Pros: None, doesn't work.

Cons: I have a small home and yet this product only works for 30 minutes. I'm not alone in this, read reviews from other websites. From what I've gathered if you have an older home, this product probably won't work for you as well. FYI my home was built in the 70's I believe.

Manufacturer Response:

Hello Customer,

Thank you for checking out this product.

We are sorry to see that you are having issues with this device.

If the device has been able to make a connection, then it means the pair must be on the same circuit - this is good.

One reason you may see intermittent connectivity could be do to other devices on the same circuit that may be interfering with this one.

These can be things like refrigerators, TVs, or basically anything that takes up a lot of power.

We are experienced in trouble-shooting this issue and you may feel free to contact us directly for any support.

We have a 24 hour technical support hotline and please contact us at any time.

Best Regards!

TP-LINK Support Team
ussupportteam@tp-link.com

Pros: Good speed, no less reliable than my Netgear AV200

Cons: None really. Does what it is advertised to do.

Other Thoughts: I have a Netgear AV200 ran from a downstairs room to my bedroom. It powers a SmartTV, a ps4, and a laptop. I decided to move the PS4 to the living room, so rather than run a cord the length of the house, I picked this up to see if it would pair nicely with the Netgear. It picked up connection almost immediately and is super reliable.

Pros: * The main bonus to this model of powerline adapter kit compared to an earlier model I have is its power saving feature called “Green Powerline”. It reduces power consumption by up to 85% when active. I have no way to test that but I’m going to take TP-Link’s word for it. While this is a great thing, it can also be a horrible thing (See my first CON in the cons section below).

* Great alternative to WIFI when WIFI signals are too weak or are unavailable to use.

* Setup and usage is really simple. Plug them into your wall, stick your Ethernet cable in them and press the pair button. That’s it!

* They work pretty much as expected and should work in the majority of situations where these would be needed to improve or extend a network in your home. They come with a 2 year warranty and 24/7 free technical support. That’s pretty good but you probably won’t need it with something as simple as these. They will either work or not work and tech support won’t matter.

Cons: * The biggest con for me is that when my PC goes to sleep, and then wakes up, these powerline adapters just stay asleep and never wake up unless I unplug them and replug them. This con alone would prevent me from using them as I would go insane if I had to do this every day, several times per day! I understand though, that there is a newer version of this model that is supposed to fix this issue. Unfortunately, I received the older model .

* The network speeds this provides are NOT as fast as using a straight Ethernet cable, nor are they as fast as advertised (500Mbps). The speeds varied greatly over several speed tests (80Mbps to 380Mbps) and I have no idea what was causing that. Average speeds were nearly the same or faster than when I tested my 802.11b/g/n wireless network to compare it to. When I ran my 802.11ac wifi on the other hand, the powerline adapters came in a distant 2nd place.

* Power strips (GFCI surge protectors). They seem to block out the network signal. You have to plug directly into the wall, or use a power strip that does not have any kind of fuse or power conditioner on it. I also had issues running through to a separate fused line, but not always. They would work from my office to my bedroom which are two separate lines, but not from my office to my kitchen which are also two separate lines. If I were an electrician and a network engineer I might have an answer to this but alas, I’m baffled.

* You have to buy an adapter for each device you use with it (unless you have a hub) and you must have a device for each different room you need network connectivity in. If you have 13 things to connect to your network like I do, this could get spendy compared to a wifi signal.

* They do get pretty warm, so don’t store them with your cans of gasoline or black power kegs.

Other Thoughts: My entire home network uses CAT7 Ethernet cables and an AC1900 (802.11AC) wireless network. Switching over to this powerline adapter kit made a noticeable slowdown, but only when testing it’s throughput. Streaming movies and music worked just as good either way. Downloading large files off the internet wasn’t an issue as the adapters are faster than my cable internet provides me. I did have some problems as noted in the cons section above, but in a scenario where one could avoid these, this adapter kit is definitely a great solution with overall good performance.

Streaming with my Roku media streamer worked fine, as did my Tivo 3 and both PCs (when not on separate electrical fuse lines). Would I recommend this product? Well, if your networking situation is in need of a solution like this and considering its $22 price tag, I would. Just remember to consider the cons I listed.

Pros: I have seen wireless come into its own and make a name for itself with the Mb/s 1G networks that are impressive and usefull for a house full of interconnected computers, Blue-Ray players, X Box 360s, and PS3 consoles.
But these Powerline class adapters really are the cat's Meow for what I have witnessed. They started out with a lot of bugs, and large devices that made the computers seem smaller, but the engineers just kept improving them and improving them until now, they are a good option for internet thru a house without the headaches of WiFi or variations.
If you are an IT type or a enthusiat of electronics and computer science, then WiFi is what you have installed probably. I don't like WiFi, don't like all the configuration varieties, which I know are becoming uniform finally, however, for me, I use these to bring my internet to my non WiFi enabled Blu-Ray player that has an ethernet connection in it to accept a way to bring in Netflix, Hulu, and the BBC news.
Yep, if you don't have a LAN network going full blast with teenagers going at it on Battlefield 4 and downloading a lot of stuff they never watch anyway, these are fine for a coupla high def 720P movies and internet cruising. I have five now populating my home, since I live alone, they don't get a lot of traffic, and work excellent when my Gdaughter is watching You Tube in the living room and my Gson is playing FC2 in the bedroom and I am watching Breaking Bad in the family room on Netflix, all on these little wonders.
As others and myself have stated before, they are not carriers of high bandwidth, but will do fine as low to medium traffic bandwidth stuff. They also would be nice to have around for when the wifi might go kaput, or save buying a new router or extender out to the workshed or garage.
They are easy-peasy to set up, just plug the first one in, press its button, then within 2 minutes, plug the second one in nearby and press its button then wait about three minutes and they are bonded. With the third, just press either of the first pair, but not both, then the button on the new one, and then it is on the LAN. And so on to I don't know the limit, but I have five going and two are 200Mb/s from TRENDnet, and they work fine with the three from TP-Link at 500Mb/s.
I don't see a lot of difference tween the 200s and 500s, but I am sure there is a measurable difference of a bit, just not enough to notice in normal use. It is very typical for Powerline adapters that the two different products mesh so well and easily together. I recommend Powerline to all my friends over WiFi, unless they are enthusiats or have a large family of computer users, in which case I recommend using both, with low bandwidth useage doled out according to the capacity of each.
These would be ideal if you want to just take a load off the main router and not have to buy a more expensive one or add an extender.
I use them near a dryer and washer, no prob so far.

Cons: The only cons are the reduced bandwidth, which isn't a problem unless you have fairly heavy traffic on the LAN of your home or office.
They need a chance to be seen in light of the advances that have been made. They are amazing little gizmos that do what they say.

Other Thoughts: Like I said, they are easy peasy, anyone can follow the directions for adapting them. Almost everyone, I should say, cause some people get rebellious when confronted by anything new. But I would guess about 50% or more of the people that have high power wifi devices could get by with these little devices, instead of hundreds of dollars, you pay a hundred for a housefull, if you get them on sale.

THEY ARE WORTH TAKING A GOOD LOOK AT.

Pros: Convenient, plug & play, shiny looking, AES is nice if there's actually a concern that someone is tapping your mains power to steal your packets and cookies and so forth.

Altogether, this gets the job done. If you have a sub-basement or some other remote area without wifi, or if for some reason you don't have wifi, this is a great way to get something going in there.

Cons: May block both outlets. Not being polarized will help with that, if turning it 180 will help. Not great for power strips...

... in fact, if you have a power strip that cleans up the power, you're going to see a reduction in effective bandwidth. Unfortunately, this includes any type of UPS, so your network will not be fault-proof for power if this is an essential component in keeping things running (or, if you want slow speeds, you can put it on your UPS).

In the end, this item is not practical if:

1. You have wireless available. It seems to be be, almost universally, slower than wireless in real-life scenarios;

2. You have old wiring. I live in an old apartment building. I don't get to pick and choose my wiring. (Plus side: It's small enough I have wireless everywhere, so #1 applies.) But many people rent homes, or just don't consider a wiring upgrade as a good offset for the cost of not buying a second router or wifi extender. I sure wouldn't.

3. You need real ethernet speed. You won't get it.



Here's a breakdown of my "hands on" tests. I didn't set up any special scenarios. I would like to think "just do it out of the box" is the right thing to do. I went halfway across the apartment from my router (not all the way across, just part way) and gave it a whirl. Then I repeated it, but the router-side was behind a UPS that (moderately) conditions the power to be cleaner / protected from surges. Then I did a baseline with my wifi (from the same spot in the apartment) and ethernet (from the same laptop, plugged into the router and -- to be fair -- with an ethernet cable long enough to get me in that same spot in the apartment).

I ran two (distinct) speed tests, I tried to download a big file from a website, and I downloaded and uploaded a large file by FTP within the local network. Here is how each connection fared. Please note that some are Mbps and some are MB/s. Divide by (or multiply by) eight accordingly. The figures are all ballpark or averaged.

PL = powerline
PL/UPS = powerline behind UPS
Wifi = normal wifi
Eth = normal ethernet
Mbps = megabits per second
MB/s = megabytes per second ( 1MB/s = 8Mbps )
u = upstream
d = downstream

Large file download from web
PL: 0.9-1.3 MB/s (d)
PL/UPS: 0.7-1.0MB/s (d)
Wifi: 1.5-3.4 MB/s (d)
Eth: 2.5-5.2 MB/s (d)

FTP transfer (over LAN)
PL: 2.0 MB/s (d) and 3.5 MB/s (u)
PL/UPS: 1.2 MB/s (d) and 0.3 MB/s (u)*
Wifi: 5.0 MB/s (d&u)
Eth: 12.0 MB/s (d&u)

*This is not a typo. I repeatedly tested this and 0.3 is not a fluke.

Speed test #1
PL: 15.0 Mbps (d&u)
PL/UPS: 8.5 Mbps (d) and 3.7 Mbps (u)
Wifi: 33 Mbps (d) and 28 Mbps (u)
Eth: 78 Mbps (d) and 29 Mbps (u)

Speed test #2
PL: 13 Mbps (d) and 20 Mbps (u)
PL/UPS: 8.6 Mbps (d) and 3.1 Mbps (u)
Wifi: 49 Mbps (d) and 35 Mbps (u)
Eth: 76 Mbps (d) and 29 Mbps (u)


This confirms the following two assertions, which really are the reason this thing can't get 5/5 eggs:

1. It is slower than wifi.
2. Behin

Other Thoughts: No word on how surge-protection works on this device. I should look into that if I'm going to use these long term (I'm not though). Surge protectors aren't great for this device's performance, but do you want to leave it exposed? This is an unanswered question I'd want to address if I were concerned about power surges.

While the effective speed will always depend on your home wiring, I don't see this making wifi obsolete (or even replacing wifi wherever available). This is a clever product that is past its prime -- wifi is no longer a slow lurch compared to ethernet, which means routing the pipe through your mains power is going to make your wired network (along that part of it, anyway) just as slow -- if not slower! -- than wifi.

Still, this product IS in fact great for the right application (see "Cons" -- if you do NOT meet conditions 1,2,3 I mentioned, then this item might actually be of great use to you!).

I haven't yet tried doubling this up with my POE injector, but I wonder how that would work. Probably either a really good combo, or totally incompatible, but I'd have to check out the specs and read up on the idea -- and I want to give this thing its own separate review. Bonus points to any other reviewer who does his/her homework and tries this out.

Pros: Very, very easy to use this nano powerline adapter. Simply push the only button and it works great paired with a Netgear XAVB5101 adapter at very good speeds. Sleek design and the best I've seen out of the 2 pairs I already have. Smaller and slimmer than the Netgear and the TRENDnet powerline adapters and just as reliable! Blue lights are nice! RELIABLE connection it works everytime without any issues. Compatible with other brands of devices. Able to stream HD movies from the server without any hiccups whatsoever. Nicely packaged with a high quality ethernet cable.

Cons: I have nothing bad to say!

Other Thoughts: I think that everyone could use at least 2 of these or any good pair of nano powerline adapters. It really is easy and convenient to have a good high quality secure connection anywhere in the house regardless of how many walls you have to go through. I've even used mine with surge protectors and extension cords and although it did slow down my connection I was still able to stream HD movies without issues. Most homes now have too many wireless devices running so these will speed up the network by cutting down on the wireless traffic. I have them on a smart bluray player and a Playstation 3 and everything on my network plays nice with each other including another Playstation 3 wired directly into the router. I've had no conflicts anywhere.

Pros: works where your router WIFI doesn't, good data rates in those areas for browsing and work

Cons: None but you must have good wiring for best signal.

Other Thoughts: Mbps is mega bits per second not MBps which is megabytes per second --8 Mbps =1mb so max this product transfers is 62.5 MBps (megs a second). I commonly get 40 and can hit as close to max 58 on the same wiring lead.

I have used and reviewed this product before and here I am again.
I use the other in a back area at the office that can not get WIFI due to interference and can now have internet away from the crowd and noise.
This time I decided to try it in a back shed where I do wood work and stuff on my off time and my Wifi had problems getting there and it does fine so I used a TP-Link "hotspot" item I had and now have wireless there/woo hoo now I don't have to run into the house to look stuff up.
Please note that the quality of wiring can and will cause lower signal on any of these so if you have an old house with aluminum wiring you may be hurting. and even an area in my house had so much tied into it I lost 50% from a plug 10' away.
If you have an area that you like to browse and yet can not get a good WIFI there and don't mind plugging in this is a perfect product w/o the pain of setting up extenders,repeaters or such and is simple plug and play.

Pros: I tested 2 of these units from the TL-PA4010KIT (which came with 2 of them, you will need at least 2 for a network). Opening the package to having them running took me literally about 5 minutes. I tested them all over my townhouse, and found the speeds to be reasonable and stable. Compared to my wireless, these were a lot more stable, the speeds were more consistent, and they were a lot less finicky than wireless about where you use them. The speeds I saw ranged from about 60 mbps on the high side to about 10 mbps on the low side. I did not seem to experience any loss of connection during use, even while streaming Netflix and Youtube to my bedroom TV. The price for these units is very reasonable compared to wireless alternatives and they are a lot easier to implement. They went into sleep mode when the device that was connected was turned off. It's also nice to know that they use encryption, so if you are like me, and live in a townhouse ( or apartment ) other people should not be able to snoop on your network. Everything you need was including in the package including an Ethernet cable for each device. The units are very compact and for the most part used very little space. A 2 year warranty also is nice to see.

Cons: Plug strips with certain types of surge suppressors, power filters, and power conditioners will block the signal from these devices and you will get slow speeds or no connection at all (this also goes for battery backups as well as home theater power centers). The packaging is a bit misleading stating 500mbps (see other comments for explanation). The software is ok, though I did have to reset the units after I changed settings on one unit and not the other. The software would only see 1 device at a time and made it a little hard to change settings on both devices at once. The one that sat near my router always saw a connection, so it did not go to sleep like the one on the other end did. Though they are better than most wireless setups I have dealt with, these are still slower than using an actual Ethernet cable.

Other Thoughts: Overall I think these are decent and inexpensive. Another great use for these, though I could not test it personally, would be to get a network connection to an attached garage or close outbuilding. These units state 500mbps, but they only have a 10/100 port on them, which leads me to believe that this rating (500mbps) is actually the maximum amount of bandwidth you can use in one setup if you have more than 2 units. The maximum distance for these is 300m but I suspect that this is also dependent on how much wiring is in your house and how it is routed instead of just physical distance. I would recommend giving these a try if your wireless is picky (or your devices don't have wireless) anytime you cannot run an actual Ethernet cable.

Pros: Extremely easy to get setup and running
Smallish footprint
Does not get hot; probably doesn't need much ventilation
Activity lights on the device
Encryption if needed

Cons: PC side port is only 10/100 mb/s - file transfer speeds will never exceed that no matter how fast the connection between the two powerline adapters are.

Will interfere with the 2nd plug in a standard US outlet if the other plug is large, such as a computer's power cable

Speed was less than advertised, but that seems to be the norm with powerline.

Other Thoughts: I had an electrician rig up two outlets with 1 ft of romex cabling between them to test the ideal scenario. These tests were done between two laptops with SSD's.

Throughput per file size (read & writes were within 1mb/s of each other):

50mb: 67.9 mb/s
100mb: 67.5 mb/s
200mb: 65.9 mb/s
500mb: 67.9 mb/s

I also ran the same tests in a real world scenario with the two laptops connected to outlets in different rooms on different electrical breakers

50mb: 16.2 mb/s
100mb: 15.1 mb/s
200mb: 15.3 mb/s
500mb: 15.5 mb/s

My overall opinion is that these are fantastic and stable devices as long as long as you have reasonable expectations. They will get your laptop in the bedroom connected to the internet via the cable box in your living room, but don't expect to be able to move large files very quickly. Streaming video would be hit or miss depending on the bit rate and what your actual setup looks like.

Pros: - Well packaged

- Construction feels solid

- True Plug and Play operation. (Just plug into your wall outlet and press the button on the unit connected to your router and then press the button on this unit.)

- Nano size, making it much smaller than a standard powerline unit

- Nice quality cable was included

Cons: None really. I would have liked to test this unit against the kit (TL-PA4010KIT) versus my Netgear kit (XAVB5101).

Other Thoughts: This device was true plug and play. I connected it in the same room my existing powerline adapter is connected in. Once connected, just press the button on your existing unit and then on this one. It only takes a few seconds for this to be up and running. My existing powerline kit is the Netgear XAVB5101. Both units (Netgear and TP-Link) claim up to 500Mbps so I knew there shouldn't be any issues with testing this unit.

Once I got this unit connected I tested it from the same room as the router/connected powerline adapter and achieved an average speed of 8.6MB/s (68.8Mbps). This was done by transferring a large "dummy" file that was 1.7 GB in size as well as copying 10,000+ small text files, to my file server. Once moved downstairs in the devices permanent "home", I did the same test and the speeds dropped to roughly 4.2MB/s (33.6Mbps). This was all to be expected, as I live in a townhouse that was built in the late 1980's. I did some testing with a wireless N adapter on the same machine that was used to test this device and only achieved average speeds of 1.8MB/s (14.4Mbps).

Overall the device performs as I expected it to. My biggest selling point on the powerline adapter is having the ability to remove any unneeded wireless signal from your home. I believe Desktops, Servers and Workstations should all be hard wired in some way. Leave wireless to your portable/mobile devices. This is a great alternative to running CAT cables through your walls and floors.

Keep in mind this is only a single unit and you need to have an existing powerline adapter kit up and running in order to make this device work. You may purchase the kit here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704165.