TP-Link TL-PA9020PKIT 2-Port Gigabit Passthrough Powerline
TP-Link TL-PA9020PKIT 2-Port Gigabit Passthrough Powerline Starter Kit, Data Transfer Speed Up to 2000 Mbps, Ideal for HD Video Streaming and Online Gaming, No Configuration Required, UK Plug
From the brand
AV1000 Gigabit Powerline Kit
- HomePlug AV2 Standard – high-speed data transfer rates of up to 1000 Mbps
- Gigabit port
- Up to 300 Meters
| Dimensions: | 7.2 x 4.2 x 13.1 cm; 520 Grams |
| Model: | TL-PA9020P KIT(UK) |
| Manufacture: | TP-Link |
| Dimensions: | 7.2 x 4.2 x 13.1 cm; 520 Grams |
I bought other TP link adapters with low range and prices before. They weren’t satisfactory. This one is great and provides good signals. I recommend this to buy straightaway instead of going for cheaper unsatisfactory options and wasting time. You will eventually go for this.
The TCP link works amazing with BT Homehub and works well through the home electrical network. Provides lan speeds to my PS5 perfectly well with no issues. The only problem was I had to move my desk slightly further to accommodate the wall socket.
I initially purchased the TL-WPA4220 powerline for an office I have at the back of the garden – as I’m an IT consultant I really needed a stable and fast wifi connection. Initially I used google wifi, but found it would cut out quite often. The TL-WPA4220 would also cut out intermittently. This was fixed by a driver update, but I thought why not get the best powerline adapters that TP-Link had.
I’m not disappointed in the slightest. I consistently get 80-100mbps and I’m over 30 metres away from the house. I’ve been using it for a week and haven’t noticed even a second of outage. Very pleased.
Once one has worked out what it does – using the ruing main as a conduit – it is so easy to just keep adding bits to extend the Wi-Fi base through the house. One of mine died but a Glen Ford at TP-Link sorted me very efficiently on the chat link.
I had the older version of these , and older POE version would drop periodically , these new version ones, work most of the time, there is some latency and dropped sessions occasionally, but overall work very well
I’ve had this for a few a months and the connection is just excellent. It’s easy to set up and I can’t tell that I am not connected directly to the router. I highly recommend it if you need to set up a cable connection in a room away from your route
I had a smaller TP Link for use with my gaming PC a few years ago and ever since using it at my new place I would get intermittent connection issues and the internet would just die completely, forcing me unplug and plug back in the device. After getting burnt by TP link I decided to look for other brands (not easy) and eventually decided to risk getting a better TP link model. Luckily, it works perfectly. No more connection issues (can play Elden Ring without getting disconnects) and i’ve not had to replug them in at all.
Had a mesh wifi system at home but my PC games kept lagging because it was not wired. decided to get this powerline as my home was recently rewired. This works an absolute treat, it feels like im plugged directly into the router. easy setup and great speeds
I bought these to extended my LAN from my living room (where the master socket/internet comes into the house) to my home office which is upstairs and at the opposite end of the house.
(I can’t run cables through the walls because I live in rented accommodation.)
While WiFi does reach upstairs at a speed of around 150-170Mbit/s I wanted to move some of my homelab upstairs which does need a bit of grunt to shift data around, especially when running backups (which top out at around 30MB/s)
Using these homeplugs I’ve managed to get around 240-250Mbit/s (25MB/s) which is plenty good enough for my needs.
My house was built around the mid to late 1980’s and the sockets are roughly 20m away from each other.
I am purely using these as LAN extenders so can’t comment on the WiFi functionality.
Just plug into a socket by your hub & follow the instructions , plug the second into a socket where your signal is poor or nothing & your away EASY .
I am pleased to say these have improved the speed and the connection, I am now getting more than 4 times the speed I was putting up with using the old adapters and I wish I had upgraded long ago !
Installation was very simple, one trick I learned was to ‘pair’ them at the same socket or better still plug one into the other then press the button on each and wait for the lights to go steady then you can move one to where you want it and connect them up. Remove the ethernet cable from the devices while pairing too and connect them up where they will be staying as soon as possible.
Hopefully these have solved all my connection issues and I won’t need to update this review again but so far I am extremely pleased !
As others have pointed out they are quite large and cover the switch on the socket, on some sockets they even prevent you using the adjacent sockets too !
Big thumbs up !
I found it fiddly to set up but it works. It’s like having a second ethernet connection.
I got these as Wi-Fi around my house is rubbish. Had lots of issues and still currently fighting for better supply but I had to have these to get the internet in various rooms. They are easy to setup and link to more but I do think they effect each other if you have too many. Can be temperamental and just lose their link but takes a minute to relink.
Slightly blocks the wall socket on/off switch which are between outlets on my dual sockets, physically quite large compared to a similar admittedly older product I’ve been using, as such quite bulky on the wall if a plug is then inserted into the pass through socket. Otherwise easy to set-up, worked without any issues.
For anyone interested, I’m on M500 Virgin, get around 600-640 plugged directly to router, however with this device, I get around 190 maximum so far. Not what I’d hoped but its still pretty good.
Highly recommend to anyone on a 200MB or less provider or if you’d be happy with that speed in general.
Why did I keep this device then, if its bandwidth is so far off what’s advertised (the manual says that it should be 150+ Mbps at least) and so far off of Wifi as well?
I kept it because a) 90 Mbps is plenty for almost everything b) this device reduced my latency from 16 ms to 10 ms, which to me, when doing Work From Home, i.e. Remote Desktop via Microsoft’s RDP or Citrix is more important than bandwidth. Well, if bandwidth is decent enough, that is, which 90 Mbps is. If I’m downloading something really big, I can always switch to Wifi quickly.
PS: My router is on the ground floor, my home office is on the second floor, in a house that was built in 2012 (ten years ago) so it’s not an old house.
I got a link of 200 from one unit to another with this TL-PA8010PKIT. My download speeds were a max of 80 Mbps. This is the same I got from my Tenda PH3. The main reason I brought this was for its “MIMO” technology hoping it would increase my download by something as i have a 350 Mbps Virgin Media connection. Nope it stayed the same.
Again, it’s not because the product is bad. My house wiring is the limitation here. But the same performance could be achieved for far less from Tenda PH3 so I suggest you give that a try.
Will be returning this and going back to Tenda PH3.
I already had a powerline adaptor that my ISP had given me to solve a problem with poor internet connection to the rear of my house. I bought this one after a recent renovation had led to an RCD being added to home electrical circuitry. The old adaptor no longer carried a signal through the wiring, as Google would suggest is normal. I bought this hoping that it would be more powerful or modern and therefore get a signal through the new infrastructure. It did not do that. However, I solves the problem another way (there are two circuits in my home, a left and a right side of the ground floor; I use the left hand circuit instead and then ran an ethernet cable from the adaptor into a second router in the rearmost room of the house). The result is that I have wifi through the entire house and garden, thanks to two WiFi routers being connected via a wire-powerline-wire connection.
The additional length of cable has added no more than 0.01 m/s of extra latency to the connection of my PC to a local ping server. In other words; it’s just as fast as if I had the PC plugged directly into the modem at the front of the house and it’s all the way at the rear of the house.
I’m happy with the purchase, but if I had the knowledge I have now, I would not buy to replace my existing powerline adaptors – there just isn’t a need to do so.
I bought this product as my desktop PC in the downstairs bedroom was having trouble getting a good Wi-Fi signal. As I am a renter, running ethernet through the walls was not an option. So, after reading reviews, I decided to purchase this option.
Set up was quite easy. It is pretty much plug-and-play with a bit of button pressing if you want to “lock” the connection. The quick start guide is quite self-explanatory.
Like what others have already mentioned on their reviews, the speeds you will experience are heavily dependent on how your electrical sockets are wired. If the two sockets you plan to use are on the same ring mains, and no other “noisy” electrical devices (microwave, fans, space heaters, blender, etc.) you will likely get close to the maximum advertised speeds. However, in my case, as the downstairs bedroom was a garage conversion, the two sockets were on different rings. But, I was able to get decent speeds 40~60MBps, which is about the same as the speeds I can get on my wifi upstairs anyways. That being said, upon doing some file transfers over LAN, it is clear that the speeds I can get through the sockets are nowhere near the maximum advertised speeds.
TLDR; Easy to set up, a great option if you can’t put ethernet through the walls (like if you’re a renter), and the speeds vary greatly depending on your electrical wiring between the two sockets you intend to use.
I had originally wanted to purchase a WiFi Extender and Powerline adapters for my upstairs office and server lab. I had been using Powerline adapter for at least five years though these were the AV500. I clicked on the wrong link on Amazon and ended up with a single WiFI mesh extender using virtually the fastest Powerline adapter instead of a kit so ended up purchasing these to work in conjunction.
They are very easy easy to set up and though I usually use my own security IDs to synch between adapters this time I used the default. There’s nobody else in my property so this isn’t an issue. I plugged both the WiFi Powerline adapter and one of these into the same power strip, let them power up, hit the button for the required period of time on this adapter and let it synchronise and that was it. I left one downstairs connected to my router via gbps ethernet cable, and the other, the WiFi one, plugged into one of my office/lab power socket connected to an ethernet switch. That was it I now had fast WiFi and ethernet between all devices. Now whether I am getting gbps (gigabit per second) between all devices is unlikely but it is certainly very fast. However this is dependant on your power cabling and what other devices you are running in your property that may cause interference and therefore slow things down. In my case There are no issues and I can even run off power strips that often cause issues with Powerline adapters and are not recommended.
Once I connect there, all sorted. Even if the Wi-fi is not working on other devices, my laptop is always online. You connect one to the router and the other side to your laptop, and that is it: no mess, no configuration, plug and play.
There is an app, if you are interested, to measure the speed between the devices (not your internet). This windows app is good to find the best sockets and tweaks any possible problem with the connection.
There are some caveats; this is not for everybody.
1- The devices need to be in the same phase, preferably on the same circuit. My apartment has only one phase, so that was easy. But It is currently in different circuits, on in the living room and the other in a distant bedroom, so it attenuates the speed a bit. Mine is reading 1200mbps, which is excellent and more than a gigabit.
2- You need to connect it directly to the wall and do not use extensions. You can plug an extension on it, but the device needs to be at the wall socket for proper reception.
Mine has 2 ethernet ports each side, which is great to connect more that one device, such as a Console and a smart TV, or 2 laptops. This makes the device more future proof for me if I expand my home office.
Whenever our girls come home, they ask me why the WiFi is so poor in our house and my wife asks me several times each week if the Internet has gone down.
Of course, after a review a year or so ago I did manage to install a pair of TPLink 1000Mbps pass through ports and one end is connected to the router and the other to the smart TV and the Fire box. This has worked really well and the TV never asks me if the WiFi is on as it just works.
It struck me that my problem was that the Router is in my little study connected to the phone socket and my computer. As the study is at the side of the house the signal doesn’t really extend too far into the house and barely at all upstairs. I purchased a TPLink wireless booster and this certainly helped but we are lacking a suitable power socket upstairs in the hall.
It struck me, eventually, that I should simply move the router into the hall, use the phone socket in there and connect the router to a new TPLink AV1300 passthrough port. The computer that has remained in my study simply then needs to connect to the original TP1000 in there.
This has worked really well and great WiFi is now pulsating through our house and things that need bullet-proof connections like the computer and the Fire box simply get plugged in via the powerline network. I have re-sited the wireless booster but in truth I don’t think we still need it as the WiFi is so much improved.
The hubs connected straight away but the computer told me initially it didn’t have an IP address and thus couldn’t connect to the internet. I simply pressed the little button on the router and the little button on the passthrough ports and within a couple of minutes all was working and beautifully connected.
The only question now is to ask myself why it took me so long to figure out that the router didn’t have to be next to the computer and with a pair of TP link passthrough its fine anywhere where it can connect to the phone line — duh!
One minor point when ordering is that I was a bit confused by the choices available whether the AV1300 had one or two network connectors on the top. In point of fact it only has one, which is fine for my needs but the one in the lounge, the Mbps 1000, as originally reviewed has two and this is essential both for the firebox and the TV. Happy surfing.
Just bought a second pair of these, this time from Amazon’s only real high street rival, who had them for 75 for one day over the Black Friday weekend. I had tried to get the first pair to work with a Devolo plug but there were problems with set up and reliability so I ditched that idea. The second pair of TP-Links work seamlessly with the first and were easy to set up. Just to confirm they will work across difference household circuits no problem. In my office where I have problems with space (given the size of these plugs), I made up a small extension lead; a plug, a length of good quality 3 core, and a double socket ‘end’, all from Wilko. The TP-link worked perfectly well connected to the mains via this. However because of the TP-link plug size the second mains socket on the extension end could not be used. I plugged in a three way extension block (you know- a white cube with sockets on three sides) into the Wilko extension and then plugged the TP-link into this. That released the second mains socket on the Wilko extension for use and, surprisingly I thought, the TP-link plug worked just as well. Its a bit Heath-Robinson-ish but its tucked into a cupboard so no eye-sore here. My guess is, if you use extensions without surge circuitry and LEDs etc then you powerline plugs are much more likely to work. I assume if it were plugged straight into a wall (along with any other electrical item) it wouldn’t have surge protection..? I have never had any experience of surges, not the electrical sort anyway…
These powerline are adaptors are very easy to set up (basically just plug them in, connect up the Ethernet cables and go). They are fast, using MIMO technology to improve connection speed. The mains passthrough was essential for me. I can’t afford to lose one of my wall sockets.
I have used them to setup a network connection to our annexe (Wifi didn’t work well, since the intermediate walls are thick stone!), one is connected to the ADSL router, and the other to an external ethernet cable that runs through to the annexe. I am getting about 350Mbps this way over a distance of about 50′, which I am happy with (my best wifi setup was < 1Mbps with frequent dropouts and only partial coverage). As a bonus, I have been able to wire up my Sky TV box and Apple TV, giving a more reliable and faster network connection. There is a button on the side that allows you to secure the network when you set things up. I have done this, though it probably doesn't matter much in my home setting. In a public setting, this would be essential of course. One of the adaptors has three Ethernet ports and the other has only one. This works for me, but since my router only has two ports, I've had to buy an external ethernet switch as well. This was still cheaper than the starter package that has two 3-port adaptors. These ones have no Wifi (I didn't really need that, and again the price was high to add it - about 40). In service, the adaptors have been reliable. The only connection problems I've had have been with loose connections (old cables). Do make sure you use high-speed Ethernet cables and buy new ones if you need to. Good Cat6a ones can be had very cheaply now, though Cat5e/Cat6 should be good enough. Once I'd replaced my old cables with new Cat6a ones everywhere, my network has been running well. The only other problem I have is that my subwoofer is picking up interference. The network management app lets you see the point-to-point throughput rate and change a few simple settings (whether the LEDs are on, traffic prioritisation, name). It's basic, but works well. You need to be connected to the same subnet as the adaptors to use it (I can't connect to it from my laptop via wifi for example). The adaptors themselves are quite sleek and modern looking, but mine are hidden away, so appearance wasn't a deciding factor. Overall, I'm pleased with these. I would happily buy more if I needed to connect anything else directly. They are a lot less trouble than wifi and are a valuable addition to my network kit.
The marketing info is, however, misleading when it comes to extending the network to additional units.
It is possible to buy more units, but the one TP-Link tech support recommends is a wifi enabled unit (I don’t need wifi) and it costs 87 on Amazon which is more than just buying another pair of these adapters. This is the link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/TL-WPA8630P-Powerline-Extender-Transfer-Configuration/dp/B077ZH6ZR8
So, I purchased a second pair (same as the starter kit) and found that only one device (the one with the 3 ethernet ports) will work as a third unit in the same network. The other unit supplied in the kit can’t be added to an existing network without disconnecting one of the others.
Had I wanted to make use of both units (reasonable, since I was effectively forced in to buying a new starter kit), it’s not possible. One unit is therefore unusable which is both annoying and wasteful.
In summary, it’s a good product slightly spoiled by misleading information about extending an network of two devices. There may be other single adapters which are compatible, but they won’t have the same high spec as these. As long as you’re aware of this restriction, the product is good.
Also, as others have pointed out, if you need this to be usable for most applications you need to disable the power saving mode otherwise the units will cut out after 5 minutes or so. For my use-case (a BT YouView box) which only has a wired connection), enabling the power saving feature makes the product unusable.
First of all – you should know TP link and competitors claims on the speeds of these adapters are not much better than blatant lies. My old “500mps” adapters only actually had 10/100mbps ethernet ports on, which means there’s absolutely no way you could ever get over 100mbps from it. These 1300mbps adapters do actually have a full 1000mbps ports (which I confirmed on the router when I got them) so I expected better results than the old set.
TP-link provide a utility you can download which allows you to tweak some settings and shows a link speed between adapters. There’s a photo on one of the reviews. This is also nonsense – you are not getting this speed for actual data transfers. If you’re getting these to use to provide broadband speeds around the house, you’re probably fine, they’ll be quick enough. If, like me you’re using them to network a NAS / storage device and stream video, copy files etc, then the speed actually matters.
The good news is, these aren’t bad for what they are & the price. From the old 500mbps adapter I actually got about 60mbps. I live in an older house, but the wiring is new, and the speed between adapters not actually that far, so I’m confident this couldn’t be made any better by fiddling about with things. With the new 1300mbps adapters I’ve measured I’m getting around 125mbps, so a decent speed up and in-line with what I expected given a google about for the actual speeds to expect from these things (well worth a search and a read as there are some brilliant comparisons between these types of devices and actual measured speeds)
All in all – super easy and quick to setup (plug in and go!) and a decent speed up for my home network setup, allowing me to stream HD video. Wish TP link wouldn’t fabricate the speeds of these. Independent tests with the two adapters next to each other have shown these simply aren’t true!
UPDATED 22/4/20
TP-Link (as commented) provided me with beta firmware to test against the red light issues I was experiencing and I think it’s now safe to say (after 8 months) I haven’t had a single red light issue. I’m adding a star to my rating because of the great service from TP-Link team in responding to my initial issues.
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I’ve had these for about 4 months to use with BT TV’s ridiculous non wi-fi enabled youview box and (because of the way it delivers content .. multicast) needed to be as high throughput as possible (my old TP Link 500+ adapters couldn’t cut it).
The good news is that it delivers the speed and I’m no longer watching errors popping up on my box half way through watching a programme.
I bought 4 of these to deliver network throughout the house and when they work they just do that, absolutely fine!.
However, since having these devices I’ve had ‘Red Light of Doom’ at least 3 times – where one of the devices has decided to screw it up for all devices and they all stop working. No pattern as to why (although i’m contend with blaming BT box here again) and then it’s a process of elimination to work out which device is causing the issue. In the end you have two switch off all devices and bring them back one by one to find out which one was the offending adaptor.
The software client is next to useless showing a pretty picture of it only seeing 1 device and , as it seems lose the names you assign to them, unless you know the hex code of the device off by heart you’ll be none the wiser.
I’ve now dropped down to 3 devices to see if that helps. So far, in 3 weeks no issues.
For the price having 3 red lights in 4 months, to me is pretty poor! – And the previous adaptors (all TP-Link) have not had these issues. Leads me to believe there are still bugs to be quashed in these devices as I’ve always found TP-Link equipment to be pretty reliable.
I’m reviewing the TL-PA9020P kit, and per the box, hardware revision 3.1.
I saw some other comments with concerns about these adapters dropping out and losing their connections over time, so I bought this with some trepidation. I’m also deliberately reviewing this a while after purchase. I can confirm other reports — the adapters do appear to lose their connection over a period of a week or more. This seems to be a widely reported problem with these powerline adapters, but TP-link have not acknowledged it, nor have they provided a firmware patch that fixes the problem.
The good news is that there is at least one workaround that may solve the above. The first, which seems to have worked for me, is to disable the power-saving function on the ‘problem’ adapter. For me, the cause of the dropouts was that the adapter that connected to my router went to sleep very quickly and became unresponsive, requiring a power cycle. TP-link provide a utility (called tpPLC, may be found on the TP-link website) that can be used to configure the adapters. For me, disabling the power save function was enough to restore the adapters’ reliability (at least for now). Hopefully this will last.
With that out of the way, in my relatively small and recently constructed flat, the adapters are good. They’re very easy to initially set up (just plug in and press a button on each). My internet speeds increased from 40 Mbps on WiFi (about half of the advertised ‘up to’ speed) to about 65 Mbps, which is much more acceptable. I connect 2 computers to one of my adapters in my office (which is where the 2 ethernet ports are handy), and the other adapter connects to the router.
Overall, if you have reasonably recent electric wiring, and have a desktop PC or something else that’s suitable for a wired connection, I’d recommend these over using WiFi, and especially over WiFi repeaters, or ‘range extenders’.
I have four of these installed and use it primarily for Sonos music/TV sound and gaming. Overall the bandwidth is best I have seen on the powerline but it still not as good as having a good old ethernet cable. Firstly, if you are streaming HD movie with surround sound signal, I don’t think it can handle all the traffic (I have Sonos speaker on 1 powerline, Sonos amp on another in a different room and router on the third). Perhaps, if you have a more streamlined setup it will work more smoothly. The video plays smoothly but surround signal has glitches. I noticed that I let it buffer for a little while, it will start playing with no issue, so I suspect it is a bandwidth issue as the video downloads and surround signal is transmitted to sonos on the same powerline network. Nevertheless, the speeds and latency are very good in my opinion.
Another grumble of mine is stability. Now and again powerline adapters unpair and I have to manually pair them again. I haven’t figured out why this is happening and this is quite annoying, hence I knocked off 1 star. I find the tplink app quite useful to help with this issue, as it visualizes all adapters on the network and lets me fine out which one got unpaired.
However, credit where credit is due: these things do actually fly compared to the TP-Link AV600s I was already using. The speed boost is definite, real, extremely noticeable and in no way ‘borderline’ or marginal.
I recently signed up for 200Mbps broadband Internet; but that arrives in the house downstairs and my study is upstairs. So how to get the signal from the ground floor to the top? By using my original AV600s… but the Ookla Network Speed Test then showed my PC was enjoying broadband speeds of around 30-40Mbps. Which wasn’t bad exactly, but I felt it was a long way short of the 200Mbps I was paying for and had hoped to enjoy. So I bought these ‘2000’ replacements, plugged in both ends (no setup or fiddling required, despite me using Linux throughout the house) and I was immediately getting 120Mbps upstairs. Still not Gigabit speeds, therefore, but around 3 or 4 times the previous speed for relatively modest outlay and definitely not bad considering this house is 100 years old with internal wiring to match!
I have one major criticism of these adapters however: their RJ45 ports are on the top of the adapter (my previous AV600s had them on the bottom). So whereas the AV600s allowed the network cable to descend discretely and immediately to the floor before connecting to the router or PC, these things produce a very obvious and very ugly loop *upwards* across the wall before disappearing out of sight. It is bad enough that I thought of sending them back and replacing them. On calm consideration, I’ve decided to keep them, but move them to plug sockets which are hidden behind assorted pieces of furniture.
Short version, therefore: I have no problems at all with this product’s *technical* capabilities. For the first time ever, I’m using an ethernet-over-powerline adapters that actually resemble “real” ethernet kit in the speeds they’re giving me. The promise of 2004-ish (of easy, fast ethernet over existing powerlines) has finally been made good. But I’m marking them down a star because of their design. Ethernet cable going *upwards* from a power socket is, it seems to me, an intrinsically daft idea!
We had Sky Q installed recently and the connection over 5G WiFi to the mini boxes was a bit stuttery so a solution was needed. I remember buying a TP Link homeplug a few years ago and I sent it back immediately because it didn’t feel any faster than the WiFi connection I had at the time. Admittedly, I know a lot more about networking now than I did then, so maybe (probably) I didn’t have my network set up right, and technology moves on, so even with my doubts, I decided to take the plunge on a homeplug for a second time.
Installation was as simple as plugging them in to their respective wall sockets and plugging in the cables, one from the router into one homeplug, one from the other homeplug into a switch in my bedroom. I turned off the WiFi on my laptop and configured the ethernet port and was up and running within minutes. My first port of call was a broadband speed test site, which showed I was getting very close to the full 38Mb/s my connection is rated at. A good start.
The next test was how well the homeplugs could handle all the non-internet traffic in the house alongside the internet traffic. In my bedroom I have a NAS and a PC which I had connected to my laptop via ethernet while the WiFi handled the internet to keep them separated. The ethernet network was on a different subnet (xxx.xxx.1.2) to the internet (xxx.xxx.1.1), so after some faffing changing everything to the same subnet I spent 10 minutes experimenting by transferring a few files back and forth between laptop, NAS and PC while browsing and downloading from t’internet, all while streaming a full Blu-Ray rip down the same pipe via Plex to the Roku plugged into the TV downstairs. Theoretically the plugs should have been able to handle all that with room to spare, but not everyone’s house wiring or setups are the same, so you never know. I needn’t have worried, though. They handled it with aplomb. From a good start, I was now thoroughly impressed.
And so on to the final test, handling the above, plus the traffic from the Sky Q box downstairs to the two Q mini boxes upstairs (I had already bought a 3rd TL-PA8010P homeplug refurbished from eBay to use with the mini box in my brother’s room). I simply plugged the mini’s into their respective homeplugs, turned their WiFi off, rebooted them and that was that. The connection is now stable, no stuttering or dropouts so far. Nothing on the network seems to be negatively affected by anything else. Result.
I am a happy camper. Time will tell how long the units last, but hopefully I won’t have to come back and edit this review!
After reading the positive reviews I went ahead and purchased the AV2000. This is my first time purchasing a powerline kit and I was very excited to finally be able to get a wired connection to our study desktop PC, which is on the other side of the apartment from the router. Setting up the two devices is very easy and done with the touch of two buttons. However, I went through about a week of pulling my hair out because everything worked fine until I connected my Desktop PC to the receiving unit. As soon as I did that the BT Smart Hub lost connection, struggled to reconnect, then lost connection again. I tested connecting my Mac and another laptop and the connection worked and the connection remained constant. It was only when connecting the Desktop PC to the receiving device.
I spent hours on forums trying to solve the issue and eventually came upon the solution, so I hope this helps someone else. After pairing both devices and connecting the first to the router and the second to the PC, you need to download the Utility app/program from TP Link’s website for your specific device. Install and open it and you should see both devices on the interface, as long as you’ve paired them correctly. Hover over each and there is an Advanced options button. Click on that and go to “Mode”, then make sure “LowerPLC-to-VDSL Interference Mode” is set to off. Do this for both devices. You’ll get a warning that this could lower data transfer speed and performance, but after doing this and hitting refresh on the left side of the application, voila, I suddenly had unbroken, consistent connection. We’re on the 64Mb plan and I am now getting a constant 57Mbps at my desktop, with 20 ping. I will update this if anything happens but these are now working excellently now that I incorporated this fix.
Please be aware that 2000Mbps is megabits per seconds and not megaBytes per seconds so we are talking on my system of speeds of just over 100 MegaBytes per second of which I can’t ask any more on my network as my router has 1000Mbps or (1Gb) ports equating to 100 megaBytes per second.
I mainly got these Links so I could stream uncompressed 4K video from my NAS to both of my Nvidia Shield TV’s without having to run unsightly ethernet cables around the house. These links have achieved that effortlessly.
The set up can’t be simpler, I bought two sets, plugged one in at my Router, the second at my desk. Within a few seconds and without pressing any buttons, they were paired. I then open the second box, plugged the next one in my bedroom and again it was paired within a few seconds.
I do live in a small cottage so the cable runs between sockets are not particularly long, so be aware that if you live in a larger house you may lose some speed. When I plugged the spare link into a socket in my shed which is wired as as a spur off my kitchen, the speed to that link was reduced to around 500Mbps but that could be attributed to there being more switches to go through therefore creating resistance or bad connections between the shed and the house ring main.
I purchased the AV2000 TP-Link kit to replace some Devolo AV200 kit that had served me well for 4 years or so.
However, with internet speeds increasing, computers getting faster and web apps getting more demanding; the older kit was starting to feel laggy, and not just for internet speed tests but also in use when compared with newer wireless ac mobile devices connected directly to the gateway.
In addition, my NAS device was really underutilised because the AV200 devices max out at about 50Mbps throughput. As a general rule with powerline devices, you can expect about a 1/4 of the headline data rate (in real terms, after you take all network overheads into account).
Bottom-line: my older kit just wasn’t cutting it for multiple users, backups of photos etc. to the NAS – all taking too long!
So, I thought I’d see what 4 years+ have done to the tech and after reading many reviews myself, I settled on this TP-Link AV2000 as a good upgrade that seemed reasonably priced.
After installation which took less than 5 minutes, I had to double-take as the 1/4 rule went out-the-window and I was getting dismal speeds of about 100Mbps.
I then started rereading some of the reviews and found several that complained about this model, even saying this was a downgrade on last years AV1200 version.
I contacted TP-Link support via their web chat and they were fantastic, however, they couldn’t help me get to the root cause of my issue though!
After some investigation (after a couple hours testing various aspects of my network and confirming with iperf3) it turns out that I basically had a broken CAT5E cable that came with the router ISP provided. I hadn’t noticed this before as 50Mbps was all I could get with the AV200 kit.
To cut a long story short I reran all my tests and confirmed that the new AV2000 kit performed to my expectations, sitting at about 380Mbps (or about 40MB/s file transfer to the NAS which was acceptable to me.
It’s interesting I’m getting speeds that many professional reviews claimed were not repeatable. Maybe my device has newer firmware, or maybe the reviewers got a bad sample! All I can say is my sample lives up to expectations.
After running more internet speed-tests and iperf3 tests to hosts in another part of the house I confirmed that I was happy with the device performance. AV2000 is a major improvement over the AV200 both in terms of throughput and also more surprisingly latency that dropped from about 10ms or so with the AV200 to around 3ms with the AV2000.
Latency reduction is very noticeable when browsing the internet and possibly more so than throughput. I found websites load faster because most sites don’t get lots of data, they have lots of links to open and therefore hosts to resolve via DNS which is where all that latency adds up.
AV2000 will provide 300 to 400Mbps sustained throughput depending on your house wiring and computer speeds etc. This isn’t quite like a 1Gbps cable solution (~950-980Mbps real-terms if you’re lucky!).
However, for a zero cabling approach, this new powerline AV2000 is plenty fast enough for most use cases that I have anyway and latency is much more comparable with cabled solutions which are really noticeable.
Final thoughts: Although they couldn’t discover my broken cable, TP-Link support was excellent. AV2000 device power consumption seems to be about right (5w each in use) and they really are plug and play (my advice is, if like me you get issues at first, check your current network cables for breaks / bad cables 🙂 and on that note the two 1Gbps ports enabled me to lose another switch and save an additional 5w of power to boot.
Highly recommend the upgrade for AV200 or any AV first gen powerline and probably not so much of an upgrade f you are already using AV2 devices already.