Discontinued: Circle with Disney

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.

This product does not work well. Setup is somewhat easy to do as they make it user friendly which I attribute to the Disney branding. But the product does not work well. What I mean is that the Circle is supposed to work with your router and keep track of all devices connected to the network through wifi. EVERYDAY the connection is lost. EVERY morning I run the Circle app on my phone and it searches and searches and can't find it. This literally happens EVERYDAY. I called Circle customer support and they were friendly and all and their solution is to unplug the router and plug it back in again after about thirty seconds. The router resents and after about 5 minutes, the Circle finds the router. Then it says I connected to my Circle and to give this profile a name. I just call it Temp and then save and all my connections are on there including Temp. So I delete Temp and I am back to my normal number of profiles.But you should not have to do this EVERYDAY. So frustrating that even Circle customer support says it shouldn't be like that but it is. And I finally went past the 30 day mark and they would not send me a replacement. So I guess this is normal for Circle.Another thing I find annoying is that you can't sent different bedtimes for different days. So bedtime for the kids on a school night is 10pm and the wifi should shut down. On weekends they might stay up to 11 or later but I can't put in a different time for Friday and Saturday. Seems like a simple function but its something not included.A third annoyance is that when you set time limits, you have only a few choices: No limit, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, etc. You do not have a choice of Zero minutes or block completely. I don't want my son playing online games during the week. I can only minimize it by giving him 15 minutes a day and then he is blocked. Maybe I'm missing something here but there should be a setting for no access.I would definitely NOT recommend this product. Like I said before, my Circle unit loses connection with my router (Netgear so its a popular brand) everyday for some reason. The Circle customer support says I have to reset my router to get the Circle device to recognize it. I have to do this EVERYDAY. That is ridiculous. That's almost like having to jump start your car everyday to get it running in the morning. This is a decent product when it works although some functions are just not quite polished but the fact that it keeps losing connection with your router, the most basic function, forces me to give this product One Star for review. I recommend looking at the other options, which I won't name here as a courtesy to Circle but do more research before making a decision. This device is Disney branded which is cute but the Circle product itself is not ready.