Setup and Monitoring

If you purchase the NETGEAR Nighthawk M5 mobile router, chances are the battery will not be charged out of the box as it ships separately and isn't pre-installed. Powering on the device by pressing the power button will thus prompt you to charge it before setting up the NETGEAR Nighthawk M5. Use the time to install the nano SIM card. Once the battery is charged sufficiently, the router should automatically detect and connect to the 5G or LTE network of your choice, and the display will show as much. The display is still a weak point, however, with the user experience akin to a smartphone from over a decade ago because of the low resolution, although touch screen response does appear slightly better than on the Nighthawk M2 with a very similar, if not identical, display.

You can set up most of the router even without a nano SIM card, and I was keen to save the time available on my prepaid SIM card for testing. As such, the video above goes through the various operations of the Nighthawk M5 without a working SIM card installed, which doesn't change the scope of this section. The router can be used completely independently of any monitoring web dashboard, console, or app, and that's where the 2.4" touch screen LCD panel comes in. You will be asked to choose the language before going through the WiFi standby settings for battery life, which range from five minutes to never if charged all the time. Indeed, as with any WiFi router, it will generate a WiFi network, or two given the separate 2.4 and 5 GHz networks it sends out, and these can be customized further with the capacitive buttons and display that has well-laid-out buttons. The design and layout of these integrated controls is intuitive, which helps get around an otherwise laggy touch screen. A larger, more responsive screen would have been great, but I acknowledge that re-using the same components keeps production cost low, savings NETGEAR is hopefully passing on to end users.

The software menu and control options are extensive, especially compared to what you might have expected from an integrated display. You pretty much have all you can think of, and there are some other options externally as laid out in the user manual which allow for more features, including selecting the USB Type C connection to be charging only even when connected to a PC and customizing the Quality of Service (QoS) settings for up to 32 connected devices. There is little reason to skip the more typical web browser firmware available here, and the display and integrated controls work best for a portable device such as this one.


NETGEAR, true to its history, maintains multiple methods of setup and monitoring. I originally expected the Nighthawk M5 to be supported by the Nighthawk mobile app, but that is clearly not the case. Instead, and again in typical NETGEAR confusion, it's a whole other mobile app called, well, NETGEAR Mobile available for both iOS and Android devices. One of these days, NETGEAR will hopefully realize just how many business units with individual apps they have to then consolidate most of them!


I decided to pop in my own SIM card after performance testing of the Nighthawk M5 was done; thus, ignore the LTE network on the device since it was tested in my living room that is at the edge of my cell carrier's current 5G support field. Regardless, I was not sure what to expect going in since the display on the Nighthawk M5 pretty much covers all you need, but knowing this is a companion app adds clarity. Think of it as a means to quickly check data usage, and how much is left before a self-configured limit kicks in. There are also settings and customizations galore here, most of which are on the device, but almost always laid out better and with more associated functions here. The app also gets around the laggy screen issue, so it is worth checking out for sure. Just be sure to note the default admin password on the back of the device with the battery removed, and ensure the correct carrier APIs are installed and selected the first time round.