Latest Product Reviews

Product reviews > Hardware > Networking

Devolo dLAN 200 AV Starter Kit
Price: £154.99 inc VAT

Features
Performance
Ease of use
Value for money
Overall

Reviewed By: Andy Shaw

This review updated: 31/03/2007
Featured in magazine:
Issue 156
Manufacturer Contacts:
Supplier: Devolo
Tel: 01865 244141
Web Address: www.devolo.co.uk


As we increase the number of PCs and networkable gadgets in our homes, the demand on our networks obviously increases. With the upper speed limit of the average broadband connection hovering around 8Mbps, it's not streaming the net around your house that is likely to put the strain on your network. Instead it's the things you want to do at home, such as using one computer or hard disk as storage space for your digital media, then streaming it to other computers and devices in other rooms. Under such testing conditions, home networking standards can buckle under the weight of the bandwidth requirement. Enter Devolo's dLAN 200 AV Starter Kit, which provides two network adapters that plug into a standard Ethernet socket and a mains plug, connecting two devices through your home's electrical wiring. The 200Mbps speed ought to be enough to handle most of your audio and video needs.

Features
In the Starter Kit box you get two plug adapters, two reasonably lengthy network cables, a start-up guide and a software CD: everything you need to connect two devices with Ethernet ports to one another. These could be a couple of PCs, or you could also plug in a games console or broadband router if you're looking to share your internet connection.
We're used to network hardware companies boasting about the theoretical maximum speed of their networks under ideal conditions and seeing nothing like that in practice, but the HomePlug concept is less prone to problems with physical obstacles such as walls than Wi-Fi is. We were seeing maximum connection speeds of over 190Mbps between two closely located computers and even when we moved them further apart we found a gentler curve of slow-down of performance once walls and storeys of buildings started getting in the way than you see with Wi-Fi equipment.

Performance
We tried to put the device through its audio/visual paces by comparing its video streaming performance to that of an 802.11g standard Wi-Fi connection, by streaming the same videos from one computer to another. We selected a range of video formats to play with, including 1080p HD (High Definition at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels) trailers from Microsoft's HD Content Showcase site (http://tinyurl.com/oxf5o), some uncompressed home movie footage and some video compressed with Windows' WMV format.

Things didn't look great for Wi-Fi from the start, as there was a very minor jerk to the frame rate of the WMV file, which the Devolo plugs were streaming perfectly. The serious rift started with the uncompressed video, however – Devolo's plugs showed no signs of strain but Wi-Fi rendered it unwatchable, dropping to about two frames per second on our set-up. The HD content wasn't particularly satisfactory on either system – it would seem that even this fast network standard isn't quite ready to chuck top-quality HD footage around just yet. It's also worth noting, that if you really had to go wireless, you could always invest in one of the premature 802.11n Wi-Fi networks, which offer theoretical maximum speeds of (so in practice, probably nowhere near) 300Mbps.

Ease of use
Like most networking technology nowadays, getting things going on a basic level is quite simple, but security is an absolute necessity and this adds an unfortunate layer of confusion. In the case of HomePlug, it's actually a little simpler than Wi-Fi in that each plug has a unique 16-letter identifying code. As long as you make a note of this before you plug it into a socket, you can get up and running fairly simply. Devolo's software helps, and is the most comprehensive and user-friendly we've seen in this area. The biggest problems are likely to lie with your security software, but as long as you're happy to fiddle with your firewall, there shouldn't be too much here to faze you.

Value for money
You'd expect to pay a bit more money for something that provides better performance and that's certainly the case with this kit. If you need to expand your network further, additional adapters will set you back around £85. If speed isn't an issue then you could get a HomePlug starter pack featuring slower products from Devolo for as little as £80, which is more comparable, both in terms of price and speed, with Wi-Fi devices. As a result, this newer standard is mostly going to appeal to people for whom high-speed across a local network is a significant issue – video-philes and gamers.

More Networking reviews:

• Solwise HomePlug AV
• Archos TV+ 250GB
• Devolo dLAN Wireless Extender
• FritzBox Fon WLAN 7140
• D-Link DHP-301 Powerline HD Ethernet Starter Kit