BACKROUND

This review is based on an immediate 30 day follow up to using Reloaded, which is run by the same group of people and uses the same channel feeds. US and sports channels are all I watch or personally care about, and I didn't bother testing any of the UK/CA content that is offered. So as always, anything below is a direct reflection on that specific experience.

GearsTV was run solely through Mayfair Pro APK. Internet speeds generally tested out at 75mbps+ while running IPVanish running in the backround, and on a wired connection through my 2017 Nvidia Shield. While I don't consider myself Mr. Tech or anything, I am confident in my researching/tinkering ability enough that any trouble shooting done was both accurate and with every possibility exhausted to best isolate any non-Reloaded issue.

My viewing times/habits are as follows: Wed - Sat I'd watch maybe an hour or 2 of ESPNs/FOXSPORTSs/MLB/WWE/NESN/NBA/NFL channels in the afternoon before work, then another 3 hours afterwards (usually 11pm est on) with some movie surfing mixed in. Sun - Tues I have completely off, so GearsTV would be used or running in the backround most of those days. Red Sox/Celtics games and UFC/WWE PPV's are also my specifically targeted sports interests. All in all I'd estimate that this review is based on roughly 100 hours of use as my primary IPTV source (with some Vader Streams and a random cheaper service test sprinkled in here and there when I wasn't using Gears).

SETUP/CUSTOMER SERVICE

Setup is about as easy as it gets. Download the APK, open it, put both your Gears and Mayfair account details in when prompted...done. There is also an option to download a more basic version of GearsTv to stream from your phone (although I personally didn't use or bother testing that feature).

I'd rate direct customer service from GearsTV themselves as a below average for a more established provider, with both a facebook group page and their own Discord chat. While having that Discord chat should suggest better then that on paper, I wasn't terribly impressed with it in comparison to what I see going on in some of the other ones I frequent. As while you will find your basic install help in there, it's not terrible active and lots of times I see people jump in without any live reps around to answer their questions. In those instance you might get a response back a couple hours latter, or more often not at all. It's basically there for the claim of having one more then it's surface claim of offering 24/7 support, and for what help they might offer you are probably better off just going through a reseller (mine was great) who has more of a reason to give a crap about you or your needs on a single sub level.

As far as fixing channels that go down goes, there is certainly a differing priority depending on on the channel. While any higher profile channel issue I've seen has been addressed asap, they definitely can take their time getting around to the more obscure stuff. Which adds up to great if you want to make sure your daily ESPN fix doesn't buffer, but not so great at times if that obscure channel like NESN is something you actually care about.

EPG

I said it with Reloaded and I'll say it again here. The Mayfair Pro EPG with the APK is hands down the best IPTV has to offer as far as EPGs go. Everything from accuracy to load times to scrolling speed to visual appearance is top of the food chain great. It even offers that extra level of polish of having thumbnail pictures of most tv/movie shows when you are surfing around it, which I personally found to be an extremely nice touch at times. Channel group management is also the best overall I've found, offering quick switches and without a need to exit out of anything with the simple click of menu button within the current section you are in.

Unlike pretty much everything else out there, sporting events don't require a separate section and are simply listed as their own channel in the guide. For instance if you want MLB they have a MLB Extra Innings channel within the guide section for sports , and clicking on it opens up a submenu listing right on screen of every available game and their scheduled times for the day. Same goes for NBA, PPV, ect. Again, a very welcome and nice extra touch as a whole.

All in all this makes for most user friendly experience I've found, and something which honestly (imo) can't be fully appreciated until you have it for a while...and then go back to not having it. Which in the name of wanting to test/review new services every month is my current situation (GearsTV expired a week back for me), and trust me...there hasn't been a day that's gone by where I haven't sat here missing it at one point or another.

CHANNELS/QUALITY/RELIABILITY

GearsTV channel offering is pretty much exclusive to US content (with some extra regional coverage, most notably Philly), and in this respect I'd rate it as top notch and fairly unequaled as far as overall variety goes. Whether it be those extra couple random movie channel you are not finding on something like Vader or Eternal, or the actual US feed itself instead of an English feed passing as one, chances are Gears is offering it. While there are some CA/UK channel listings, Gears go out of their way to note that neither is supported on their end (with a stated warning that they'll ban you for pestering them in regards to any CA or UK channel related issues).

Picture quality isn't at the top of the IPTV food chain, but is generally no worse as a whole then a lot of the other popular HD providers out there, and which of course can always vary by what specific channel you are making the provider vs provider comparison on. Most feeds are in HD though, although like pretty much every other provider you will at times run into your SD quality on a less then super popular channel. Very occasionally and in that select regard you'll get a pretty poorly cropped one at that.

What Gears does lack in peak picture quality it does make up for in unrivaled stability imo (which make no mistake and I can't stress this enough...outside a lot of overly boastful and fanboy driven claims there is no have your cake and eat it to solution to this out there atm. You **WILL** make a stability and buffering frequency trade off while hunting for better min/max picture feeds). Server crashes/downtime are almost non-existent from what I've gathered while keeping tabs over the last half a year plus. Overall channel stability as a whole and over an extended period of time is also probably the best I've ever experienced while trying pretty much every notably mentioned provider here on Reddit. None of which is to obviously say that you still won't run into your random drop or buffering of course but yeah...day in/day out consistency counts for a lot in my book, and for my own channel needs I was mostly satisfied with that overall consistency. Gear's ability to be relatively stable and remain relatively stable definitely sticks out imo among a lot of other popular great one month and terrible the next providers out there.

I tested 2 PPV's with Gears. One being a UFC event, the other being a WWE ppv. Both performed flawlessly and without a single hitch, and which followed up a similar experience I had with the two I watched on Reloaded the previous month. Speaking of which I slammed Reloaded pretty hard in that review for their MLB coverage being a complete joke, and on that front it actually rebounded quite a bit and into a mostly adequate experience in my second month. To an extent I used Gears for MLB more then I found myself using my backup (Vader), which despite the latter's 60fps offering picture upgrade was just having too many constant issues in comparison. None of which to say the rebound was a flawless one mind you, as I still ran into wrong listings and the occasional spotty or late starting feed, but for the most part it wasn't nearly the deal breaking experience it had been. Once again this didn't mirror my experience with the NBA coverage though, which was solid and didn't have any of those problems.

FEATURES/VALUE

*APK* - I didn't even bother to mention above about the basic Kodi install since this APK is easily the best, most user friendly, and highly polished one out there. As an android box based service Gears isn't your trying to save or stretch every buck provider to begin with, so any purchase there needs to include the extra $3-3.50 for the APK to complete the experience. Period.

*MULTIPLE CHANNEL FEEDS* - Gears offers 2 separate feeds on a lot of their higher profile channels, broken into a "1080p" and "Moble" listing. Quite honestly I never really noticed much of a difference in actual picture quality between them, but this did come in handy the one time I ran into any notable buffering with the service. Which occurred at the very tail end of my sub and lasted for 2 days. A lot of the feeds listed as 1080p were buffering, but when switching to the Moble listings they worked just fine.

*STABILITY* - I normally wouldn't put this down as as a "value" in a review, but I'm going to here. Especially considering the fact that in my current round of testing, that includes a sub of both Vader and Eternal, I'm on average switching between the two to find which is having the least amount of issues about 10 times a day (doing these tallys when I'm off work for the day and sitting around the house btw, and which got as low as 3 and high as 19). Which to me personally isn't the biggest deal in the world, especially with the multi room value I'm getting out of them as a whole, but has been for my girlfriend who got pretty used to turning on Gears once and almost never having to switch throughout the day. Her grumbling about it has gotten progressively worse lately too, so yeah...scoring Gears a convenience value here based on that.

The above said, no question Gears falls on the expensive side at $18.50 a month for a single line. As noted above if trying to save or stretch every dollar is your primary concern, and/or you are willing to make the overall stability sacrifice in the name of using multiple providers to min/max the potential feed quality you might be able to get on show/event you want to watch, there is probably better combo value as a whole out there to be had. But that also means you really aren't the type of user Gears is marketed at anyway.

On another note, and just to be thorough here, there is no official VOD. Which nobody really needs on the android box you'll be running Gears on anyway. Go to youtube and search "Terrarium TV". That's your easy to work VOD selection that will have anything being offered elsewhere and a lot more for free.

CONCLUSSION

For starters, I held off on putting this review up for a week due to the reported possibility that the owner was selling his share of the service (apparently to somebody already directly involved behind the scenes) to see how that shook out. Which apparently fell through, but doesn't really seem to be a cause for any surrounding concern. Well, except for the people with Reloaded subs thinking there is any logical reason in the world that they are now going to push ahead on a Mayfair APK. Won't happen and makes absolutely no financial sense with enough people still buying subs to both.

Secondly, and as was the case in my Reloaded review, I'm again going to give the GearsTV team props for having the best dev team out there imo, and for being different by taking more of a specialization approach then most providers do. I love the fact that they put functionality/polish of their product first, even if it means they won't attract as many customers that the much more typical and watered down "we have something for everybody!" approach would. Heck, coming full circle from when I first got into IPTV and going full blasphemy here, I even prefer the fact that you won't find many (if any) resellers offering free trials for this already well established provider. Or more specifically that they don't have a constant leech factor helping to potentially drag down the everyday experience for the people actually paying what amounts to be a premium.

So on that note and even taking into account the fairly high pricetag, I'm going to put GearsTV + Mayfair APK down as a **BUY** here for the majority of users out there, and especially among the tech challenged. Which I know combined with what was written in this review is coming off as overly positive, but I really did struggle to find any notable negatives with the month I spent using it. It was just a great overall experience as far as my expectations with IPTV go, and my favorite to date. My mother's as well...by far. GearsTV prides itself on a "it just works" motto, and that's the primary aspect it both lives up to and what you are basically buying it for there. It's also the only provider out there atm that I'd even consider running as a sole service and without a backup.

Direct purchase method (credit card only, and have to then buy Mayfair account elsewhere) - https://omarsvideos.com/acc/cart.php

Established reseller I used who includes the Mayfair account and accepts various other payment methods, including Paypal - https://srmronline.com/whmcs/cart.php?a=confproduct&i=0