Cradlepoint MBR95 4G LTE Wireless Router - High-Speed Internet for Remote Work, Mobile Offices & IoT Connectivity | Secure Cloud-Managed Networking Solution

I've been using this router for a couple of weeks now and am quite pleased and impressed. It's the perfect router for a small home network. Coupled with a Verizon 4G LTE modem the results are amazing!I drive most of my devices via network cable but sometimes need the wireless also. Prior to this I had the CTR 500 which was not capable of penetrating the walls and floors of my home. The MBR95 is amazing in that respect, even the farthest reaches receive a very good signal.I would have given it 5 stars if it weren't for the bad experience I had with a support person. Initially everything connected via Ethernet worked fine but I could not get a wireless connection with either my laptop or phone. I fought if for a day or two and then emailed Cradlepoint.I did get a quick response from support and described the problem in depth. I was immediately told the unit was defective and would have to be replaced, no effort at troubleshooting at all except to reset to factory defaults and try again, which I'd already done multiple times. However, since I'd bought the router from Amazon.com I was told I would have to contact them for replacement, as they are not an "authorized" Cradlepoint reseller. It struck me as being not very customer supportive as the router was purchased new, which I can prove, and why should it matter who sold it?Amazon's return polity is clear, they would refund or replace at my direction. However, I couldn't be without a working router for the week or two it would take for the exchange. I decided to buy a replacement and then return the original to Amazon for a refund. I then asked the support person for a list of "authorized" resellers and was told they did not provide that information for public consumption.The only reason I can imagine for this ridiculous response is that resellers, authorized or not, sell the routers for less than does Cradlepoint itself. However, that begs the question, why even have authorized resellers if you're going to hide their identity from potential consumers? I was NOT happy.However, my wife had brought her iPad home for the weekend and the next morning I noticed that she was doing some web browsing. Since it's wi-fi only it hit me she had to be using the wireless router connection. I asked her how she'd done it, "I just entered the password and it worked". I then grabbed her phone and it had no problem finding the router either. Still, my phone and laptop did not. Obviously the wireless router was working for some devices so I decided to take another shot at it.I tried several settings changes with no luck, then under Advanced Wi-Fi Settings I changed the "Channel Selection Schedule" form "Once" to "Daily" and everything suddenly connected. I can only speculate that the wireless radio sensitivity on two of our devices was just enough different from the other two to cause this problem. Everything has continued to work very well since then and, as I said, I really like the MBR95 once I resolved the wireless connectivity problem.I wish I could say the same for Cradlepoint customer support, which was non-existent in this case. No attempt to fix anything other than "reset the router" and "it's defective and has to be replaced". And oh by the way, it's up to you, the customer, to figure out how to do that!I recommend the MBR95, seems to be a great product. However if you buy it and are expecting support from Cradlepoint, make sure you buy it direct from them or an "authorized" reseller, assuming you can find one.I was very enthusiatic about MBR95 when I read the positive reviews and decided to buy one from Amazon. I actually ordered another one for my school before I tried out my own. Even when I spotted a bug right out of the box when setting it up for the first time, I tolerated it and still hoped this is a big step up from my old WRT54GL. But after about two weeks of frustration I finally can't stand it any more. I don't know why this product gets so good reviews. Maybe people haven't used it for long? But it really doesn't take long to see its problems.Setting up the first MBR was fine. Quick and Easy. Then I saw the alert that a newer firmware version 3.3.0 was available. So after verifying the router could work, the first thing I did was select auto update for the firmware. Then the first bug emerged. The update took a while to finish, but, after that it still showed version 3.2.4 and still alerted me about a newer version! I repeated this step for 3 times, all the same. This first look greatly lowered my confidence on this product. I decided not to try the manual update. I was afraid if I did it and it went south, the tech support might have an excuse to ignore me.The next problem I saw, was that 802.11n didn't work! This is unbelievable because it's such a basic functinality for today's routers. I first spotted this when looking at the router client list. In the UI all the WiFi clients showed 802.11g connection. This made me suspecious, as the setting on the router was a/b/g/n, and some of my devices are n devices. I then tried different settings of the WiFi standard. When I set it to b/g/n, all devices showed g connection. When I selected n-only, all clients were GONE. Basically 802.11n on my first router doesn't work at all. The second MBR95 I received didn't have this problem when I tried the exact same steps. So I know my first one is defective on this for sure.I was hoping the keep the second one and return the first. But within a minute I saw a problem on it, too. It's not as serious as the first one. The problem was that the client table didn't get updated or say it took very long to update it ). I once disconnect three wired devices from it, but on router's client table, they were still there, and for a long time. Even when I re-connected a PC, and checked that its interal IP was changed, the old clien IP still showed on the router's UI. I could probably live with this bug, however, my first router was able to update its client status very quickly. This descrepency even more lowered my confidence on this product. I really haven't used it for long, but have seen problems here and there, and more importantly, the problems are not consistent between the two routers I have. I don't know what more randomness I will see down the road. I am on the edge of deciding whether to return the second one, too. will return the first one for sure ).There are other small things here and there. I really don't want to waste my time to write more about it. To be fair, if I just wanted a g router, the first one, even though can't update firmware, can serve that purpose. The basic functionalities are there plus some interesting new features. But my old WRT54GL costed me only $60 and it lasted years even to today.I bought this to replace a Cradlepoint MBR 900 that played well with my 3G/4G card but was not able to pass as much data through once 4G came available in my area. I am mostly glad with this purchase.The Good:Works awesome with the Verizon UML 290 and my Wilson 4G LTE signal booster kit. Is aesthetically pleasing and takes up a pretty small foot print on my desk. Keeps connected and reconnects on its own a majority of the time. Provides a near reliable always on 4G connection.The Bad:This would get 5 stars if the latest firmware had not flaked out on me. My 4G signal strength is slightly lower with my Verizon UML 290 in this compared to directly connected to my iMac. Also why would Cradlepoint cap the four lan ports at 100 megs unless they wanted you to spend a lot more to get a higher priced product? Who does that in 2013? Oh yeah, Cradlepoint does. A few revisions (stable firmware, 1000 meg lan ports) and this would be near perfect. Also forcing my modem to LTE only mode was easy but somehow the March/April 2013 firmware kept changing it and my signal kept dropping until I rolled back to the Dec 2012 firmware. After doing that it allowed me to save the LTE settings and it has worked pretty well 95% of time. We've had to manually flip the router off and on a few times to regain a steady 4G connection but not to frequent to overly ding Cradlepoint.Verdict:Overall it is good as it is currently our main broadband through 4G connection. It is worth the invest though if Cradlepoint ever offers something slightly better for the same price point then I'd probably go with that. I do recommend buying this if you need a good 4G router.Worked great for establishing a wireless hot spot at our seasonal park