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- Review count1
- Helpfulness votes4
- First reviewApril 14, 2017
- Last reviewApril 14, 2017
- Featured reviews0
- Average rating4
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SpudPug's Reviews
Circle allows your family to manage all of your home's connected devices with ease. With Circle, parents can now filter content and limit screen time as well as set a bedtime for every device in the home. Circle can even pause the Internet and share what kids are up to online.
Customer Rating
4
Not perfect, but better than anything else so far.
on April 14, 2017
Posted by: SpudPug
Verified Purchase:Yes
For context, I'm the parent of a 13-yr-old with a cell phone and a 9-yr-old without.
We purchased the Circle based on reviews after trying to reign in our kids' internet access through software, router, and ISP solutions. None offered the flexibility, access, and reporting we were looking for. The Circle comes the closest to our idea of a perfect solution, and it is priced below other less-featured solutions.
The major features that attracted us to the Circle were the ease of access using the iOS app, the kid-proof-ness of the design, the fact that it works with the router we already bought to do this (for 3x the Circle price), and the ability to set up multiple groups with multiple on/off times each day. Being able to put each kid's personal devices into their own group allows us to switch off the younger child's access for an earlier bedtime without affecting the older one. We also have separate groups for family-wide devices like the primary homework computer - these get different schedules for accessing entertainment vs educational websites. The ability to also exclude devices like our security cameras and thermostat from the user pool is helpful for when anarchy breaks out and we have to lock everything else down until the tantrums end (you other parents know what I'm talking about).
While it's not perfect (the interface can be clunky at times, and you can't undo a reward given to a child, for example) the overall experience is leaps and bounds above anything else we've tried. Improvements are always coming, and connections to multiple additional apps have been promised. It's great as-is, and hopefully it will just get better.
Note: We have not yet tried the paid service that controls devices on a mobile network, but it is supposedly an extension of the included home wifi service.
I would recommend this to a friend!
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