Meural 4+

After an unconscionably long time, the app has finally been completely redone, thank goodness. After more than a year of limping along with an virtually unusable iOS app (I finally got into the habit of uninstalling/reinstalling it before each and every use because otherwise it was in a perpetually frozen state), at long last it has been redone and the new version is much, much better. I’m once again able to control the screen from my phone, and the playlists are a pleasure since you can have many of them (it used to be you could have a max of eight), so I can organize content by themes, orientation, or whatever else I think will be useful, and then scroll through to see and choose individual images to display.

I do completely love my Meural and the content (though I miss the original editorials we used to get), and can only hope that Netgear will do a better job of keeping the app functional as operating systems evolve. Still on the wishlist: improving the support interface on Netgear’s site. Heaven forbid we have to weather any future protracted app issues with no means to resolve them.

The product itself along with the content deserves 5 stars; the still-fresh experience with poor support demotes my rating to four (but I’m hopeful for better performance going forward).

Really love the improvements.

One thing that I HATE however is that I have a ton of phot albums (and I feel like this product is geared towards people just like me). Finding and linking the album is extremely difficult. There should be a way to search on an album title or string…or at least SORT the albums. It would also be preferred to link more than one album at a time. I literally have to scroll down at least 200 albums to find what I want to link, which is extremely tedious. And since the albums are not sorted, this takes forever to do.

I was so excited to get my Meural canvas II. As a lover of the arts, I was excited to be able to display my own art and browse their catalog. I was hoping for a great experience but instead received the worst customer service when I called the support line. I received a box that was clearly opened and when I contact them they offered no exchange and refused to offer a discount customary of buying used or open boxes items. The app is still a bit buggy and shut off once or twice in the middle of using it. The subscription can only be canceled by customer support which after spending over an hour on hold with no compensation to make up for their product not meeting expectations you can see why it would be better to be able to manage the subscription through Apple. Unfortunately, I have now started to look for other services. I think to build a successful product and brand requires respecting and listening to people who took the time buy your products. I didn’t feel heard or seen as a consumer and as such highly DO NOT RECOMMEND this product until it offers better customer support and enables subscriptions through trusted services with a cancellation option that does not require reaching out by phone on hold 1+ hours to cancel a subscription.