Why You Can Trust CNET Trendnet Powerline 500 AV2 Adapter (Kit) review: A fast, easy, and cheap way to extend your network
The Trendnet Powerline 500 AV2 is an easy recommendation if you want to extend your home network to that far corner of the house.
Extending your home network doesn't get any easier than the Trendnet Powerline 500 AV2 Adapter. It's fast, easy to use, and more affordable than competing options.
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Trendnet Powerline 500 AV2 Adapter (Kit)
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The new adapter is available in a single unit (model TPL-408E) or a kit of two (model TPL-408E2K) that currently costs $45 and $75, respectively. In my testing, the TPL-408E2K kit was the fastest to date, registering sustained speed much faster than a regular Ethernet. It also comes with a handy security feature. The adapter's only downside is the fact that it's a bit bulky and doesn't come with a pass-through socket, meaning you can only use it in places where there are more than one power outlet.
If you're looking to quickly extend your home network, without having to worry about the latency or signal dropping, the TPL-408E2K is an excellent starter kit. For other choice of power-line adapters, inducing those that are cheaper (and slower), check out this list.
Design, setup, and features
It's normal packaging that power-line adapters are available in a kit of two. This is because you need two adapters to create the first power-line connection (or node). After that you only need one more for each additional node. The Trendnet TPL-408E2K kit includes two identical TPL-408E adapters, which can also be purchased by itself. In contrast, the
The TPL-408E adapter looks like a typical power-line adapter, taking the snap-on design found in many power supplies for small electronics, such as cordless phones or label printers. It's quite compact, but not enough so to easily share a multiple-socket wall outlet with other devices. Chances are, it will obstruct the access to nearby receptacles. This design, plus the fact that the TPL-408E doesn't have a pass-through power socket means that you can't use it at a place where there's only one power outlet. In this case you can't provide power for any other device. Generally, power-line adapters require to be plugged directly into the wall, and not on a power strip or surge protector, to work well.
On top the adapter has three LED status lights for the power, the home network, and the network port, which is on its bottom side. This port support Gigabit Ethernet, which is a must if you want to really take advantage of the adapter's rated speed, which is 500Mbps. I've seen many 500Mbps-rated power-line adapters that use a regular Ethernet (10/100) port -- such as the
The TPL-408E works with other power-line adapters, including those of older standard and other vendors. To prevent leaking your network to others living on the same building, near the network port, the TPL-408E come with a sync button that helps create secure power-line connections between the multiple units. You just need to press on this button on each adapter within 2 minutes of one another and they will only work with each other and not with other power-line adapters. A secure connection is necessary only if you live in apartment building where multiple households share the same electrical wiring system. If you live in a separate home, this is not necessary since the power-line signal generally stays behind a power breaker.
Similar to most power-line adapters I've reviewed, there's not not much to setting up the TPL-406E2K. First you hook up one of the adapters to the network via the router (or the switch), using a network cable (two short ones are included with the kit, by the way.) The second adapter is connected to an Ethernet-ready device, such as a printer at, say, the far end of the house. After that, you just plug both adapters into the power sockets. And that's it. Basically, a power-line connection is an alternative to running a long network cable between the router and the Ethernet-ready device. In most cases, getting a pair of power-line adapters is actually much cheaper than running network cable properly, which involves the cost of the cable, the two network wall ports, and the time spent stringing wire.
Performance
With networking, you generally can't expect the the real-world speed to be the same as the advertised (or ceiling) speed. In case of Wi-Fi, this gap is always very huge. Power-line is better, however, since we're still talking about physical wires here. That said, I was very pleased with the sustained real-world speed of the TPL-408E. I tested it with the kit of two, and they registered some 33MBps (or some 270Mbps) of sustained copy speed. That's about almost four times the sustained speed of a regular Ethernet connection, and about a third of a Gigabit connection.
The TPL-408E is also the second power-line device that supports the new 500 AV2 power-line standard and compared with the Linksys PLE500 (which registered 250Mbps) it was noticeably faster, and currently the fastest power-line adapter on the market. This might soon change, however, since there are more adapters of the same standard coming out soon.
Compared to Wi-Fi, the TPL-408E is faster than most, including many device that supports 802.11ac. On top of that, power-line networking generally doesn't have as much latency (or lag) as wireless networking.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 | Throughput |
I also tested the TPL-408E2K in a stress test that lasted more than two days and found no problem at all. The adapters also remain cool even during heavy loads.
Conclusion
The Trendnet TPL-408E2K replaces the