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NETGEAR Switches pros and cons

Vendor: Netgear

4.1 out of 5

57 reviews
88% willing to recommend

Pros & Cons summary

NETGEAR Switches offer features like network monitoring, ease of VLAN programming, and remote management via mobile apps. They are praised for bandwidth AV-over-IP functionality and modular design but lack virtual stacking compatibility. Frequent firmware updates may require manual power cycling. While stability and a comprehensive warranty are positive, technical support and multicast support require improvement. Their higher cost and pricing concerns may affect tech buyers' decisions despite the management advantages.

Buyer's Guide

Get pricing advice, tips, use cases and valuable features from real users of this product.

Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Valuable features of NETGEAR Switches include network monitoring, ease of VLAN programming, and eliminating the complexity of command-line interfaces.

NETGEAR Switches provide excellent remote management capabilities that are accessible via mobile apps, allowing real-time changes and alerts from any location.

NETGEAR offers cloud-managed Insight for centralized device management, which is efficient for network configurations without direct access.

The High Bandwidth AV-over-IP functionality and modular design of NETGEAR 96X are praised for their adaptability and cost-efficiency compared to high-end alternatives.

NETGEAR Switches are recognized for their stability, competitive pricing, and comprehensive lifetime warranty, contributing to overall cost management and network reliability.

CONS

NETGEAR Switches lack compatibility with virtual stacking, limiting device stacking and bandwidth redundancy.

Firmware updates are frequent and often require manual power cycling, which has been inconvenient for users.

Technical support response time and assistance could be more efficient and effective.

NETGEAR Switches should address deficiencies in multicast support which affect network printing from Mac computers.

The expense of NETGEAR Switches is higher compared to other brands, raising cost concerns.

NETGEAR Switches Pros review quotes

Senior System Administrator at a agriculture with self employed

Nov 25, 2018

Valuable features include network monitoring and ease of programming for VLANs, etc. I especially like NETGEAR because it's easy to teach system administrators how to use them, how to look at them, how to make changes to them without having the complexity of CLIs, but still having a CLI should we need it.

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EG

Owner/CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Nov 25, 2018

We have one client that has three Insight switches and when we make a change to their network... we can make the configuration change and push it down to all three switches at once. We don't have to individually log on to each switch to make the change.

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HM

CEO at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

Nov 28, 2018

Remote management is the most important thing for us. And monitoring, of course, allows us to see when something is wrong with a client. We get notified that an access point is down, for instance, or that there are too many clients on one access point, so that we can log into the portal and manage the solution with the client instantly, from either a laptop or a cell phone, with the Insight app.

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NETGEAR Switches

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KS

Kiersten Saltwick

VP, Accounting and HR at Parrish Consulting Services, Inc.

Dec 2, 2018

Their online portal is one of the most useful features. The portal is very user-friendly, so even someone with not a lot of tech experience can go in and see what's going on with the switch.

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DS

Owner at a tech services company

Dec 6, 2018

The ability to manage them is the big valuable feature. The ease of use is great.

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JM

President at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Dec 24, 2018

It's nice, if there is an issue, to be able to go in through the remote. The fact that the remote doesn't require a static IP... is nice. They initiate the contact to the outside world, without requiring a static to get in.

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Principal Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1-10 employees

Dec 10, 2018

The most valuable feature is the fact that Insight is cloud-managed. The whole reason behind it is that there is one central place to manage it. You can pre-configure everything and you can get access to it without having to get onto the client's network. That makes it easy to use and deploy.

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KH

Independent Consultant at a tech company with 1-10 employees

May 11, 2019

The remote management tools are fantastic. The combination of the webpage as well as the app makes life so much easier. I don't need to go and visit sites to do upgrades or any sorts of changes. The firmware can all be deployed remotely. I can see the traffic on each of the switch ports remotely as well, so I can see if we've got problems, down to an individual port. It's very granular.

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Operations Manager at DLL Technologies

Dec 13, 2018

The most valuable feature to me is the modular side of things, being able to replace a module and a transceiver at our beck and call. If something goes down, or a piece of equipment is broken, I don't have to replace the whole switch. I can just replace the part that's broken or the part that is no longer working. I can get them back up and working within a matter of minutes, versus having to replace everything and reprogram everything. It's a huge time-saver.

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JC

Owner at Alpha Tech

May 13, 2019

The cloud management has just been huge for us. We have 80 clients and they all have switches... With the cloud-managed Insight ones... we know more information without having to do complicated SNMP traps. We get nice emails, we get a web interface, and we're not having to wait for our RMM tools to get SNMP traffic to notify us. We don't have to do complicated configurations.

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NETGEAR Switches Cons review quotes

Senior System Administrator at a agriculture with self employed

Nov 25, 2018

What I'd like to see is more compatibility with virtual stacking, so that 4300-series switches and 3300-series switches will actually stack together and that virtual switch stacks, themselves, are not limited to just six devices, so that they can create larger loops with more bandwidth and more redundancy.

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EG

Owner/CTO at a tech services company with 1-10 employees

Nov 25, 2018

One area that has room for improvement, and I know NETGEAR is working on it, is adding more features to the products lines in terms of what we can manage through the Insight portal... not all Layer 2 or Layer 3 settings are there yet.

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HM

CEO at a tech vendor with 11-50 employees

Nov 28, 2018

The main negative thing is the speed. When you use the portal, if you have a lot of customers and locations in the portal, and you need to scroll through those clients or those locations, it takes a pretty long time to load those pages and to select the client. That's the problem in the portal on the laptop, and it's the same problem in the portal on the app.

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NETGEAR Switches

Free Report: NETGEAR Switches Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about NETGEAR Switches. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2026.

881,082 professionals have used our research since 2012.

KS

Kiersten Saltwick

VP, Accounting and HR at Parrish Consulting Services, Inc.

Dec 2, 2018

Their old firmware was a problem for us and we're still working on it. It didn't apply correctly so it took about half of our switches offline, which meant we couldn't use some of the functionality like the firmware updates. Unfortunately with that firmware, which they've sorted out, if you don't go through all the firmware and make sure it's past that point and back online, that's an issue with them. It's something to cautious about

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DS

Owner at a tech services company

Dec 6, 2018

The management of them, itself, is not so good. You have to go between many different browsers, even some super-old browsers, to be able to do it. That is a super pain.

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JM

President at a tech services company with 51-200 employees

Dec 24, 2018

There are some design issues on which they really missed the boat. The problem has to do with rack mounting them because the lights and jacks should all be on the front, and the power on the back. The way they did it makes it really difficult to use them in a rack environment, because when the lights are on the opposite side of the jacks... you usually can't see the back side of a rack. You can't get back there to see, so it's just crazy.

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Principal Consultant at a tech consulting company with 1-10 employees

Dec 10, 2018

There is a technical problem they can't seem to solve. It doesn't support multicast packets. In layman's terms, Mac computers can't print over the network.

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KH

Independent Consultant at a tech company with 1-10 employees

May 11, 2019

My one issue with it is that not all the features of the switch can currently be managed via the portal. For some of the more advanced features, you still have to configure the switch.

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Operations Manager at DLL Technologies

Dec 13, 2018

When the power does go out, or if we do a soft shutdown, some of the transceivers or the monitor don't recognize when it turns back on, so I have to physically unplug it and plug it back in and then it works. We're working with NETGEAR's engineers to figure out why that's happening.

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JC

Owner at Alpha Tech

May 13, 2019

I'd like to see a little bit of slowdown on the firmware updates. They've been doing a lot of them. I don't know if that's just because it's such a new product line, but the firmware updates have been a little annoying because they've been coming once a week. For a switch, that's a little extreme.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 49)

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