After six years, Google is finally ending support for the OnHub

The OnHub was Google’s very first attempt at creating a wireless router and paved the way for Google Wifi. It was released all the way back in 2016 by both TP-Link and Asus, and to date, this device is still out there being used by many faithful consumers. It features both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands and automatically connects users to one or the other intelligently – something Google Wifi also learned how to do.

Touted as “easy to use and ready for the future”, the OnHub’s legacy is more about paying forward its best qualities than it is about being the future directly. The device will officially stop getting security updates or software features before December 19, 2022, and will no longer be able to operate from the Google Home app after that date, effectively deprecating it.

• You won’t be able to update things like Wi-Fi network settings, add additional Wifi devices, or run speed tests. 
• Google Assistant features like “Hey Google, pause my Wi-Fi” will stop working.
• OnHub performance can’t be guaranteed.

To alleviate the pain for those who are still clutching their OnHub devices with white knuckles, Google is offering a special discount code via email for 40% off of Nest Wifi on the Google Store. If you are in this camp, you have until March 31, 2022 to claim it otherwise it will expire!

As the company states on its Nest Help page, a lot has changed for Wifi over the past six years, so it’s basically ready to move on to forcing all of its users to upgrade to the latest setup. It’s not all doom and gloom though, because the Nest Wifi has many benefits that you won’t find with OnHub, including intelligent notifications for when a device joins your network, connection speed information so you can diagnose network issues, the ability to check your peak internet usage on a graph so you can understand if your current plan is the best fit for your home, and more.

Understandably, most OnHub users could probably give a crap less about all of these little benefits as they have a fondness for their O.G. devices, and I get that. All I’ll say is that nothing lasts forever, and while they are now being strongarmed into spending money to upgrade if they want to keep their home Google-centric, grabbing the Nest Wifi setup for 40% off is a pretty sweet way to welcome them into the modern.