NETGEAR 4G LTE Broadband Modem (LM1200) – Use LTE as a Primary Internet Connection or Failover Solution for Always-On WiFi Certified with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon

My wife works from home 100% now. That means it's MY job to make sure she has100% uptime. Our cable is very reliable, but it does sometimes go out at the most inopportune times so I was looking for a backup to get us through a day or so if we lose wired connectivity. Enter the NETGEAR 4G LTE Broadband Modem (LM1200). Right out of the box it worked with a T-Mobile hotspot SIM that I picked up at my local store. There's no WiFi on the LM1200 which is great, because it's not what I was looking for. If you want an LTE WiFi hotspot, there are a ton of other choices out there for you. Think of the LM1200 more as a cable modem with some very rudimentary routing capabilities (which can be turned off.) We're using Ubiquiti equipment on our network at home so I needed something that would interface with that. The Unifi Dream Machine (UDM, non-pro version) doesn't offer failover capability so the LM1200 fits in perfectly by slipping in between our cable modem and the UDM router's single WAN port. When the cable goes down, the LM1200 kicks into action and seamlessly changes the connection from our cable modem to its built-in LTE modem. When the cable comes back up, it switches back. Exactly what a UDM owner wanting failover is looking for. Having said that, the LM1200 also works well with the Unifi Dream Router 7 (UDR7) that I recently installed. The UDR7 does include failover capability between its two WAN ports and takes care of the switching on its own. In this use case, you would turn off the failover function on the LM1200 and simply attach it as another modem on the UDR7's second WAN port. Of course you still have the option of letting the LM1200 do the failover for you as mentioned above and then switch that second WAN port on the UDR7 to be another LAN port. Your choice. My only gripe with the LM1200 is that it's LTE-only. Don't get me wrong, that's fine. I knew that going in so I'm not going to take away anything from its rating. But this is 2025 and it's about time for NETGEAR to have an upgraded version that has the same capabilities but using 5G. I'm pretty sure NETGEAR knows that which is why the LM1200 is being sold for a reasonably low price. I'm perfectly happy with the LM1200 while I wait for its successor.

So first I'm fully off grid out here, the nearest utility is a mile or more down the road and that's just power and a phone line. Everything I have comes through an larger/upgraded antenna whether it be TV, FM, LTE, ham radio. So I know an thing or too about how to get the most out of the signals in the air around you. Pros: Price Wall mountable(86mm hole spacing) Small Easy web interface Easy setup External ant ports if needed Cons: -Uses USB C as a power source. (Needs a wall adapter vice a normal 12volt source like most routers and my booster, ideally I would wire it directly to my campers 12 volt system which remains powered if ACpower to the camper is lost.) -Internal antenna doesn't do well in low signal environments. -you must connect directly to it via Ethernet to view the settings menu on a computer. Can't connect from PC>router>lm1200. Has to be PC>LM1200 It just happened that I was on a hill that can just about get decent service from band 13 LTE on a tower 5km away from me even know the cell tower antenna barely faces my direction. So I got a booster that can boost that band. All good. Great useable speed from my phones hotspot buuuttt I needed a wired connection, I wanted Ethernet for some equipment I have so enter the lm1200 Netgear cell booster. Very cheap at 110 dollars. Picked it up from an Amazon locker in town and walked right into Verizon store without even taking it out of the box. They scanned the IMEI number and confirmed that they could probably set up a SIM card even though he had no idea what I had in my hand and had never done it before. Probably 5 minutes later we were powering up the unit with a new SIM card and it was online 2 minutes later after initializing a connection. I ran home and powered it back up and bam, connected to cell tower(via my booster) and I ran a temp line directly to my PC and it worked perfect. Pings range from 40-100ms for me so you ain't gonna game on this bad boy but anything else not time sensitive will do fine. So in my video you see I run it into a normal wifi router, this allows me to have multiple ethernet ports for multiple things and it allows me to have both a 2.4 and 5.0 Wi-Fi band like a standard household would, which allows visitors without cell service to still connect to something. The same thing that you would do if you went to a friend's house and you didn't have cell phone service. So my first impression is that the internal antenna of the LM 1200 is fairly terrible because I can only get up to around 10 megabytes per second when testing(in my signal environment), I thought about getting a splitter and connecting the TS9 ports on the back of this directly to the same antenna that my cell phone booster uses, but I'm willing to try the $7 whip antennas you can buy for this that just plug right into the back and I'll update this and let you know how much speed I get just by adding those two little whip antennas. If those don't work, they sell a coax type f to ts-9 splitter that I can use to connect this lm1200 directly to my cell phone booster antenna you see in my video. So the data for the nerdy people: -I can get near full bars which means -70db signal on my pixel 6 when located at the same spot as this product and this product gets 70 db(viewed on the web portal) - With my cell booster OFF, I get about -115db on my phone and -115 on this device. -So the cheap Amazon booster works great when set up properly even with stock antennas. That translated to about 20-30 down and 5-10 up on my phone using the boosted LTE. -BUT when doing speed test on my computer when using this product I only get around 6 down and 2-5 up at the time of testing These speeds change with network/tower traffic of course but I think its interesting that the speeds can be so different from 2 devices that are using the same carrier and cell band and have about the same signal strength so I'm going to call my carrier and present this data as i suspect they are messing with my speeds. Other details, 70 bucks added on my bill for this extra "line" and 150gb of data...

Es una porquería, la publicidad es engañosa te hace creer que este producto genera una red wifi para conectar tus dispositivos inalámbricos pero no, sólo ofrece un puerto ethernet. Es un modem 4G yo lo uso en México con un chip de axios y si funcionó, sólo tuve que añadir el APN del proveedor y funciona muy bien. Lo malo es que tienes que pagar por otro dispositivo router que genere la red WIFI y puedas conectar todos tus dispositivos de forma inalámbrica. Este modelo LM1200 no trae batería ni botón de apagado/encendido tienes que dejarlo conectado siempre a la corriente eléctrica, no lo recomiendo.

Totally plug and play. This shouldn’t be your your primary router. It’s router features are super slim and basic. You use this in bridge mode to act as modem to connect to Bell (or Rogers) 4G for cell internet when needed during an outage of your wired (fiber, dsl or cable). You want a carrier for 4G that is different than your wired ISP. It’s a fantastic hot standby and automatic failover solution if your wired internet goes down. Or your house fiber, phone line or cable line is cut. Imagine voip, wifi, TVs, security, voice assistants, alarms, house automation all working when main internet goes down. It’s a whole house internet backup solution. Super simple to setup - get a nano sim card and ask your cell data provider to unlock it and register the IEMI # of this modem and 5 mins later you are online. You configure it with a PC via an Ethernet cable to the modem. You then connect it your primary router’s spare Ethernet jacks (that you designate as wan fail over in your router setup). You need a router that has WAN failover and preferably failback like many Asus routers. Failover is about 30 seconds and automatic once your primary internet goes offline. Nothing in your house will notice the difference - no rebooting of anything or trying to hotspot to your phone in an outage. Failback on your primary router watches for your wired internet to come back online and auto switch back to avoid costly cell data charges. Failback also happens in 30 seconds or less. This modem also has sms alerts to your phone to let you know you are on backup internet and alerts when data exceeds a set threshold. This plus notifications from your 4G provider that require exception approvals protect you from surprise high cell data bills. In standby mode, a router like Asus sends no data over the lan Ethernet cable to this modem So zero data charges, means you can get a basic $10/mth standby package for 4G online backup. (It will also hunt for 3G if no 4G but those speeds aren’t really useable - so set it to hunt for 4G only). (An Asus primary router could also use this in an actIve wan load sharing mode to increase bandwidth- but that would be super expensive data charges). Speed on this for about a 2 bar reception to cell tower is 50-70 Mbs down and 15 MBs up. There are jacks for extra antennas that don’t make much of a difference unless you put the remote antenna outside. When’s it’s in failover mode, you can logon onto to the admin interface from any lan device or phone to see real time data bandwidth downloaded. Monthly testing is as simple as unplugging the wan Ethernet cable to your wired internet modem from your router.

This 4G modem works surprisingly well and is affordable. I use it for remotely monitoring a camera system and basic home automation. The area has poor reception and this thing manages to get a usable signal even with the built in antenna. It provides decent performance even at low reception (2-3 bars). It works well enough for viewing camera feeds and PTZ controls.

I am giving this one less star because it took me along time to get it to work. The current app version of the router works just fine. I inserted my fido sim card from my phone into the router and it automatically detected the apn settings and connected to internet. I didn't need to change any apn settings however everytime I tried to update the app I got an error, so I decided to manually update the app as the automatic update was giving errors. I went to netgear website and downloaded the latest firmware then uploaded it to router and it automatically update itself however the newest version is not any better as the previous version automatically detected apn settings whereas the new version requires manual input of apn settings, so the upgrade was more of a downgrade, and I advise against it. the previous version also allowed me to connect to sim card using the bridge mode whereas the new version of the app wouldn't work in bridge mode and it has to be in router mode only. the manual says wan doesn't work now and it will be available in app upgrade, this was the reason I updated it; there is no way for me know if wan works in the new updated version of the app, however I did see failover settings displayed in the new version (not sure if this has anything to do with wan functionality) but there is no wan settings in the new version. after spending so many hours playing with settings I figured out how to get eiotclub (esim card) to work with the device. esim cards are great options to save money on data. eiot esim card worked fine after I changed some settings. I did the following to get eiot sim card to work: the router has to be in router mode (not bridge mode) and you have to allow connection to accept roaming by changing the settings from connect all the time (except roaming) to connect all time (with no exception). once these two settings are changed and you add the apn of eiot esim card, you restart router, and it will automatically work. I am going to use this router in my car for my car security systems like wifi cameras, door sensors, and vibration sensors. so if I get an alarm from my car like someone opening the door or hitting my car, I will be notified and I will check the cameras remotely so I can see if a robber is about to do the deed. I could do all that without a monthly subscription, because with eiot esim card I can activate the card remotely with as much as 5 to 10 dollars whenever needed. esim will remain inactive until someone steal my car then I could activate the sim card remotely to see where my car is going and who stole it. one thing to keep in mind is that this device doesn't have any wireless functionality, which means you have to connect it to a router. I do have a pocket size router from tplink that I used with it and it works just fine. initially my tplink router didn't work with it except with the fido sim card, so when I used my eiot sim card it didn't work however after I changed the settings on netgear router from bridge mode to router mode, my tplink router started to work just fine.

After seeing a lot of reviews saying that the Netgear LM1200 [LM1200-100NAS] does not work with Telus in Canada I decided to test it for myself after checking that I could return the device if it did not work. The LM1200 works great with the SIM's I have for a business APN I manage using Telus IoT. I can only assume that the LM1200 does not work with the Telus residential service or that people don't know how to properly set up the device, usually an issue when you have to set a custom APN which is what I had to do to get the modem working with my Telus IoT account. The modem has been working great for me for several days as a failover device and I really like that it can be set to bridge mode which is something that most devices don't offer as a feature. The SIM I'm using in this device has a static IP. I'm not using external antennas and the modem gets 20 Mbps upload and download (all I need) from inside a building with less than ideal signal strength. Since I have no need for WiFi or any router functionality on the modem it makes for a perfect solution for my needs. I can't believe it is so difficult to find devices with these features.