Google will kill OnHub routers next year — what you need to do

Google will kill OnHub routers next year — what you demand to do

(Prototype credit: Google)

If you're using a Google OnHub router, bad news: You lot get to use it for just 1 more year.

On Dec. 19, 2022, Google said in a new web log post, all support for OnHub routers will stop. The routers, currently six years old, will still role, merely you'll no longer be able to manage them with the Google Home smartphone app. Unfortunately, the app is the only way y'all can manage an OnHub at all.

"Y'all won't be able to update things like Wi-Fi network settings, add additional Wifi devices, or run speed tests," said the web log post. "Google Assistant features like 'Hey Google, interruption my Wi-Fi' will stop working. OnHub performance can't be guaranteed."

Every bit for whether or not you'll get any more firmware or security updates, Google was vague, stating but that those would end "before Dec 19, 2022." That could hateful tomorrow, or information technology could mean that OnHubs volition go several more months of updates.

So you could keep using your OnHub, but we wouldn't recommend doing and then. Instead, Google recommends that "you upgrade to a new Wi-Fi setup today."

Discount offer on Nest Wifi devices

To that end, the company will send all OnHub owners an email with a link that offers a 40% disbelieve on its current Nest Wifi mesh systems. In theory, this ways a Nest router and two mesh "points," which ordinarily retail for $350, would cost only $210.That's about the same price as an OnHub router back when information technology first came out in 2015. The offer is skilful through March 31, 2022.

In addition, you can trade in your old Google OnHub router to Amazon, shipping paid by Amazon, and y'all'll get 20% off a new Eero mesh-router system. You'll also get an Amazon souvenir menu equal to the appraised value of your device.

There are, in fact, ii OnHub models: one made by TP-Link, the other past Asus. The first came out in August 2015 and cost $200; the second launched in Oct of that same yr and retailed for $220. Their innards were identical and made to Google'due south specs, but the Google'southward own Wifi mesh-router system superseded the OnHubs in belatedly 2016.

Google's intentions with the OnHub were to produce an attractive, like shooting fish in a barrel-to-use, powerful router, and sell information technology at what was then a premium price. At the time, most dwelling Wi-Fi routers cost between $60 and $120. The TP-Link version even had a series of optional shells, for which you could swap out the original casing.

In our review of the TP-Link version of the Google OnHub, Brian Nadel said information technology "may correspond the future of home networking" but was express by its narrow configuration choices.

At that place was just one downstream Ethernet port, for example. There was besides no way to interface with the router's admin settings from a PC or Mac and, at the fourth dimension of release, a USB port that didn't work.

Fortunately, the Google Wifi mesh systems that Google released a year after were astern-compatible with the OnHubs, and the ii models could work interchangeably on a single dwelling network.

According to 9to5Google, the OnHubs and Wifis fifty-fifty concluded upwardly on the same firmware-update cycle. The Google Home app, which controls a wider range of smart-home devices, gradually replaced the defended OnHub app.

OnHub had too brusque a working life

Only nonetheless, the OnHub will be but seven years old when Google officially kills information technology. Routers should have longer working lives than that.

The venerable and dull-looking Netgear Nighthawk R7000, for case, came out in the fall of 2013. Only eight years later, it's still in product, sold in stores and updated with new firmware and security updates.

Unlike the OnHub (or the Wifis), you can ignore the smartphone app (in this instance, the Nighthawk one) and instead administer the R7000 the quondam-fashioned way — from a PC or Mac connected by an Ethernet cable.

Past comparing, the OnHub's short life shows that sometimes gadgets can become too loftier-tech for their ain proficient.

Cheque out our choices for the best Wi-Fi routers , and the best mesh Wi-Fi systems .

Paul Wagenseil is a senior editor at Tom'south Guide focused on security and privacy. He has also been a dishwasher, fry cook, long-haul driver, code monkey and video editor. He's been rooting effectually in the data-security space for more than 15 years at FoxNews.com, SecurityNewsDaily, TechNewsDaily and Tom's Guide, has presented talks at the ShmooCon, DerbyCon and BSides Las Vegas hacker conferences, shown upward in random Goggle box news spots and fifty-fifty chastened a panel word at the CEDIA home-technology conference. Yous can follow his rants on Twitter at @snd_wagenseil.