Unfortunately can't use this at all since switching to 5G internet.

Overall I am very satisfied with it, installing and configuring it was easy, but it faces some issues recognizing iPhones/iPads since they mask the hardware ID and does not pass the name of the device all time. Subscription on the other hand is expansive, and I would recommend that manufacturer to lower their prices to capture a bigger market

after install, day 2 already see my kids activities in internet.Now is time to correct them with facts. thanks Circle.

This product is EXACTLY what I needed. Granular controls of all devices connected on the network. You can create profiles with sleeping/timeoff schedules, time limits per day, websites restrictions, so on. It even works on mobile devices when it's not connected to the home wifi. Control social media access, chats, and make websites completely disappear... YouTube doesn't exist in my house anymore, they simply can't access it on any device on the wifi... GENIUS. If you want to take control of what the kids are listening too and stop all this terrible content they end up watching, or simply stop the addiction or at least control it, this is what you need.

So far so good. This device does what the documentation says it does. My kids don't like it at all! My only negative comment would be the 1 year subscription cost is a bit excessive.

I am very happy with Circle Home Plus (2nd Gen). It was easy to setup when using the simple instructions booklet. I am happy to be able to manage bedtimes, off times, time limits and to set filters. I did notice our connection speed was a little slower but nothing major and we are due for an upgrade anyway. Also, I had a question and contacted customer service using the online chat option on the meet circle website. I received immediate assistance from a knowledgeable individual. It was a great experience. Only negative is that most gestures are premium so you have to pay a monthly membership fee of approx. $10 currently in seems for this. However, with many the 1st year of premium is free.

I had the first generation model for the longest time and absolutely loved it! Had to switch to this version because of incompatibility with my modem and it is simply pointless. Between the circle being offline, and the circle being online but not tracking the usage despite devices showing up in the right profiles, it is like I have nothing in place at all.Customer service is great in that they are polite, respectful and ready to help, but ultimately have been unable to make it actually work. So ... don’t waste your time.

I -LOVE- this device. Loved the first Gen as well.My issue is, the 2nd Gen doesn’t appear to do anything different or better than the first. Same content filter, and you can set up your child’s devices on the Circle VPN, which is supposed to be able to shut down cell data, however after bedtime, I hear my daughter laughing with friends and sends me messages. I trust my daughter and this is more a test for me to impose guidelines, and test systems to create references for friends and family. As an IT and Security Professional, I believe I will always recommend this device as a fantastic way to moderate devices without Cellular/SIM capabilities, and set the level of expectation for young children trying to grow up submerged in this new stay-at-home, electronic world with devices in every hand.

Had this product since it came out and was working perfectly fine. I love it and kids hate it.I can end screen time during night time, get kids chores done and get family time back while real life is here to stay. While $15 dollar a month Canadian may cost me little more, it’s worth it when they go to others home, use public wifi or turn on LTE or 5G to bypass house rules on my own wifi network. It even has pause button to get family conversations going and dinner time going in public places.

This is the first kind of parental control device I've ever used, so I don't really have a basis for comparison aside from research. I'm a new parent taking in foster kids. I'm kind of new to ALL of it. The fact that I have this in my home allowed me to take placements with extra needs and/or supervision plans. Everything is monitored, and it's so easy to look at browsing history to see if the kiddos are using media when they shouldn't be. I caught one of them at 5am on the TV in the living room one day. I was able to look at what another was watching on youtube just to confirm it was kid-friendly without having to tell him to stop watching until I know that the youtuber was safe (which it was, it filters YouTube content, but you never know).I'm really surprised and happy with everything. It was a little difficult at first to get it set up, and actually the girl at CenturyLink helped me with that. I did end up getting a new modem for the internet, but since they have an easy-to-read list of compatible modems and routers, I found a perfect one that suited my needs.My android phone is the control center for it all, and its suprisingly intuitive. I've added all sorts of devices (mac's, PC's, fire tablets, iPad's, xbox's, nintendo/wii/switch, Samsung tv and fire tv, iPhone, 4 echo's, and much more!), and it was super easy. Instead of making profiles per kid (since it's regularly changing), I created groups to manage devices. I set bedtimes, offtimes, and rewards based on those. For example, they can use alexa from 7:15am to 9pm, but they can only use tablets/iPads, game consoles, and computers for 3 hours between 10am and 5:15pm. And then I've got it set per day so that school days are a lot more limited. And it's so easy to add a device to a group that way. It's a little tedious to set all the limits and whatnot, but it's worth it. Since I have all the groups set up, it takes 2 seconds to drop a new device into the appropriate group. And on a side note, if I want to use something after hours, it takes 2 seconds to either send a reward, turn off offtimes, or in my case I put the device in another group until I'm done using it. I just have to remember to put it back in the right group when I'm done.I've diligently used their presets for content based on age, but also went and customized it further. Most of these kids are used to playing mature games and tv or watching inappropriate YouTube content. Once they come here, it's all filtered out. Since it's all automatic, and they know it's coming, it filters out that argument of putting devices away, haha. Seriously, most of them time they're saving their games or places and turning off the devices before the internet even goes off now!Maybe this was all free before, but in my situation, it's worth the monthly fee. It takes kids 3 hours after stopping media for their growing brains to calm down and stop being affected by it. They don't need all the stimulation or older age content in their heads. This has been a wonderful and relatively easy way to limit all that until they can comprehend that choice for themselves.I feel as though the reviewers with low ratings are more upset that they have to pay for the service, and they aren't actually reviewing the actual product. There aren't many other parental control devices out there, and this is definitely one of the better ones (according to my own research which I did for 6 months straight before becoming a certified foster parent). All the other decent ones charge fees too.I haven't had any issues with it slowing internet or randomly stopping internet. We lost power one time during a lightning storm, and I had to do a hard reset to bring it back up, but that was it. I've had it for 4 months now and have none of the issues anyone else has mentioned. Again, I did get an approved modem/router combo too, and that could be the difference. I've turned off and on the internet more than a few times (because daaaang kids make things so loud and I wanted to sleep in, haha) and again no issues there except for kids not letting me sleep in because the internet won't work.All in all, I'm happy with this device. Maybe limit your coffee a few times a month if you think the monthly fee is too much. Is there a coffee filter for that (pun intended).

I was enthusiastic about this and it sounds pretty great. Especially the bedtime feature. In reality, it took me 3 hours to set up and it kept kicking me out of the circle app. Once I had it hooked up and all our families phones connected then it slowed down our internet so much that none of us can use our phones. I finally just unplugged it. We have rural Canadian internet and an intermittent 3 G network. Perhaps it will work as intended in a better service area? I am disappointed and out all my money as I bought it a couple of months ago and just set it up now. I’ve missed the return window. I do not recommend this product.

While I'm sure the Circle does what it's advertised to do, filter internet content and meter screen time, it comes with too many disadvantages.The first is that is slows down the Internet for all devices connected to it. Running SpeedTest on my iPad I get 28 Mbps with Circle, 83 Mbps without. It is noticeably slow during web browsing. Images especially take a long time to appear.Secondly devices randomly get "disconnected" from Circle. Then all internet is stopped on that device. It comes back eventually or after a reboot, but this is still unacceptable.Thirdly it assumes every device is only ever used by one person. This is not realistic. We allow our kids to use our desktop and laptop devices for their screen time. But to meter their access we would need to re-assign these devices to their profile in the Circle app, and then re-assign them back to the parents when they are done. This is much too much a hassle.I create separate login accounts for my children on my desktop and laptops. I assumed that the Circle device and software could see who is using the device by their login username and meter access appropriately. But no.Fourthly, you can only manage the Circle device through an app on your phone. For basic use this is OK. But for setting up custom whitelists or blacklists for the children this UI is terrible. You can't manage a list of hundreds of sites from a 4 inch screen.Fifthly, it operates via "ARP spoofing". It pretends to be your router. I know something about networking and with this device connected to my network, I never knew what was connected to what.After dealing with all the above, I don't even know if metering screen time and site filtering even worked. It was too much of a hassle to figure out.Not recommended.

Update: We returned it and I changed my review to a 1 star. After much frustration, we just gave up.This is just OK. We purchased this item, as I'm sure most did, to help us limit our kids' screen time, especially when we are away.First the good:It kind of does what it says it will do. Once you set up the app, install the device and figure out which device has which address (it isn't always immediately clear, but there are step by step instructions to figure it out...no big deal) and install the hardware, you are good to go. It will allow you to remotely shut the entire internet off, or just particular devices. I like this feature because if my daughter has done what she is supposed to, but my son hasn't, I can turn the internet capability of his devices off, while leaving my daughter's on....and vise versa.The Bad: First, it is not nearly as user friendly as the video suggests! Not even close! I am fairly tech savvy, but I have dedicated far too much of my life to figuring the system out. Turning a device's internet capabilities off is easy and very reliable (on a lazy Sunday morning around 11:30, haven't not heard from either of my kids, I turned the internet off. My wife and I started counting to 10 and before we got to 7, both kids were out wondering what was going on). Turning it back on, however...not so easy. I turned it back on and the devices still didn't connect. I ended up having to remove them from "managed device" in order for them to be able to use the internet. I rebooted the devices, the internet, the Circle Box, but nothing worked except removing them altogether. This is frustrating because as far as I can tell, that means I am unable to see what sites they are visiting or limit their time. Second, it does nothing for non-internet based apps or calling or texting. This may seem obvious, but judging from a few other reviews, I thought I would mention it.The Ugly: If you have a Kindle device that you want to manage, I offer 3 choices: Throw away the Kindle, don't use Circle to manage the Kindle or don't buy Circle. Apparently Kindles, like ET, "phone home" constantly and Circle isn't able to distinguish between that and your kid watching You Tube. Soooooo.....if you are setting a time limit for your child, Kindle's constant need to call the mothership will eat up your child's screen time. Needless to say that doesn't go over well with a child who already thinks you're the worst parent ever for even suggesting a time limit. The only way to make a Kindle not booty-call Bezos every two minutes is to turn it off altogether (I'm sure you're child, having a much better memory than mine, will remember every time) or put it as an "unmanaged device." See problems with that above.So that is my review of Circle Home Plus. We've decided to keep it, since it kind of does what is says, and in the hopes that there is a software or tech support fix for most or all of the issues we are having. Happy parenting!