Discontinued: Circle with Disney

My kids hate the Circle. Does that tell you what you need to know? It took me several tweaks before I had my Circle set up correctly, but now, two months into using it, I have come to really love it. For reference, we live in a large house with one router and two extenders (which only means that there are multiple "networks.") I have four kids, and their ages range from 7 to 14. They have iPhones, iPods, iPads, 2 Xbox consoles, Playstation3 and Playstation4. I have tried several different flavors of net-nannies and I have set up parental controls on several different routers over the years, but nothing has ever been worth the hassle of it all until this Circle. This gives me more flexibility and customization than anything I've ever used, and it is also visual (on my iPhone) so I don't need to be a computer programmer to make sense of it. REALLY, this thing is EASY. And if you need help to get it set up properly, just ask on their Facebook page because they are incredibly committed to helping people. I've never seen this degree of helpful Facebook customer service before, on any kind of product. The beautiful part of Circle is that every device that is connected to the internet automatically appears in the DEVICES for your circle. Some of them are easy to identify (e.g. "Jimmy's iPad") but some are more difficult (e.g. "HUMAX Device" or T0108000357180). I started with the things I could positively identify, and then the rest became obvious over time. Anytime a device joins the network, Circle will give you a notification. So, if you unplug and replug your Amazon Fire Stick, or put your iPhone into airplane mode and then switch it back, you'll be able to identify and label the device in your Circle. Once I figured out what each of my devices was, I assigned each one to a person. If the device was used by all of us (like the TV in the living room) I assigned it to E (for everyone). One son has an iPhone, iPad, Xbox, and another child has iTouch, iPad, and Mac. Another one has a Mac, an iPad, and an Xbox. The fourth one only has an iPad and a Fire device. Now, with devices set for each child, I can pause one kid's internet (on each of his devices) without messing up all of the other kids' internet. Also, if my son is allowed to use his computer (for homework) but not his Xbox, I can pause ONLY the Xbox, and leave everything else connected. (Also, if I have said, "No Xbox for you! One Week!" but then forgotten to actually put a pause on the Xbox. I can pull it up on my phone and see if he has turned it on.) Likewise, if I have gone to work and forgotten to turn someone's internet back on, I can easily correct that and get him back in business. The best part is that I can do all of it with an app on my phone. I can do it from the front yard, the bank, the airport, or from another state. Instantly. For me, this is where Circle REALLY earns its stars. Simply stated, Circle will allow me to pause the internet for the entire house (say for dinner). OR, it will allow me to pause the internet for one child (who's grounded) or for all the kids individually (until each one gets homework finished -- and then individually I can give wifi back to them as they earn it.) For content, there are filters. Using the settings for Filter Level, I have set up my youngest as kid, and my three older ones as teen. I am able to completely disable Youtube for my 7 year old, who was pretty addicted to Disney Collector and Family Fun Pack before Circle came along. On the Teen filter, I have the option to shut down many apps individually (e.g. Instagram, HBO, Twitter, Tumbler, Snapchat, YouTube). I can give some or all or none to each kid, INDIVIDUALLY. Separately, there is a custom option on each filter which will allow me to add in any specific website they are visiting that I don't want them to. If I click on INSIGHTS (and this is on each child's profile) I can see every website he has visited today and how much time he spent there. Time Limits have proven to be my ACE IN THE HOLE for discipline. My young teenager is now on a plan where if he doesn't cause any disruptions in the house he gets to maintain his internet time, and if he gets in trouble for something he loses an hour. WOW -- what a changed kid! It is effortless for me to change his limit (I just pull up the app on my phone) so he knows that I won't get busy and forget. For once, I have a parenting tool that is SUPER EASY for me to wield. If he does something sweet, I can bounce him up an hour. It doesn't cost me anything and it actually has a value for him. BEDTIME does just what it says. It shuts down their internet at bedtime without me having to realize the time and run around the house snatching electronics at 7:30, 8:00, 9:00 and 10:00. It allows me to let the big kids have their internet later on weekends, but still have a limit so they don't watch Netflix until 2:00 am. Week night bedtime limits can be set at a different time than weekend bedtime limits. If one child always has Thursday Night projects for school that take him past the regular bedtime, I can remove Thursdays from the bedtime limit or turn bedtime off (when he asks me about it) and then back on when he is finished, easily from my phone. My favorite part of Circle is that (now that I have it set up properly) I can easily control each device, or each child's devices from my phone with one or two clicks. I feel like it has given the power back to me. I know that there are sophisticated router setups that are also supposed to do this, but I haven't had luck with any of them. I have read reviews from people saying that they couldn't set it up, or that it crashed the entire system, and I just don't have any idea where they are going wrong, but trust me, they are doing something wrong. As an aside, the day after I set up my Circle, we had a problem with the internet and of course I blamed the Circle and unplugged it. Let me tell you that it STAYED ON. It has a battery inside, so if your kids ever get the bright idea to disable the circle and run amok on the internet, their attempts will be foiled! As it turns out, the problem with the internet was that I hadn't paid the bill (oops!) and it had nothing to do with the Circle. However, I forgot to go back and plug it in (after everything was resolved). It worked for a month before it started sending me messages on my phone that I needed to plug it back in. Also, with regard to the extenders. I thought that the Circle wouldn't work if the kids just moved from the regular router to the extenders and I believed it to be a serious flaw. However, I have since learned that if I pause the device, it doesn't matter which network the kids plug into (because the extenders feed from the actual router). The device will pause regardless of the network name. One other thing is data on the iPhone. There is a plan to control your child's data use, but I have not taken advantage of it. I realized that the MYATT app has a place where I can easily disable data, so for my one rebellious child, I just shut down his data when he's at home, and then he is forced to use the wifi, and my limits placed in Circle will keep him in check. If I want him to have data (vacation, etc.) I just turn it back on in the ATT app. If you child's device has access to data, you will only have so much control over it with Circle. Also, it is true that the iPad will allow you to block some apps and some sites. Circle isn't the ONLY way that you can get the job done. But for me, it has absolutely been the easiest.

----- September 10, 2016 Updated review after 1 1/2 months of usage: Downgraded from 5 stars to 1 star. The product is unusable. It worked great out of the box -- just as my review outlines below. However, as time wore on our home internet began to rot. Here's what I mean: Our iPhones could not connect via wifi, our Tivos quit working, our Nest thermostats dropped offline. Sometimes a reboot of our router would fix some of these items, but eventually, they just stopped. I would be (slightly) OK with all this if they had some form of customer support. They don't. The best that they offer is a FAQ. No phone line, no email address. Worst part: Some of our devices have not "recovered" even after the Circle thing was turned off for 2 weeks. Great product idea, I really liked it at first. The UI execution is good, but there are problems they didn't anticipate with the technical execution. I can only give an unusable product 1 star. ----- July 28, 2016 We just got this and installed it. The current review is just after installation. I'll come back and update my review after we've used it for a few weeks. ----- Out of box experience Set up and installation were smooth as silk. It goes like this: You connect the electricity. You install the app on your iPhone (also available on Android). From there the app directs the remainder of your configuration. Connect your iPhone to the wifi network that Circle makes available, then tell it the SSID and password for your wireless router. After that the Circle network disappears and you connect back to your router. The app then prompts you to set up a profile for each of your family members. The main task here is to associate devices with each person. I was surprised that Circle detected 23 devices in our house: Laptops, iPhones, TiVos, Nest thermostats, printers, etc. etc. There are still 3 devices that I'm not sure about. For each person you can set filters to limit access to inappropriate content, you can also set a "bedtime" where the internet is shut down for all that person's devices (e.g., 11PM to 6AM). Additionally you can set time limits for each person and even split those limits out to different categories of content (videos, shopping, etc.). ----- A finer point I wanted a bit more fine-grained control over gaming versus "regular" internet usage, so I created two profiles for each of our kids: One for game consoles and one for their other devices. That will let me totally shut off the consoles without limiting more mundane access. We'll see how that pans out. ----- How the technology works I have to admit that I'm completely sure how this device works. Other products work by intervening physically between your kids' devices and the rest of the internet. For instance, a competing product (koalasafe) works by setting up a completely separate wireless network that your kids must connect through -- I get that. On the other hand, Circle connects as an ordinary device to your existing wireless router, then takes it over via mind control of some sort. ---- Pros + Very easy set up. + Does what we need it to do -- sets time limits and turns off the internet at bed time. + Solid, simple smartphone app configuration and monitoring. + Smartphone app works even if you are outside the house. + Reports that summarize individual child's activity. + Big one: The company is alive and actively improving its product. Some competing services (webcurfew) seem to be dead or dying companies. ----- Cons/limitations - No control over devices when they are not connected to your home's wifi. A particular risk here is that a child can set up their iPhone as a hotspot, then connect to any content through that hotspot. Our approach to this is to set low monthly limits on their smartphone data usage. - No control over devices outside the home (e.g., smartphones at school). Circle does offer a subscription app you can install on your kids phones to monitor them outside the home. - Only way to monitor/configure is via the smartphone app. There is no web-based interface, or other way to control the device. - Only can control the system from a single smartphone. It would be nice if both me and my wife could change the configuration. - Weird name. The "Disney" affiliation is tenuous. ----- Competing products I have looked at a few other competing products, but settled on Circle for now: + WebCurfew: This is a cloud based service that you allow to remotely connect to and control your router. I tried it. The interface was very clunky and slow. I couldn't figure out how to set schedules. Just overall cheesy feeling. + KoalaSafe: This is a device that you connect to your existing router. It sets up a separate wireless network that your kids must connect to. Overall it looks like a promising product, but the reviews seemed to indicate that it was not as good as the Circle. The primary weakness seemed to be that the quality of the wireless connections was low. + Individual router controls: Many routers (e.g. Apple's airport, ASUS) have options that let you set on/off times for individual devices. These are OK, but not as flexible as Circle. For instance, I can easily "ground" all of a kid's devices with a single click using Circle. ----- Overall Great product. I look forward to seeing how it evolves.

Tl;dr - this product is AMAZING and the best technology product I have purchased in a year. It does something that is important to me that I've struggled to find an effective solution for years. Pros: - Sufficiently powerful - Does not create a performance impact if properly configured - Easy to monitor remotely - Works across multiple devices - Provides both insight on technology use and control - Allows you to set service level restrictions (e.g. limit Fortnite to 1 hour/day) - Great price point. Cons: - It can cause your network to break in ways that are not obvious - A bit complex to set up - The service groupings (e.g. “Email” or “Online Gaming”) are not customizable - Mobile only administration Overall a solid product and well worth the cost. Detailed Review - A bit of background - I'm technically adept and understand my way around my own network. As my kids have become teenagers, my struggle has been to effectively parent their online behavior. On the one hand, their devices and technology are an important part of their school, social lives, and even part of our family connectedness. On the other, I've been concerned about how much time my son spends on Fortnite and Youtube, and about my daughter's technology use late at night. Our solutions to this have largely been ineffective. We’ve tried having the kids leave their phones downstairs when they go to bed, but that doesn't address what they do during the day, and it has been a source of conflict. I've tried controls using my router, but they haven't been time based, nor sufficiently granular - e.g. I couldn't easily stop face time on my daughter's computer without affecting her ability to do homework. iOS 12's Screen Time feature has been helpful, but that only provides data for a single device and it is somewhat unreliable. The big problem is that we can’t easily know exactly what they are doing without policing them, let alone come up with effective constraints. I finally found a review online for the Circle. It seemed good, but I was concerned that 1) it might not work with my router (I use an ASUS AC5300), that it would create performance issues, and that it would not provide sufficient control to deal with the issues that we care about. However, I figured I would give it a try. The key to how this product works is that it uses some obscure aspects of how networks work to give the circle the ability to see the network traffic that goes into and out of your house for any device or collection of devices (the technical term here is ARP Spoofing). Without getting into the technical details, if you connect the Circle via the ethernet cable, it does not create a performance issue. Moreover, any device configured as “unmanaged” is left alone. This is something I was particularly happy about as my home network has a lot of devices on it and I like the control. Installation: Installation was a bit obtuse. Despite being connected via ethernet to my router, I still had to use the WiFi network to setup the circle. Moreover, the Circle only understands how to talk to 2.4Ghz networks. That said, once everything was done, the wireless network was not an issue. Setup: Once setup I created a test profile for myself to see how well the device worked. I was pretty amazed at how easy and powerful it is. Profiles allow you to connect multiple devices, define specific constraints on a service level (e.g. Youtube), and these constraints work across all of the devices on the profile. Moreover, everything else is left alone. Once active, I immediately got what I was looking for: - Time spent on a variety of different services (YouTube, Fortnite, Gmail) - Identification and monitoring explicit content sites - Ability to set constraints, as either hours (bedtime and blocked time) - Ability to set time limits (yeah!!!!) I found the monitoring/time calculations to be pretty accurate. The only limit is that they are limited to 5 minute granularity - which is fine for me. Once the Circle chooses to block a service, it happens pretty immediately. Some things like youtube take a bit before the block is noticeable, but everything else is immediate. Restoring service is also immediate, though there can be some problems (see issues below) What I LOVE: - This device allows for granular control over services. Meaning, you can allow for web browsing and email, while blocking video games and netflix. You can block one device but not another. - You can set up profiles for your family that work across multiple devices. No more temptation to cheat by moving consumption from one device to another - For my network, the device even worked on the guest network which means my kids couldn’t get around it that way. It did not seem to affect our AT&T Micro-cell traffic however - The device provides both monitoring and prevention. This allows me to have conversation with my kids where we now have an objective definition of time spent. Moreover, it allows them to see how much time they are spending so THEY can set the limits - Now I get to parent as a coach instead of as a policeman. - There is no noticeable impact to my network performance. I have a 400mb/s connection to the internet and have noticed no impact to my network latency or performance from the Circle. - It is pretty easy to use once it is set up. Issues: - It’s not perfect however and there are some things to be aware of: - I can’t easily customize what Circle monitors/blocks. Circle’s pre-defined categories are pretty good, but if you want to change something it is not easy - and in some cases not possible. I would prefer to have more flexibility than the device provides, but given the ease of use it provides in other ways I can live with this constraint. - Networking problems - the way the circle work can create compatibility issues with your router. Circle has put a pretty good compatibility chart on their website you can check - strongly recommended that you do this before buying this device - The Circle can cause your network to break - in my case, if I make a change on my router, it can cause my entire network to freeze until I reset things using some fairly technical commands. This may be somewhat specific to my router, but when it happens, it is not something that the layperson could easily fix. I suspect that the routers that are marked as fully compatible (mine is not) don’t have this issue, but I was unable to test this. - The Circle is hard to reboot - it has an internal battery which I suppose is nice for power outages - though seems unnecessary to me. However, when something goes wrong, you can’t power cycle it easily. - When the Circle unblocks a service, sometimes it takes a while for the service to be restored. There are multiple reasons for this. In one case, I had to reboot the router my son’s Xbox was connected to to restore service. When I tried to reproduce this it didn’t happen again, but I’m suspicious that this isn’t the only time I’ll have this problem (for those who are technical, clearing the arp cache tends to clear these issues). - When the Circle blocks a service, it routes the blocked user to a web page full of Disney content. Not the worst problem in the world, and this is the only time that “Disney” shows up in the product. I’m sure some VP is very proud of this. There is no web console. I would prefer not to manage this just from my phone. In the end, this device does way more than I had hoped - esp. For the price. It has brought me a solution to a problem I have struggled with for years. I’m a very happy user and feel that the benefits of this product fully outweigh the costs. Moreover, I like that it is something I can use to have a better dialogue with my kids about their technology use. It enables both “trust but verify” type monitoring, as well as specific and detailed constraints. Great job!

OK. I have been using this device for sometime now. My wife and I have 7 kids and while we have pushed off giving all of them digital devices until they are older and more capable of regulating their digital time on their own, we decided to give in to them because of the features promised in this device. I have to say, it has not worked out flawlessly. It has taken a considerable amount of trial and error to get it set up. It also has its flaws that we are still getting worked out. I gave 3 stars because some features are really good. But, it has taken sometime to get them working correctly. I will try to explain the benefits and struggles in a way to help others. 1. Time to set up. The amount of time to set this up took a long time for us. I have 5 smartphones, 5 tablets, two laptops, a DVD player, PlayStation, Nintendo, and printer that showed up in the list of devices on the circle app. You have to create a profile for each user and what you want filtered and not filtered. The process for setting up a user is fairly straight forward and intuitive if you are digitally savvy. If not, it will take some time. The bad thing about the setup of profiles is IT TOOK A LONG TIME FOR CIRCLE TO SAVE MY SETTINGS FOR EACH USER. what should have been a 15 minute setup time per user, took several hours and sometimes days for the circle to save the info. It would sometimes only save part of it, and sometimes it would tell me an update was needed and would occur in the next 24 hours. Until it did, I couldn't add a new user, or make major changes to a profile. In my experience, I have never come across a device that required me to wait 24 hours for an update. I decided that I would try to "Force Stop" the circle app. This eliminated the update problem. But it still took several hours of back and forth app stops and saving to get the profiles created. Not sure why it takes so long, but it does. I also felt committed to making the circle work because I had already purchased my older kids phones, and the younger kids tablets. I had to get it working. 2. Device names do not come across in an easy way to identify. If you have a lot of devices to set up, you need to have them close by to go and find the IP addresses for them, because that is the only way you will be able to know what device belongs to which profile. 3. The pause does not always work. We have paused the devices and waited to see how long it took for the devices to recognize that the internet was paused, ie... Youtube still plays the video for ten minutes after we hit pause, and sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. But it is not instantaneous. Knowing that one thing, would have changed our minds about our digital Christmas in 2016. But too late now. 4. Unless you purchase the circle go monthly subscription, you are not able to control smartphones. They can shut the wifi off on the phone and have full access to whatever they want through data on your wireless plan. You will have to add parental control features on you wireless plan to control this. I suspected this was the case before buying our circle. I had already added the parental control through our cell carrier. As far as the circle go subscription, if it is as effective as the circle device, I imagine I will need to keep the parental controls in place on our wireless plan. 5. My laptop will not allow me to access Bing maps, or other content that does not have a rating associated with it on the internet. I have to disable the circle to gain access to basic websites. Which defeats the purpose of having the circle. This is something that would have been a deal breaker in buying the circle for me as well. The first time it happened, I realized I had not thought it through very well. I do a lot of work online for my job. I have yet to find an internet filtering system or program that allows me to access everything I need to and protect my family from harmful sites. Basically, the internet, and filters will never allow for optimal use, until everyone in the world agrees to one set of filtering guidelines and standards and abides by them. That will never happen, so do not expect the circle to work flawlessly. There are harmful(virus, adult or other extreme content, malware infested, etc...) sites on the internet that can bypass filters and blockers. There will never be a sure fire way to defend against them all(including you apple users that think there are no apple os or ios viruses). I really wanted the circle to work well for us. It is doing what it advertised for the most part, but do not ever think you will be able to program and filter your devices to relieve yourself and your family from using digital technology in a responsible manner. Ultimately, these types of devices and filtering programs will fail. An individual who wants to subvert the system will do so. We have the circle now, and our use and feedback will help it become better. But we have realized it is more important for us to teach our kids responsibility with regard to their use of digital devices and let them govern themselves. Eventually they will have to learn for themselves what is and is not safe. I hope this has helped. I hope the tech gets better, and I hope I can teach my kids how to use tech in a responsible manner.

I was skeptical at first about using this device. So far, it has done what I expected. I have a not-so-normal network configuration. Two routers daisy chained. I have the circle hard-wired to the second router as opposed to using the wifi. I did this since I assumed that sending every packet to the circle over wifi would slow down my wifi (I'm guessing it would). The setup was simple enough. I entered in the MAC of both my son's ethernet card and wireless ethernet card. And for testing purposes, I also added my laptop to the system with an "adult filter." I think this allows access to nearly everything except explicit photos (aka: pornography). For my son, I used the "kid filter." I found that filter was a little to strict even for an 8-year-old. He was trying to work on a report for school and was searching information about history. There was a fair amount of content that the circle blocked that looked innocuous to me. Good news though, I can update the filters on the fly. It took some guesswork but ultimately I might have found the sweet spot. There's a few things that the circle doesn't do well enough. To be fair, I don't know how it would do it. If anyone here has a kid's kindle fire, you can configure it to block access after 30 minutes of games or shows. The kid could do any combination of 30 minutes and then the kindle essentially turns off. The circle doesn't really have that option. Sure, I can block youtube after 30 minutes, but that doesn't stop him from simply going somewhere else to watch a video afterwards. However, that might simply be asking more than the device could ever do. When you think about it, if my kid wants to look up on youtube how to play a song on his guitar (for example), I'd want there to no limit on usage. Or really, anything that is educational or enrichment. The Circle can't differentiate and nor should we expect it to. I will say that I did some testing on his computer by entering in some explicit words and it pretty much blocked whatever I came up with. There's a time and place to talk to kids about sex and violence. Blocking them off from the internet because of those reasons alone probably isn't a good idea (in my opinion). It seems like the Circle does do that fairly well. It gives them some protection at a younger age until I can have these sort of discussions with him. A few other notes: I can say that hard-wiring the device to my router has not impacted my internet speeds at all. I know some people have concerns about that. I'm also a big fan of being able to update settings on the fly as necessary. Or in a pinch, I can essentially disable all internet access or if I'm sitting there with him, I can essentially turn off all filters. It is an impressive device for what it does.

The Circle is a marvelous invention and I love it. I could have done some time management for my teenager's heavy internet use through the software for my router, but the router can't come close to the flexibility of this device. The Circle "sees" every device on your network and allows you to assign each one to specific users. Each user gets a profile in which you can set age-targeted basic filtering, on/off times, and bed and wake time. Doing all this through the phone app is a breeze, and you don't have to be in the house - the app controls the Circle from anywhere. And you can have the app on more than one device, so for us, my wife and I both have control over our internet via our phones. You can also use a Rewards feature to disable an off time and other things. And you can set all the devices you don't want to restrict to a "Home" profile or make them Unmanaged altogether. These and other features make for an extremely customizable level of control over any or all wifi enabled devices, and believe me, all mine are managed through it. Oh, and in the app you have a Pause button both in the main screen (so you can stop the entire internet across all devices in your home network), and in the family members' profiles. It's like a kill switch! So if my kid does something super heinous, I can drop the consequence bomb of losing his internet instantly. It actually helped him choose his behaviors better, knowing he lives on his internet time. While not the only thing a good parent would use, it's a great part of the parenting toolkit. I also like that the company is really family-centric and is working on more enhancements like connecting with rewards and chore apps, etc. I haven't used the Disney content or feature, so I can't speak to that. Also, I had worried that this device would slow the internet speed of our wifi (or at least for the managed devices) but I'm happy to say it has no noticeable effect, including on high-demand activities like streaming and my son's gaming. I really recommend this device to my fellow parents for peace of mind. Set up is just a little tricky, but the directions are very good and they have a great support page online. After setup, we found that we don't use it much except to give rewards (extra time online) here and there and to add new devices to profiles. It has become an easy to use part of our lives. One caveat: In the initial setup process, then when a new device is sensed later, some devices appear listed in the Circle app with a name that is easy to identify, like "iPhone". This is super helpful so you can know who to assign with device to. But many show up labeled with their MAC address instead, and some with weird names. For example, my kiddo's new PC is a PowerSpec brand from Microcenter, but showed up as "ASUS..." something or other. Basically, the Circle was naming the PC for its network card brand. I'm somewhat techie, so I don't mind getting on those odd-named devices to figure out which ones are which in Circle. I did that and then renamed them in the Circle app to something far easier, like "Johny's PC", etc. Again, most of this work was the evening I set up the Circle for the first time. It was about an hour or so. Now, when a new device is sensed (a visitor's phone, Nintendo DS, etc.), we can add it, leave it on the default Home profile (we leave that one unrestricted), or just ignore it since its not a permanent family member's device. So with a little patience and just a pinch of techie-ness, you can set up a Circle and reap the benefits. Again, I highly recommend it! Final note: we've been using it for 5 months or so and works great. Power failures (often short in our area) will temporarily disable the Circle, and you get a notification that it's offline on your phone. Once the network and Circle are back up, you get another notification telling you it's back online. I like that, too.

I agree with so many other users that this is a very good idea gone wrong. I rarely write reviews, however I depend on reviews greatly when making purchases, so I am writing this review in hopes that it will overpower other users who gave it 4 and 5 stars. Perhaps they have one device or one child, but for a large, electronically active family, this device has many flaws. (We are a homeschool family of 8, so we are home and on the internet a lot) My hope in adding this review is that Disney would take these defects seriously and make the appropriate changes to their product. Giving us an upgrade to improve what we have would be an added bonus since I feel that we are not getting our $100 worth out of this product. We are even looking closely into other items out there, to see if there is a better option. First, Our circle never works right. Even as I type this, we have not had access to the Netflix feature on our main TV for over a week. Who knows why?! Everything else works. That's this week's issue. As for the App, Both my husband and I are pretty tech savvy but the app is very difficult to navigate. You have to jump through way too many hoops to get anything to work, when it chooses to work. Many times, our devices are hijacked by circle and I am unable to effect change by using the app. Everything just freezes and we end up telling our kids, "Sorry, I have no idea why you can't access that. The app says that you are able to." We end up spending half the time disabling circle out of desperation just to get things to work. (and sometimes that doesn't even work!) And as I type this, my app is currently not registering at all. My husband needs to factory reset everything in hopes to try again. Who has time for that? I agree with other users that circle should be smarter in how they time the internet use. There have been many times when I leave the room or the house with our laptop open and on, but it is not being used at all, yet it will count as the time used for the day simply b/c it is on. Spotify is another one that this happens with. Another issue...when looking at our devices through the app, there are dozens listed that we have no idea what they are or how to find out what they are. It's almost like it is detecting neighbors phones or devices too? This makes it confusing because we now have that many more things to scroll through before we find what we are looking for. I could go on and on with our pet peeves. I feel like this device is controlling us, not the other way around. This has made our life more stressful and complicated and it is not doing its job at all. This makes me sad b/c I really REALLY wanted this to work as advertised, it simply does not.

I've had this for about a year - I can't say enough great things about this device, it does everything you can imagine and more. Now before I begin - I will say that I am technically inclined, well actually it what's I get paid 9-5 to do - so more than just inclined. At first I wanted someway to monitor and filter what was received on their phone. I tried numerous apps, from free to paid. I found a few apps that worked for awhile, and after a few google searches - they found a way to uninstall them. The other apps, which I even paid a subscription fee for - they got around by simply factory resetting their device. Even tried to filter via DNS via OPENDNS.com and this wasn't always 100%. Now with this Circle with Disney device I don't have install anything on their device. I can monitor multiple devices from their PS4, phone, tablet, school laptop - everything. Say I want everything to cut off at 8:30 so they can get ready for bed - I can put in a bedtime. No problem, no arguing, no fuss. They get used to it - and it becomes routine to the point they make sure to not start a Fortnite game beforehand. I can have his ROKU and his PS4 in different 'circles', if I only want him to play online for only 2-3 hours - but may want to give him more time watching cartoons in the morning. I can even give rewards - say I want to extend his 'cut off bedtime' - just go to rewards and extend by 15 minutes or whatever you want. The app always notifies if another device connects to my network - so no surprises if a friend brings a phone or he brings a different school laptop with that has a different MAC than what he originally had. Just move the device to the 'filtered circle or circles.' You can also pause the circles or even pause the entire internet that isn't even in the circles. Wife talking back? Pause her internet. Just kidding but you absolutely could from the app. Speaking of the Mrs, she can have her own login - and control the kids devices also, from pausing, rewards. But once you have a schedule in place - most of it, is set it and forget it. He hasn't figured out how I'm able to monitor and pause his internet - but if it is ever disconnected from the router it will send me a notification. I only know this because I get a notification when I'm rearranged a few things and had to disconnect it. The only bad things I will say is that it takes a few(5+) minutes sometimes when I try to open the app, even a year later this problem still persists. Also, if he was ever to go to a different network or a different home - then all that filtering/time limit - goes out that window. Yet, I've read you can pay a subscription for them to be filtered wherever they go. So, there's that. Once again. Awesome device and I will be using for the future little ones....I don't see it being outdated anytime soon.

Best purchase I have made for our family and the internet. I had to purchase a new router so I made sure I had one that was compatible, I would ensure your router is compatible before purchase. This device is extremely easy to use. Every person has a profile that you make that covers ALL of their devices. You can block apps per person or set a time limit per day that covers ALL of their devices. I like that I can see what our teenage is up to in the history portion. Our teenager tried to download Fortnite and it was destroying our data. This helped us catch it and block the malicious content. It was also amazing to show the teenager how much screen time they had actually used (it was a wake up call). I like the pre-made settings based off age. We have messed around with this quite a bit and were very impressed. It is a bit of ease as a parent. This thing is serious though. If you forget you've assigned a device (like an ipad) to a certain setting it can be quite frustrating to figure out what is wrong until you remember. It's that serious. Better than pre-set router parental control. It's not even comparable, at all. You can set certain devices to bypass this (tv, your own stuff). Have not noticed any slow down for the devices that go through this. The features to reward extra time are very easy and very neat to use. I cannot say how much of a game changer this is for family safety and peace of mind with a teenager. This actually works. I was sold on this by the end of the second day that I had it. This is worth every penny and more.

Me lo recomendo un amigo, muy facil de usar. Tienes control de todo a lo que se conectan a tu WiFi. Mis hijos lo odian, ya que les control las redes sociales, veo a que paginas se meten, etc. Tengo hijos de 7 15 años. Lo he recomendado y ya van 2 amigos que lo compran.

Absolument génial. J’ai essayé plusieurs contrôles parentaux jamais bien. Celui-ci est tellement facile à utiliser. Un clic suffit pour mettre internet en « pause »...et votre ado arrive pour dîner ..sans son téléphone !! Vous et votre ado aussi pouvez voir le temps passé sur chaque appli, mettre l’heure pour qu’il dorme ou qu’il travaille. Un forfait à 20mo et il ne pourra pas utiliser sa 4g sinon il faut intégrer le système pour bloquer la 4g Je suis étonnée que cette application ne soit pas si connue des parents car, quelle sérénité maintenant !

Great product, but came with a wall plug only usable in the U.S. Had to use other plug for Australia. Not a bit deal because is was for USB.

Keeps disconnecting from the network. The product as such is very effective but what's the use if it is not connected. Badly in need of a good firmware update.