NETGEAR Armor Reviews

by DJSFO

Bought a new Netgear Orbi 6 Wi-Fi router and Bitdefender came with it for one year. Very buggy app, parts don’t work, Even website instruction English is incomplete and can’t understand what they’re saying,the worst Technical Support I’ve ever had in my life by phone, chat, email it’s all bad. They appear to be in India and talk so fast I can’t understand them either. They don’t understand English and when I ask A question I get an answer for something else but what I asked about. The bit defender app is very buggy and I don’t see them doing anything about fixing the bugs?? Instructions for setting up bit defender or nonexistent except if you want to spend hours in days trying to look on the web, which I don’t have that time. Probably going to end up uninstalling at all.
Update…. Updated my iPhone to iOS 15.1 after talking to technical support stating that there would be no issues. That wasn’t true, the software update caused Orbi app to block all my devices but one. Then created a second device for my cell phone calling it Network and not allowing me to have bitdefender on my cell phone?? Then it took three days to try and delete the old iPhone device which wasn’t working anyway but not allowing the new device to be download with bitdefender protected which still is the case today??

by 253aaron

NETGEARArmor is very frustrating, after purchasing the annual subscription I have found this vpn will work for a few days then all of a sudden my internet doesn’t work and I have to turn the vpn off then on again, turn airplane mode on and off, or restart my phone. After contacting support several times their only fix is to uninstall and reinstall NETGEARArmor .

by Xmas Edition

Installed on iPhones: 8Plus and 12Pro. I knew NETGEARArmor would keep an eye on our surfing. Every time my husband would read his sports apps it would "block malicious" sites. Always centered on an add on a page. He always ignored them anyway. Would also block spam. Never figured those out. But the biggest problem was that the VPN it creates (that you can't turn off) was problematic. Admittedly it slowed the internet. A lot. Because it worked so hard to keep us "safe".

The last straw was when it tried to direct us from the 2K or 5K connections to our wireless router, depending on traffic. Supposedly you would choose the main connection in your settings and NETGEARArmor would decide where to direct you. This was a disaster! Our connections would stutter and stall and completely freeze. We had to manually change our WiFi setting back and forth between 2K and 5K to reconnect to the internet, constantly. Total pain.

We decided we really didn't need the VPN or traffic help at the cost of no internet. Uninstalled and we're back to normal speed with no stutter and dropped connections.

by SteveHC

I had a credit card on file in my Netgear account as I purchased my new router directly from the company. When I signed up for the “Armor from Bitdefender” add-on service I paid for it via PayPal. Turned out Netgear assigned TWO such subscriptions to me and my router and charged me for BOTH - one charged to my credit card on file w/Netgear and the other to my PayPal account (and thus the card attached to it). It took me at LEAST 5 calls to Netgear Cust. Serv. to get them to cancel the subscription that was paid for via the credit card on file with the company, but in doing so they did NOT leave the OTHER remaining (and paid for) subscription as fully active and after at least 3 MORE calls to them to try and get them to fix THAT problem that THEY created it became clear to me that they could not or WOULD not fix it properly. Consequently I told them to cancel THAT subscription entirely and refund to my PayPal account THAT fee as well but given their horrendous track record I registered the problem with PayPal and PAYPAL credited me the purchase amount IMMEDIATELY. THANK YOU, PAYPAL!

by MimiTN1

Look at the forums regarding Orbi and Armor security. There are issues with Orbi and implementation of Armor, activation of subscriptions and on and on. My Orbi router, from within the router’s app, prompts users to download NETGEARArmor to protect mobile devices; however, once installed, Orbi never recognizes the devices as protected. I’ve rebooted, uninstalled ,reinstalled, etc., same result. No one at Netgear seems to be able to answer how to get this to work and good luck getting a hold of someone at Armor or Netgear. FYI - your “support” from Netgear now expires 90 days after you buy their router (wonder why). I will be deleting NETGEARArmor and Armor from my router and going with a different security package that works out of the box and is supported when I have issues! Netgear - I should not have to pay for support to get an answer to a question to implement a feature promised by your device that I paid for already. This may be going back to Costco for exchange for a different mesh network.

by Day Jo 💖

Honestly I had never downloaded a VPN for our entire web connection before but we love our Orbi and had some security issues pop up. Orbi suggested we purchase it and add all devices to it so we did. As far as the other devices in the house no one has claimed to have a issue with it but my phone on the other hand will go on these longs bouts of not being able to connect to the internet so I have to turn the VPN off or the Wi-Fi and then browse whatever or turn off VPN and just use my mobile data then other occasions that would also freeze on an iPhone 12 Pro no less and I would have to switch back to wifi I honestly thinks it’s more trouble than it’s worth. I love Orbi but it’s a shame they attached their name to this.

by BPAK2384

I installed this along with the Orbi App, I really wanted this to work but only ended up being disappointed. I even just walked away from it for a day in hopes that I was too tired and frustrated with it. Nope! You would expect more from these two companies: very basic, doesn’t really do anything, no way to dismiss an alert, for example I installed it June of 2019 and it gave me an alert that my DropBox account may have been compromised and I should change my password. Date of alert... sometime in 2016. Now it just sits there and never goes away.

Don’t get me started on the Orbi App and how it works with Armor. Short Answer: It doesn’t!

Come on guys and gals you can do much better then this!

by Cacike47

I have been in IT for over 30 years, back in the good old days, new software was pushed out to only those developers who wanted to see if a program was good. Today, they push out crap like this and have the public pay for it first AND then have you “test it”.
Now go call their lousy off shore support and speak to “Chip”, who maybe has a month of training, to put you on hold for an hour or more, to tell you a supervisor will call you tomorrow.
What a shame, what these times have degraded to.

by AlphaCog

Experiencing all sorts of Internet connectivity issues the moment I installed this BitDefender app. It uses a VPN as part of its protection solution, and that is a source of major headaches…

Some services don’t work with VPNs, like Netflix. So, you have to go turn the VPN off before using Netflix, and then remember to turn it back on when done! Good luck figuring out how to turn off VPN. Can’t do it from your phone’s settings!

Additionally, each time I leave my house and disconnect from my WiFi, when I return and reconnect to WiFi, I’m unable to connect to the Internet without first turning the VPN off then back on!

Clearly there are still many bugs with this system that makes daily usage very frustrating and inconvenient. Not sure it worth the headache.

by Rjbeekeeper

Have the Nighthawk MR80 with free trial. Trying to login to the security app fails, doesn’t give an option to create an account. If you enter the wrong credentials there is only one way to try again. You need to kill NETGEARArmor and relaunch NETGEARArmor and enter your login again. No back button exist or even a try again button.
I am sure it’s a good product but may never know as I can’t even try it during my free trial.
Waste of a free trial.

by Bigbobby50

Seems that after 2 years ORBI RBR 50 & 2 satellites cannot maintain connectivity. Had my CCTV cameras drop off for over 49 minutes.
Thankfully my house monitoring is on a different WIFI network. Can’t blame weather or temps; nights have been clear & in the 30’s.
Should have listened to my son & gotten GooglePods- they’ve moved with him to 3 locations & still work great. PLUS, he paid a lot less than I did for this system.

by EricNSacramento

I have always been a huge NETGEAR fan. Sadly this application has some sort of serious flaw. When enabled it starts out great...but within a day or two we end up having to disable the VPN and web protection due to endless issues. Most being that we cannot access anything! Turn off the application and everything returns to normal. I wholeheartedly hope that this issue is resolved soon so that I can change this review to something I’m used to giving about NETGEAR. NETGEAR....please address this issue ASAP.

by LearninBoutMoney

I was excited to add this end point protection to my iOS mobile devices. However, after installing it, it proved too buggy for me to keep. I have now uninstalled it after having it for 24 hours. Several times throughout the day it would stop all browser traffic on my iPhone and iPad. The only way to restore connection was to disable NETGEARArmor’s VPN. I look forward to using it in the future but it’s not usable in its current form. Perhaps it worked well at one time and an iOS patch broke it. I would also like to see more documentation on how exactly NETGEARArmor and its VPN adds security to the Netgear Armor suite that isn’t already included in the routers Armor processing.

I look forward to adjusting my review once these significant issues are addressed.

by B>Ray

I purchased Netgear ARMOR for my home router and with it came access to NETGEARArmor. I have nothing but issues when it is turned on. It has slowed connection speeds and they are just getting worse. It has blocked me from opening many apps and websites, even the AppStore, and I believe it has negatively impacted my use of wifi calling, which I use for work. I liked the idea of increased security, but will be deleting NETGEARArmor .

by Retro Surfer

This security app is horrible, it’s probably safe because it considers basically everything spam and a threat. Honestly if I wanted that I could just unplug the Internet and that would not cost me $100. Honestly it make using the Internet impossible I get dozens of threat notices a day and some of the sites it tries to block are ridiculous! It tried to block NBC News, Apple News, All Recipes, every game off the Apple site and most everything else. And if you unblock these it tanks your security rating. I started out at 89% secure. After a week I’m at 60% and weak all because God forbid we tried to use the Internet. Honestly I love the Orbi Mesh network but this security app Armor is just buggy and almost impossible to use. Sad that a trusted company like Netgear bundles this poorly designed security app with there hardware.

by Tom S Of Plymouth

My very high speed internet was no match for the New Web Protection VPN. My connection kept getting slower and slower then it stopped working all together on the devices that I was testing the new VPN web protection on. I could only access my internet by turning off web protection and the VPN. I am guessing this new feature is having growing pains. Please fix it, it is a great feature when it works correctly. My other devices that were not using the web protection and VPN are and were fine. Which is how I was able to determine that it was NETGEARArmor and vpn were the issue. They are running a very robust protection program just from a different vendor. I still have high hopes that you will get this fixed ASAP.

by Donn Sheldon

It appears that the program is doing many things simultaneously. It is not clear however, what each function actually accomplishes. There should be a little explanation or pop up for each to clarify what it is doing and what the results are. Also, an invite to install took me to a menu of different contacts when I touched the install button. That gave me no idea whatsoever of how to install Armor which was part of the invite. So also, instructions are not clear. NETGEARArmor could use many improvements.

by Johnny5-ShortCircuit

Man netgear has potential to be the best in the game and maybe they already are. Their products are all I’ve ever known. I know them like the back of my hand.

I’ve used BD in the past and had many many computers destroyed because of it. I can say that because it’s true so I don’t care... I don’t fear ramifications for telling the truth.

Anyway I thought heck my router manufacturer who I’ve used my entire adult life.... probably own more their stuff than many small businesses..... all I saw was no one taking responsibility about real answers and just pointing back and for they between each other.

Hmmmm sure sounds like we found major vulnerabilities that I pointed out but since I’m Joe Blow they’d rather keep their business relationship than fix some REAL PROBLEMS.

by Jim Nyc Cop

I’ve had several programs

by Ms Maleka

Keeps telling me that I need to install app when I already have it installed it’s so annoying cause it interferes with the security numbers it reduces down to a lower number why is this happening