Test report: The Netgear Nighthawk M5 mobile router in a 5G test

I was given a Netgear Nighthawk M5 mobile router (external link) by a friend and tested the router for about a month with a 4G card and later also with a 5G card.

The router is very light, has a removable battery and a touch display. The display simplifies the use and operation of the router enormously, e.g. the PIN of the SIM card can be entered via the touch display. The price of the router is currently EUR 799 (January 2024), but ultimately the router offers a lot of functions and features in a very small format and very low weight.

The Wi-Fi name and password are also displayed directly on the screen.

Of course, settings can even be made directly via the display.

The battery of the Nighthawk M5 can be easily removed, i.e. the device works both with and without a battery. In addition, the small router even has a LAN port, which can be extremely practical.

I even used the Nighthawk mainly as a home router and was pleasantly surprised. There were no connection problems most of the time. I only had to restart the router once because the Internet became slow.

I tested the 5G performance with an o2 5G test card and achieved acceptable results in Berlin. My end device was connected to the router via WLAN.

The Netgear Nighthawk M5 5G router is available to buy from Amazon, for example (external link).

In addition to the practical touch display, the router can of course also be accessed via a web interface. Numerous settings and even port forwarding are possible here.