Circle 1st generation Reviews

To all the angry teenagers

thatbillgiy

Get over it. Your parents are responsible not only for you, but anything elicit you may do on the internet. If you really need that much freedom, get a job and start your own household.

I’m a teenager, but hear me out. There is no use for this, except building mistrust between people. This device is a horrible excuse for attempted remote parenting for the “tech world” I’ve happened to program a similar app, that can ARP spoof devices off a local network - without a stupid Circle device. It works perfectly and with similar function to Circle. There is a hack that can knock the Circle off the network, but when I brought it up to customer support, I got this response. (07:40:27 PM) name hidden: I'm unable to speak with you anymore about the Circle device. Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Do current for Apps

LordBennett

If you buying this with Netgear be aware it is not like circle plus. This is an outdated and non-functioning for new apps. It filters apps like Disney+ and discovery plus which most of my kids spend their time on. I find it ironic that a Disney circle blocks their own Disney+ App however it goes to show when the last time an update happened on this. We like Disney Circle. However, this version that came with our Netgear router is trash. It needs an update desperately.

Crashes Wi-Fi

Jeremy Pozderac

After using this I have constant daily Wi-Fi crashes and have to restart my router every time. I've tried uninstalling and disabling, all of my firmware is up to date and have tried rebooting my network. Extremely irritating and wish I had never implemented this.

Ok hear me out

Jerebud

I am a high school student, so if you want to take my information about this app as biased then go ahead and keep scrolling. But for those who want to see a formal review of this concept in the perspective of the child, keep reading. The idea of circle is understandable, as all parents should be concerned about what their children are doing online and should protect them from the horrible aspects that the internet can provide. But the fact that parents are spending their money on a network device that blocks out house WiFi (and cellular service) which they’re ALSO paying for is considered acceptable and convenient? I don’t see how this logically connects to every necessary part of the situation. I don’t see how I’ll be able to contact my parents during a serious emergency while on the go if my internet is paused. I don’t see how I’ll be able to complete all my online school work if my parents have an “all categories” limit set to 3 hours(I’ve tried talking to them about that, they just give me a 15 minute reward over and over which wastes all of our time. Lots of parents are passive-aggressive like mine). I don’t see how the whole mechanism is going to work, if I’m spending my HARD EARNED money on cellular data, and they’re just gonna spend THEIR money to block it out. Yeah, the whole situation just wasn’t completely thought out by the developers. It is a brilliant idea to help protect children, but the whole thing just isn’t very convenient for the whole party. Also, circle just shouldn’t be necessary for kids older than the age of 16, since they’ll be a legal adult in just <2 years and they’ll have to figure out how to manage their own screen time by themselves eventually. Parents, if you’re planning on getting yourself this network-killing device, please take a moment to look at yourself, how your relationship with your children will be, and if it’s going to be beneficial for EVERY part of their life(including online school!). Please be aware that your children will feel punished, and will cause trust issues between you guys. If your children have some screen time problems right now, I would deeply imply having a friendly conversation with them about it first before surprising them with a restriction right out of the blue. It’s like trying to quit smoking cold-turkey(not like they’re actually smoking, just take it as a simile). As a teenager who has experience with parents who ghostly put restrictions on me whenever they want without telling me, it’s a bit traumatizing. But, if you’re a good parent and your kids know it, and putting restrictions for them is necessary, and all your limits you provide them are fully thought out, OR, your children are just utterly psychotic and won’t get their eyes off a screen for less than 10 hours a day, then go ahead and get Circle. But please, be careful. I’m saying this for the sake of the kids :c

Had high hopes

JaFu7

So this service came stock with my Netgear Nighthawk R7000. Set up was easy, but that’s about all the good stuff that I’m going to say about this service. I signed up for the premium service plan, but the only thing that it worked well in doing was filtering the sites that I had blocked. None of the other features ever worked. The visited sites tab for each profile never populated and always indicated that no one was going to any sites which is impossible since they were clearly going to the sites right in front of me. From day one, this service has caused nothing but issues with DNS resolution. It’s either the circle service or the router itself. Either way, I’m canceling the service and returning the router to the store.

Subscription features will not work

cdrmills

I have a Netgear router, I pay for the subscription, but none of the features work. I cannot get any support from circle or Netgear in this, they both say it is the other’s issue. I deleted the app and then downloaded it, but even with my code it will not load my account any more. Beware if this happens to you as you will have to abandon circle

Absolutely disgusting

biueprint

This app can cause huge rifts between parent and child— it makes the child have trust issues as this is a huge breach of privacy while making the parent think that they have absolute authority over every aspect of the other’s life, in which they don’t. This leads to huge arguments thanks to miscommunication and may possibly ruin the relationship for a long time, if not forever. I know this because it’s happened to me. It’s absolutely disgusting and I hope that if you are another parent reading this, please do not install it if you don’t want irreversible damage.

Broken subscription

Dark4181

This app has always been janky, but now it is broken. I have an active subscription through my Apple account, but the app has apparently lost the link. I’m unable to restore purchase in the app, it says no subscription found. I can’t find any recourse for resolution.

Needs update for iOS 15 for premium features

Mdcmarty

Needs update for iOS 15 so premium features will work

Circle 1st generation Reviews – Page 4