Customer Ratings & Reviews

I was surprised to find out that this product has existed in multiple previous forms and this was the first time I had heard of it. Now that these have become a bit more mainstream some services like Gmail are letting you set them up directly. Requiring the need to be plugged into the device AND have a physical touch to log in adds that extra layer of security many are looking for. This was fairly straightforward for me to set up but you’re unlikely to set one of these up and give it to your grandma. It’s a bit too techy for that. I almost wish these came in a two pack as Yubico themselves recommend you have a backup or second key. I did also encounter a few instances where I couldn’t set it up at all and had to work around it. The NFC portion was a little finicky for me when using it on a mobile device. Overall this is well made and I recommend one for anyone attempting to add more layers of security to their life. The form factor is great and the key itself lends very well to every day carry.

The YubiKey 5 NFC was easy to setup the pin and get device ready for use. The reason why I gave 3 out of 5 stars is because the YubiKey website was not helpful; after pin setup and my Windows recognizing the device, I had no idea how use the device to log into Windows. After about 30 minutes trying to figure it out, I gave up. Later, I had to search for videos on YouTube and various sites to finally figure it out. I had to download additional software from the YubiKey website to log into Windows. So I think that the YubiKey website needs to be more informative and user friendly to the users because the video at the home screen did not help. Another drawback is the instructions ask that users have a backup key as well, so this caused some second guessing if I wanted to use it without a backup YubiKey. In the end, after being able to use the YubiKey to login, everything was OK. I will still recommend this to friends and family as it seems very secure because the YubiKey must be plugged into the system for login as extra security. If I had not lost an hour or more on setup, I think I would have given 5 stars.

I really wanted to like the YubiKey 5 NFC that I was given to evaluate. I'm a big fan of multifactor (or two factor) authentication (MFA or 2FA in the jargon). Multifactor authentication relies on something you know (like a username/password pair) as well as something you have (for example, a phone to receive an SMS message or a phone app to generate a time based one time password - TOTP). I have several TOTP authenticators on my phone for various websites (e.g. OTP Auth, Norton VIP Access, or Google Authenticator). They all work pretty much the same - you enter your username/password pair, pull out your phone and bring up the proper app, and enter the six digit code that it generates (which typically changes every minute). Yubikey can automate this process, but as a big improvement, it supports FIDO2 (a very secure challenge response protocol) as well as the one-time password world. That's a big win. The problem is that it's really best used with a phone (for NFC) or a laptop (to plug in). If you're a desktop user like myself, then there's often something else plugged into the easily accessible USB port and you still have to touch the key to authenticate which involves serious contortions. Also, a single Yubikey isn't a good idea - you need two so that you have a backup. I have no idea why they don't sell these as pairs since a single Yubikey is very vulnerable to loss and you often (depending on the website) cannot use an alternate authentication method to get in if you lose your Yubikey. At any rate, I'm a bit paranoid so I never log in to finance sites using my phone or laptop connected via wifi. As a result, Yubikey isn't a big win for me.