Nighthawk 5G M7 Review – The travellers WiFi built for home or abroad

Netgear has long been the leader in mobile hotspot devices, their Nighthawk M1 was a ripper nine years ago when we reviewed it and since then the M2 right through to the M6 have all impressed. But it’s a case of re-writing the playbook for portable WiFi when you take a look at the latest Netgear Nighthawk 5G M7 – made for travellers.

You could connect up top 32 devices to this thing, but let’s keep it simple and focus on how it works for the average traveller, or travelling family.

With support for both mmwave and sub-6 5G this is a global 5G device, and the Global bit is what matters here.

I travelled to the USA and left behind my T-Mobile SIM card which I normally carry for my M6 Pro Nighthawk router. I use this as an additional connection for my live TV broadcasts back to Australia, so it’s important connectivity for me.

What’s most impressive with the M7 is it’s dual-SIM capabilities, not just that but one of those is eSIM, and the entire eSIM marketplace process is within the Netgear app.

I should note, this was not a simple process, and now I’ve done it, I’d encourage full setup of the device locally, at home, before you go. I found the iOS version of the Netgear app to be far more reliable than Android so I just used it instead. The Android app itself would load and login, but I never got it to detect the M7 within the app, despite being connected to its WiFi network.

Additionally, purchasing an eSIM really needs internet, so you need to do that while either not connected to the M7 and using Hotel WiFI or your own roaming, or do it at home first.

Once you “own” an eSIM it’s effectively sitting in your Netgear account, and you then need to switch to the eSIM and activate your purchased plan.

It’s all pretty straightforward within the app, showing you your purchased plans, of which you can have several, and then you choose to set them up on the device.

Your eSIM plans don’t become active, that is the timeframe of access you purchased doesn’t start until you activate the plan.

Once that’s done, you’re off to the races!

And your home page for the Netgear app will show that plan as active.

On the actual M7 device is a colour screen, not bright so our photos struggle to show it, but its enough to give you what you need, including an active count of your data as used on the device.

All the functions on the screen are accessed via a single button on the side, which toggles through pages and allows a full press to action an item.

On that same side of the device is the small SIM tray where you can place the single Physical SIM – in this case I use it for a local Aussie SIM.

In addition to the awesome eSIM marketplace which is a complete game-changer for this category, here’s a hidden feature I absolutely love – WiFi offload.

I thought this seemed interesting, then I tested it.

WiFi offload allows you to connect the M7 to a local WiFi network, and any devices you have connected to the M7 will actually have their internet traffic routed through that local WiFi network. I tested this by connecting my phone to the M7 which had a Vodafone SIM in it. I checked the IP address of that phone when on the internet.

When I setup WiFi offload through my office WiFi the phone was still online connecting, but now the IP address was the same as a PC on my office network.

Very cool.

Difficult to use on a Hotel network due to the pop-up authentication, but worth a try in situations where the WiFi is normal password authenticated. Great on holidays for the family!

I think over the last nine years the Nighthawk M series portable hotspots have improved incrementally to keep up with the changes in both WiFi and Mobile connectivity. We’re now at WiFi 7 and this isn’t just an update for WiFi 7 – this is a complete rethink of the device, and with the eSIM marketplace at the touch of an app – it’s so great to use.

We were able to “do it live” from San Francisco on a simple eSIM plan setup in the app – worked a treat!

Plus, I was able to work from my Laptop no matter where I was.

At 9 it’s ideal for business travellers and those who venture overseas more often than most. You can grab one direct from Netgear with ease.