antenna is required not optional.

We tried to switch from Spectrum ($75 a month) to T-Mobile's 5G WiFi a while back to save some money, which was $40 a month. In short, I could never shut down Spectrum because the 5G WiFi is constantly losing contact with the cellular towers, so we'd have to reboot it about once a day. It's on the top floor of the house, so someone had to constantly go up and down the stairs to reset it. Finally gave up. Negotiated a new price of $30 for Spectrum, but we still need a back up because every once in a while Spectrum goes out. We live in a semi-rural area where storms and such can cause problems. So I explored this thing... I bought the LM1200 version about a month ago, and ordered another cellphone "line" from T-Mobile, which costs us $15 a month. They sent me the SIM, which I first plugged into my phone to make sure it was working, then plugged it into this thing and turned it on. Very easy setup. Connected it to a WiFi router I had, and magic! It all works as intended. Of course, it is running at 4G LTE speed, to the device. When I connect various PCs and Phones to it from throughout our house through the WiFi router, I'm seeing speeds of around 18 Gig. That is, until we hit our data limit with T-Mobile. Then T-Mobile does not throttle our data, but they do deprioritize it. So when local cellular traffic is heavy, Our WiFi can slow down to 1 GB or less, which is slow, but better than being disconnected when Spectrum goes off line. All critical things such as our security system, etc. remain on line, and internet access via our PC is still functional but can take few seconds to load. The quality seems good. I did add external antennas that are supposed to help improve the 4G LTE signal, which cost about $10 and needed small adapters, but it was not apparent to me they materially helped with the signal strength, but maybe. Overall, very pleased. Works as expected and as a back up system, after the upfront costs, saves us about $25 a month. Highly recommended. Update: It's been 3 months since I wrote the above review. At this point, I'd give it 5.5 stars. This thing works great. We have only *had* to use it once when Spectrum was down for a few hours, but about once every 3 weeks I log into it just to see if it is working, and so far, every time it has been and works great. Again, not as fast as Spectrum, but for $15 a month, in a crunch it is great.

I have a Netgear LB1120 LTE modem as a backup for my home network; I thought this would be a good upgrade to 5G. I was wrong. For a whopping $700, I expected this to function, but it barely does. Half the time it would struggle to actually hand out an IP over the LAN port (inconsistent). If you enable IP Passthrough mode, you can't change the admin IP address -- specifically, you CAN (and you have to also change the DHCP range, even though that's irrelevant), and then it forces you to reboot, and the screen will show the new IP address, but the old one still works and the new one won't, but if you change it BEFORE enabling passthrough (then reboot), and then enable passthrough... it works. It doesn't help that the touchscreen is super laggy and frustrating to interact with. But remember the inconsistent IP assignment when working as a router (passthrough off)? Same issue with Passthrough... it was inconsistent. And the device takes 5 minutes to reboot.... which you have to do any time you change nearly any setting other than turning WiFi on/off. Even installing/removing the battery while plugged into the wall causes an error message on the screen saying it has to reboot to change the "Power Mode" setting... while it's still on and powered, but adding/removing the battery causes it to change some setting... that requires a reboot. If you start it out-of-the-box for the first time before installing the battery, it will also immediately boot to that error/warning... wait 5 minutes to make sure you see it, and THEN reboot. And, in the 3 short hours I was trying to get this to work at all, it somehow decided my APN setting was wrong and stated showing the network as 000-00 and just wouldn't connect. Manually selecting the correct APN for my carrier caused to to complain and throw errors about how this was OBVIOUSLY wrong. Reboot. Again. The real cherry on top here was that when it DID give out an IP address, it caused my router (an Ubiquiti UDM-SE) to lock up for 10-20 seconds every few minutes. I don't understand how or why, and it was the same in NAT/Router mode and in Passthrough/Bridge mode. If this was a $100 device, I'd probably debug it and poke at it with Wireshark and see what packets it is sending out the LAN port, but for $700? I expect some amount of QA and polish... and a functioning device out of the box. As such, I'm just returning it. I'm sure it's probably fine if you're using it as a hotspot, but as-is, this thing doesn't function as a 5G modem for your network and is incredibly frustrating and fiddly to even try.

Works great if you just need a very basic failover solution. Speeds are perfectly sufficient for streaming, though you might struggle with 4K. Bridge mode is appreciated. Easy setup if you have some networking experience. Those who don't will probably need to do some googling. Attaching antennas did nothing. It might be CPU limited, but I can't complain for the price.

It is what it is. LTE is getting ready to be slowly phased out, but for $25 it was the most economical option for a cellular failover to my primary home internet at the moment. I paired it with a US Mobile SIM card and plugged in the correct APN settings, and was off to the races. Well, more like the slow walks. But hey, it works! I have LTE failover for my home now, and although it’s not that fast (I can only get band 71 where I am), it works reliably for essentials at about 12-15 Mbits when my main goes out. It’s advertised to support up to 150 Mbits, but that’s probably on a different band with a stronger signal. Now for the nerdy parts. The LM1200 I received was NOT the retail LM1200-100NAS. It was the carrier-variant model LM1200-111NAS, and had a custom engineering firmware on it that had band 71 disabled. After some troubleshooting, I managed to flash an updated firmware on it and solved that problem, however the carrier-variant firmware still has some limitations compared to the retail version. In short, some of the granular settings are just gone, and you can’t do things like band-locking or changing which port serves the public IP passthrough. You CAN put the box in router mode, but if you’re using it as failover on a separate WAN port of your router, you’ll have to deal with double-NAT, so probably better leaving it in bridge mode. But in bridge mode, you can’t change the management IP, and so that can cause some headaches. With some effort, you can change the management IP in router mode and then go back to bridge mode, but that brings its own host of problems as well since the public IP and management are both served through the same LAN port on the modem. I finally just had to create a static route on my WAN2 port on my router, so I can access the management UI of the modem at any time. That works, but it was annoying to have to resort to that. If you want to get VERY nerdy, like engineering level, enabling diagnostic mode allows you to telnet into the LM1200 on port 5510, and you have access to some more commands in there, potentially allowing further modifications to be made that you can’t do in the GUI. But that is going to be outside most people’s comfort zones. All in all, for the price and for my particular use case, it’s fine. I’ll probably upgrade to a 5G modem in the future, once the prices come down a bit on those. Until then, this LTE modem will do the job.

Works perfect, inserted sim and powered on, everything auto configured. Please note to buyers, this is a cellular modem only with wired Ethernet connections. There is no wifi whatsoever with this device.

Consumer Cellular does not (yet) sell mobile hotspot units, but they can provide a sim for an unlocked unit -- with no guarantees, of course. We recently transferred service from Verizon, where we had several mobile hotspots running for our work-from home needs. We live in a rather remote area, but have good cellular coverage, and no cabled internet. The cellular networks have worked exceptionally well for us. CC usually uses AT&T or T-Mobile networks, so we had hopes for the Netgear device. We took a chance on this Netgear device when the Inseego Jetpack unit from Verizon crashed and burned 2 days after moving it over. Conspiracy theories aside, the Inseego unit was great, but gave us grief with the Consumer Cellular sim right off the bat. One Inseego unit is still working -- don't know why. But, the second Inseego unit is now ready for recycling. Got the Netgear unit within hours from Amazon, thankfully. Moved the CC sim to the unit, fired it up, allowed it to do a firmware update, and we're now off to the races. Everything is connecting well to the unit. It immediately found the proper APN for CC and I think it is working better than the old unit. We may yet have to upgrade the remaining Inseego unit - we'll see if it crashes. Although the Netgfear is a little pricey, its reliability, connection, and wifi coverage is excellent. We're back to work! Note we have not experienced the issues some others there have noted. We did not have to use Netgear's app to set things up; it was immediately accessible via our laptop browser with plenty of configuration options. The APN can be manually configured, if needed. So, we certainly have no complaints. Had this unit updated and running in minutes.

July 2025 Update: I see that Netgear is still selling this model. They've provided no updates that improve battery, reduce overheating, or even bump the cpu or cellular modem and still selling it for the ridiculously high price of ~$500. Very few firmware updates. Slow to latch onto cell network (far slower than your $300 basic smartphone). In a nutshell, steer clear. Previous review: So far the product has worked well on T-Mobile and AT&T's networks. It has three strikes against it though, especially considering the price: 1. Poor color choice. These devices are often used outdoors for live streaming sports. On a summer day the black case gets quite hot and you run the risk of the unit shutting down with little warning. Had they mad the unit white it might keep the unit just a bit cooler. 2. Another poor design choice by NetGear is the battery cover. While the unit feels pretty solid the battery cover is a flimsy piece of plastic that just uses a friction fit to stay attached. While I've only had the unit for a few weeks the back cover has already fallen off several times just in daily use and transportation. Be prepared to use tape to keep it attached to the main unit. 3. Boot time: be prepared for the device to take far longer to boot up and get signal compared with your run-of-the-mill smart phone. It is slow to the point of being quite bewildering as to what decision(s) Netgear engineers made that resulted in this. With each firmware update I eagerly hope to see an improvement but so far they haven’t fixed it. It’s likely they went with older chip technologies to save money and give better margins, which means it won’t be possible to improve with firmware updates. So at a price point that is as high as many leading smartphones, this device deserves no more than 2 starts