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The Best Powerline Networking Adapter

By Joel Santo Domingo
Updated
Three white devices, our picks for best Powerline Networking Adapter, sit on a dark orange background with a white ethernet cable.
Photo: Michael Hession

If a traditional Wi-Fi or mesh network isn’t cutting it in your larger home, and you don’t want to (or can’t) drill holes and snake Ethernet cable through your walls, you’ve got more options: powerline networking and MoCA (multimedia over coaxial alliance). Powerline networking uses your home’s electrical wiring to share your internet connection, bypassing Wi-Fi and its limitations, while MoCA works similarly over the cable TV wiring in your home. After spending more than 48 hours testing 13 kits, we’ve found TP-Link’s TL-PA9020P to be the best powerline networking kit for most people.

Everything we recommend

Our pick

Our pick adds two speedy, wired network connections, anywhere you have power in your home.

Buying Options

Runner-up

The PLP2000 offers some of the speediest connections in our tests, but its higher price and short warranty are drawbacks.

Buying Options

Also great

MoCA wires up your home network, using the cable TV connections in your walls rather than Ethernet or powerline.

Our pick

Our pick adds two speedy, wired network connections, anywhere you have power in your home.

Buying Options

TP-Link’s TL-PA9020P V3 is one of the fastest kits we’ve tested, is less expensive than competing adapters with the same speed ratings, and includes dual Ethernet jacks on each adapter so you can wire two nearby devices to your network—like a streaming box and a video game console. It’s a great way to add strong network connectivity to devices where Wi-Fi is impractical, and it comes with a two-year warranty.

Runner-up

The PLP2000 offers some of the speediest connections in our tests, but its higher price and short warranty are drawbacks.

Buying Options

The Netgear PLP2000 is a good choice if our top pick is out of stock, and if you need the best possible performance—think online gaming and streaming 4K video. The speedy connection to any devices you plug into it should make a big difference compared with unstable Wi-Fi, but it won’t have as much impact on regular browsing on a so-so network. Netgear offers a shorter warranty than TP-Link, but this an excellent alternative, especially if it’s the same price.

Also great

MoCA wires up your home network, using the cable TV connections in your walls rather than Ethernet or powerline.

The Trendnet TMO-311C2K uses the coaxial cables (aka cable TV) in your walls instead of running new Ethernet cables from the router to other rooms. MoCA performed faster than powerline networking in our tests. But you’ll need a cable TV outlet in each spot you use it, so it’s ultimately less flexible than powerline.

Before joining Wirecutter in 2018, Joel Santo Domingo tested and wrote about PCs, networking, and personal tech for PCMag.com, Lifewire, HotHardware, and PC Magazine for more than 17 years. Prior to that, Joel was an IT tech and system administrator for small, medium-size, and large companies. Wirecutter has tested powerline networking kits since 2014.

Powerline network adapters extend your home network by using your home’s electrical wiring instead of an Ethernet cable. This makes powerline a great way to get a high-quality connection to distant parts of your house, which can also relieve stress on your Wi-Fi network.

MoCA network adapters do the same job, using the coaxial (cable TV) cables already in the walls of many homes. It’s a great way to reuse a resource that may be unused if you’ve already (figuratively) cut the cord—though there’s no guarantee that every cable TV drop in your home is connected to the others (unlike most power outlets). As long as there is a connection between the spots, MoCA adapters will work concurrently with cable TV or cable modem service. Some cable companies lease MoCA adapters to customers, but Wirecutter is a proponent of owning your networking equipment to avoid paying rental fees.

You should consider a powerline or MoCA kit if you have a router from the past year or two that covers most of your space well but doesn't get a reliable signal to somewhere that needs it, like a home office or an entertainment center on the opposite side of the house. Check to be sure your router supports the 802.11ac standard—if not you may want to replace it before getting a powerline kit. You should also only consider powerline networking if you have a relatively modern, midsize home—less than 2,500 square feet—since powerline performance can vary depending on the quality of your home’s electrical wiring. If your home is larger or older, or if your router is due for an upgrade anyway, you should probably consider a mesh networking kit instead.

A single pair of wired adapters will typically provide much lower latency—the time between when you try to do something online, and when your device actually starts doing it—than a device would achieve on a busy Wi-Fi network. This makes an adapter kit potentially a better option for a gamer who complains about “lag” on their Wi-Fi connected console or PC but doesn’t have an available Ethernet connection nearby. Powerline or MoCA can also serve as a bridge across walls or a foundation that kills Wi-Fi signals (like a basement or garage, for example).

A powerline kit contains two identical devices: one adapter connected to your router that you then plug into a nearby electrical outlet; and a second adapter you plug in where you need an internet connection. MoCA works the same way, but use the cable TV connectors in your home instead of the power outlets. If you need more networking ports where you’re putting a powerline adapter, you can plug in a network switch and still get better performance and lower latency than using Wi-Fi to connect those gadgets. To add more rooms to your powerline network, you only need one more powerline adapter in each room—the same router-side adapter will service your entire powerline network.

Despite its limitations, powerline is a useful and affordable way to extend your network to areas where Wi-Fi doesn’t reach and running an Ethernet cord would be impractical. Powerline can bridge network connections throughout a multistory structure where building materials like brick, glass, or lath-and-plaster block Wi-Fi signals. However, powerline signal quality depends greatly on the quality of your electrical wiring, which can be a problem in older buildings. Conversely, MoCA connections will depend on whether the coaxial cable next to your router is connected within the walls to the cable TV outlet in the distant rooms.

Some powerline kits have Wi-Fi extenders built into one of the adapters. These can work better than traditional wireless extenders because they don’t rely on Wi-Fi for the connection between the router and extender. However, if powerline networking doesn’t work well with your house’s wiring, you’re better off upgrading to a Wi-Fi mesh kit.

The good news is that powerline and MoCA don’t interfere with Wi-Fi, and vice-versa—walls that stop Wi-Fi cold or your neighbors’s Wi-Fi interference don’t matter to a wired connection. With very few exceptions, a wired connection will be faster than Wi-Fi. The network’s performance depends on the overall quality of the wiring in the house, followed by the electrical distance—not the straight line distance—between two adapters. Shoddy wiring can lower the bandwidth or drop the connection. Powerline and MoCA networking are expandable but can be subject to collision and congestion—the more adapters you have, the worse they’ll all perform.

You should also be careful to encrypt the connection between your powerline adapters, using the physical pairing button on each adapter, especially if you live in a multi-unit building. If you forget this step, you can end up merging your network and your neighbor’s. For a MoCA network, you may need to change a security setting on the adapter’s website, and you may need to install a PoE (point of entry) filter on the coaxial cable running outside your home to your neighbors, if your cable company forgot to place one when it installed your cable modem.

Other factors can affect powerline performance. You don’t want to connect a powerline adapter to a surge protector or power strip, or outlets that are behind AFCI circuit breakers. (These will be labeled as “AFCI” or “Arc Fault” in your breaker box.) SmallNetBuilder noted in its testing of powerline adapters that some brands of AFCI circuit breakers cut transmission rate in half, though others barely impacted throughput at all.

While it’s possible to mix and match older powerline adapters, you really shouldn’t. They can slow network speeds by two-thirds or more. Older powerline devices that use the AV standard are compatible with the AV2 standard devices we tested here, but that just means that they won’t completely break the network when plugged in at that same time. I ran into this situation when I neglected to remove a rogue powerline adapter left over from testing years ago. With an unpaired AV adapter plugged in, overall throughput on the newer gigabit AV2 adapters slowed to a crawl. AV and AV2 devices can’t be used at all with powerline adapters that use the competing G.hn standard, and we found the interference from the spare AV adapter slowed the G.hn network down as well.

MoCA also has defined standards: MoCA 2.0 and 2.5 are currently shipping, and both are compatible with each other. MoCA 2.5 is nominally faster (2.5 gigabit versus 2.0 gigabit), but right now 2.5 GbE internet connections are rare, so there isn’t a large advantage to using the faster standard, yet.

Powerline networking kits can be susceptible to interference from other devices (particularly poorly constructed phone or laptop power supplies) on the circuit. Appliances on the line can also interfere with powerline signals, so it may not be the solution for improving your internet connection on outlets near kitchens or laundry rooms. According to this knowledge base article from TP-Link, “Electrical equipments [sic] with electromotor, like washing machine/air-condition, can generate interference [and] may even cut off your powerline connection.”

This floor lamp wasn’t even turned on, but it went "Funkytown" when we benchmarked 2015’s powerline kit in the same outlet. (During similar testing, two newer kits left the lamp alone.) Video: Nathan Edwards

It’s also possible, though somewhat unlikely, to get interference from a powerline kit showing up in other devices. In 2016, we tested for interference from a floor lamp with a dimmer switch and three 13 W LED bulbs. We didn’t see any speed drops on any of the kits we tested then, but we did get a light show when we benchmarked a Zyxel PLA5405KIT with the lamp plugged into the same outlet and turned off at the dimmer switch.

A group of the powerline networking adapters we tested.
Photo: Michael Hession

Much like any network connection, what we’re really looking for here is the most speed and reliability we can get for the best price. Unfortunately, just like Wi-Fi, the big numbers on the box can be misleading—you’ll never get the theoretical maximum of 2 Gbps out of a kit that uses the AV2-2000 standard. And sometimes a product from one brand on the slower AV2-1000 standard can actually perform better than a product from another brand that uses AV2-2000. So we directly tested each kit, using the same techniques employed in our Wi-Fi router, Wi-Fi mesh, and Wi-Fi extender guides.

When deciding which devices to test, these were our criteria:

  • Throughput, or speed: We measured how fast each powerline kit downloads files and streaming data. At a bare minimum, we’re looking for at least 25 Mbps, the speed you’d need for 4K video streaming to one device. If your home internet connection is slower than that and the cause of your problems, a powerline networking kit may not make a difference. We used AV2 throughput ratings as a guideline when picking which kits to test—those numbers aren’t always indicative of real-world performance, but newer and better kits do generally have higher throughput rates.
  • Latency, or delay: This is the kind of speed that makes most of what you actually do on the internet—such as web browsing and game playing—seem fast or slow. It’s frustrating when you have to wait longer than a couple of seconds for a response from a website or an app’s servers
  • Price: A pair of Ethernet-only powerline adapters shouldn’t be more than $120; a kit with a Wi-Fi radio on the far end shouldn’t be more than $150. Once you reach that price, you may be better off looking at a mesh networking kit or evaluate if you need to install wired Ethernet in your home.
  • Wi-Fi capabilities: You’ll get the highest performance results from a powerline connection by plugging in an Ethernet cable, but many people really want to get good Wi-Fi coverage to another room.
  • Extra Ethernet port(s): Having an extra Ethernet connection (or two) is a boon for smart homes. They come in handy if you need “just one more connection” and don’t want to bother with an additional network switch for a media streaming box and a desktop PC in the same room.
  • Power passthrough: It’s not a dealbreaker, but we prefer powerline kits with 110 V passthrough outlets on the front. Powerline adapters should always be plugged directly into the wall—not into a power strip—and kits without power passthrough will block one or both of your wall outlets.
  • Warranty: It’s not the most important feature, but we gave extra points to powerline kits with two- or three-year warranties. Three contenders had only a single year of coverage.

We tested only current-generation powerline devices, and we don’t recommend older non-AV2 devices. The modern AV2 standard brings much faster real-world speeds, better reliability, and mandatory push-button encryption.

The AV2 standard (and the G.hn standard the Zyxel kit uses) requires modern, three-prong electrical wiring. If you only have two-prong outlets, powerline networking is probably not for you—but if you want to try it anyway, your best bet is the TP-Link AV600 Powerline Adapter Kit.

Floor plan for where the powerline networking adapters were tested, showing a first and second floor plus attic. The key at lower left identifies the red marker in the attic as the router and adapter A, the green marker in the attic as the attic test site and adapter B, and the blue marker on the first floor as the bedroom test site.
Illustration: Wirecutter

To test coverage and performance, we connected each kit to a TP-Link Archer A7 (our current budget Wi-Fi router pick) in a challenging home environment. The three-story, 2,400-square-foot house we used is built into a hillside. The house has Wi-Fi–blocking interior materials, including interior glass panels, a masonry fireplace in the middle of the living room, and a metal-and-wood staircase in the center of the home.

The router and web server were located in a home office in the attic of the home. One powerline adapter was also plugged into a nearby outlet, with its Ethernet cable connected to a port on the router. Powerline adapters are paired automatically when you plug them in, but to ensure we had a secure connection, we tapped the pairing/encryption button on both units after they were plugged in. Note: Tor the MoCA testing during early 2021, the adapters were placed in similar test locations as the powerline adapters, connected to a working coaxial cable outlet.

Adapter placement

We picked two spots that would show each adapter’s capabilities: The downstairs bedroom has four interior walls and two ceilings between it and the router, which challenge Wi-Fi reception more than the 60 feet or so of straight-line distance. The second test spot in the attic is “easier” at about 25 feet distance, but it still has a pane of window glass in between it and the router. These are exactly the sort of places wired adapters are best-suited to reach.

Test device placement

All of our powerline and MoCA adapters offered wired Ethernet ports, and we tested those wired connections with an Intel gigabit network adapter on a Dell laptop. Placement of the actual laptop doesn’t really matter when you’re wired; we tested with a 3-foot Ethernet cable, which is just as challenging as a 100-foot Ethernet cable.

For the kit that offered Wi-Fi connections on the remote adapter; we tested it using the same Dell laptop with a TP-Link T4U USB WI-Fi adapter, also about 3 feet from where the powerline adapter was plugged in.

Test protocol

We tested our powerline adapters using Netburn, an open-source tool that tests networks with the same HTTP protocol your browser uses to read web pages. This allows us to test the network the same way we actually use it and minimize the likelihood that we’ll pick a device that’s better in testing than it is in the home.

We used an Intel NUC mini PC running Linux and Apache as the back-end server for our tests. The NUC was plugged directly into a spare port on the Archer A7 in the home office, and the test laptops had to connect to it by way of the powerline adapters.

Each laptop was tested for download performance and for web browsing performance. The download test simply downloads a 1 MB file repeatedly as fast as possible. We also ran a version of the download test with a 16 MB file to stress the network further.

The web browsing test is considerably trickier; each web page consists of 16 side-by-side 128 KB downloads, and the next web page can’t be downloaded until the last one finishes. Problems with the reliability of the connection—or the speed of the adapters’ CPU—get uncovered more quickly on the browsing test than they do with a simple full-speed download. We ran the tests on all the adapters with an Ethernet cable connected. In addition, for the Wi-Fi–capable TP-Link kit, we ran the same suite of tests again while connected to Wi-Fi. We also ran the test at each location with the laptop connected via Wi-Fi to a TP-Link T4U USB adapter.

Plugged into the bottom outlet, the PA9020P covers the ground plug of the power outlet above it; you might be able to connect a two-prong plug to the top outlet, but most three-prong plugs won’t fit. Thankfully, there’s a passthrough adapter on the front, so you can plug a device directly into the PA9020P itself.

There’s no Wi-Fi built in, so you’ll need to connect a wired access point or Wi-Fi extender to the PA9020P if you want wireless networking at the far connection. Even with the extra complexity, that will likely be a faster system than the Wi-Fi–capable TP-Link WPA8630 v2—the PA9020P absolutely trounced the former in our throughput tests.

Our runner-up pick, the Netgear PLP2000.
Photo: Michael Hession

Runner-up

The PLP2000 offers some of the speediest connections in our tests, but its higher price and short warranty are drawbacks.

Buying Options

Since it’s normally a little more expensive without offering a clear benefit, the Netgear PLP2000 is only a good choice if the TP-Link TL-PA9020P is out of stock, or if you can find it at a lower price. Both powerline adapter kits excelled in our throughput tests, trading places for the top spots. The PLP2000 was faster overall, but you’d need a calculator to see the difference between the two on most tests; on one test the difference was less than a percentage point.

Pair of units for the Netgear PLP2000, our runner up for best powerline networking adapter, both laying face down showing the ethernet ports and plug tines.
Two Ethernet ports and the sync/pairing buttons on the bottom of the PLP2000 adapters. Photo: Michael Hession

The PLP2000 kit placed a smidge higher than the TL-PA9020P on four of the six throughput and latency tests, meaning it is technically faster than our top pick. But the truth is that both powerline kits performed within a hair’s breadth of each other. With so many variables in play, you’re unlikely to notice the difference in day-to-day use around your home. And both options were over twice as fast the lowest performing kits—the TP-Link TL-WPA8630 v2 and the TrendNet TPL-423E2K—at the long-distance tests. Either of the top kits will do just as well to extend your network where Wi-Fi is problematic.

The Netgear PLP2000, our runner up for best powerline networking adapter, plugged into a horizontal wall outlet set in a white baseboard. The unit has a white ethernet cord attached to the bottom port.
The PLP2000 blocks an outlet, but has a passthrough to power another device. Photo: Michael Hession

Most of the time, the Netgear adapter is about $10 to $20 more than our top pick from TP-Link, and Netgear only offers a one-year warranty compared with TP-Link’s two-year coverage. Those two factors were the main reasons the PLP2000 is only our runner-up pick. Aside from the similarities in speed, the overall design and feature set don’t differ in most meaningful ways. Both kits have two Ethernet ports per adapter, so you’ll be able to connect two devices in each location. And the PLP2000 also includes a power passthrough, a benefit because the adapter’s bulk blocks the other outlet.

Two Trendnet TMO-311C2Ks stacked on top of one another on a red table.
Photo: Sarah Kobos

Also great

MoCA wires up your home network, using the cable TV connections in your walls rather than Ethernet or powerline.

You’ll always have a power plug next to a spot where you want a better network connection, but if you have a cable TV outlet at the same location, a MoCA adapter like the Trendnet TMO-311C2K will transfer data much more quickly, according to our testing. MoCA adapters work similarly to powerline adapters, but use the coaxial (cable TV) wires installed in many homes to carry networking signals. Though MoCA adapters are measurably faster than powerline networking, they aren’t our top pick because electrical outlets are exponentially more prevalent in homes than coax hookups, which makes placing a powerline adapter much more convenient than MoCA adapters. In either case, cable TV viewers and cord cutting families alike can use the wires already in your home to transmit fast Ethernet-like signals from your router to other rooms in your home. It would be a lot less expensive to use the wires you already have in your walls, instead of hiring a contractor to run Ethernet cables from one side of the home to the other.

Connect the familiar coaxial connectors to your “Cable TV” outlet in your wall, then connect Ethernet to your desktop PC or streaming media box. The second coax connector is for your TV, if you still subscribe to cable TV. Photo: Sarah Kobos

When we tested the Trendnet TMO-311C2K and compared the results to our powerline picks, the MoCA adapters were twice as fast in the attic, and over four times as fast over 50-60 foot distances to the bedroom test location. That translates into potentially faster response and a smoother picture from streaming services to your media streaming box with a built-in Ethernet connector.

The TMO-311C2K is potentially a better choice than powerline for connecting two distant rooms in your home, provided there is an intact coaxial cable connection between the two rooms (a big if). The Trendnet adapter kit has a few downsides: the TMO-311C2K kit only comes with the MoCA adapters and power plugs. The other three MoCA adapter kits we tested (see competition) had extra Ethernet cables, coaxial cables, splitters, and point of entry filters. You may already have all of these items to spare, but if not you’ll have to order them separately.

Any MoCA adapter also occupies a power outlet; the powerline adapters we recommend have pass-throughs so you can plug in other items like lamps or TVs without losing an outlet. The TMO-31C2K only has one Ethernet port, while our powerline picks each have two. And again for emphasis, there’s no guarantee that the coaxial cable outlet in your wall is hooked up to anything else in the home, especially if you’ve had coax removed after cancelling cable TV service or if you’ve never had cable service installed in the first place. Building codes ensure that there is a wired connection between power outlets.

Wired connections, like those of our seven powerline adapter kits, improve the stability and responsiveness of the network connection. So we concentrated on how fast each kit was able to transfer data. Overall, the best powerline kits were faster than Wi-Fi, especially as more obstacles were placed in between the router and the test laptop.

Our throughput test measures how much data can be transmitted through the network, measured in megabits per second (Mbps). For example, if you’re paying for 200 Mbps internet service, you’ll be able to download files and stream media at 200 Mbps to a laptop connected to the router via a wired Ethernet connection. Obstructions in your walls or electrical wire distance will degrade the Wi-Fi or powerline throughput, respectively.

Graph showing download speeds of various networking adapters
The best powerline adapters are faster than Wi-Fi at the same distance. MoCA is even faster, and might be a better choice if you’re paying for a gigabit Internet plan. Illustration: Dana Davis

Note that we’re testing these throughput speeds locally using a server: If your home has a 15 Mbps data plan, your connection to streaming services on the internet will be limited to 15 Mbps maximum, no matter how fast your router and adapters are.

As mentioned earlier, we tested throughput at two locations in our test home. The first site was in the attic about 25 feet from the router, but on the other side of a load-bearing wall and plate-glass window that decreased Wi-Fi signals. In general, the powerline transfer speed in an attic was quite fast, easily exceeding Wi-Fi over the same distance.

The other test location was in a bedroom two flights down, and on the other side of the home, a challenging 60-foot distance for both Wi-Fi and electrical signals. At this location, the best powerline kits still managed rates that were twice as fast Wi-Fi–only performance, while the worst two kits were a bit slower than Wi-Fi.

For comparison, during our last router test session the TP-Link Archer A7 router had no trouble maintaining almost 200 Mbps throughput to a similar laptop about 15 feet away, through a ceiling.

To challenge the network kits, we also ran the same test with a larger file for a shorter period to simulate a quick, massive burst of data that would really stress the network. Wi-Fi slowed a bit at both locations compared with the 1 MB file download tests, showing that the wireless network was becoming saturated at that point. However, the best performers, including the PLP2000 and TL-PA9020P v3, managed to provide double the throughput at both test sites compared with Wi-Fi. They had the extra headroom and just kept going, while the Wi-Fi connection direct to the router was really starting to show its limits.

There wasn’t a lot of difference in throughput rates between the slowest and fastest MoCA adapters. But because powerline adapters vary so much, the MoCA adapters were anywhere from two to 22 times faster. The coaxial cables in your home are subject to a lot less interference than the power wires in your home, and they are likely to be shorter runs, since they don’t have to share wires with multiple outlets in each room.

The TL-WPA8630 v2 (both wired and with a Wi-Fi connection) and the TrendNet TPL-423E2K were no better than the Wi-Fi connection in the first floor bedroom. Both were rated Powerline AV2-1300, which goes to show that you shouldn’t expect advertised speeds simply because the adapter is rated “up to 1,300 Mbps.”

One notable anecdote: The G.hn-compatible Zyxel PLA6456 was fastest at long distance in the first-floor bedroom, but it was merely above average in the attic location. Therefore, we consider it a possible alternate if you need to cover a long distance or if our main pick and runner-up are out of stock.

If you need Wi-Fi: Adding Wi-Fi to a Powerline kit sounds like a foregone conclusion, but the TP-Link TLA-WPA8631 is expensive and doesn't perform as well as a MoCA adapter or a Powerline adapter with Ethernet alone. Adding Wi-Fi may add convenience, but it also adds a bit of latency and slows overall speed (throughput) due to Powerline communications, which is slower than a direct Ethernet or MoCA-to-Ethernet connection. Positive aspects include three Ethernet ports on the Wi-Fi adapter, which adds more wired connections at your destination without having to resort to an Ethernet switch. The TLA-WPA8631 also has a pass-through power outlet, which can be handy. As mentioned above, the downside is that the kit is expensive, over $110, and for that price you only get Wi-Fi 5, not Wi-Fi 6 or 6E, which are more modern.

Powerline networking evolves slowly, but there are occasional upgrades and interesting new products. TP-Link announced the Deco PX50, a mesh networking kit that will use powerline networking to connect two mesh networking nodes through your home’s AC power wiring. We’ll consider this product for an update of this guide, or our mesh networking guide. We also plan to test TP-Link’s TL-PA7017P KIT, which is a reasonably priced Powerline setup rated at AV1000, a little slower than our top pick.

TrendNet’s TPL-423E2K has a three-year warranty and a nice price, but its performance placed it last in the latest round of testing.

The Zyxel PLA6456 used Wave 2 G.hn technology instead of AV2, and topped our throughput tests at the longest distances, but its other performance numbers were just behind the top three. It might be an alternative if you need to cover a long distance or if our pick, runner-up, and budget pick are out of stock.

The Wi-Fi-enabled TP-Link TL-WPA7617 KIT performed about as well as the TL-WPA8631P KIT, but we felt that the latter’s two additional Ethernet ports (for a total of three) and pass-through power outlet were worth the extra expense of about $30.

MoCA Adapters

The Screenbeam (formerly Actiontec) ECB7250K02 is a MoCA 2.5 adapter with a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet (GbE) port. But it didn’t perform any faster in tests than the Trendnet adapter when we used our 1 gigabit Ethernet laptop and server. 2.5 gigabit internet service is rare and expensive right now, most laptops and routers lack 2.5 GbE, and the ECB7250K02 is significantly more expensive than the Trendnet TMO-311C2K. One added bonus is that the kit comes with spare Ethernet cables, coaxial cables, coaxial splitters, and a point of entry filter, potentially saving you about $40 if you don’t already have spares lying around. It also has a short, one-year warranty compared with the Trendnet’s 3 years. Though you could buy the ECB7250K02 for future-proofing, we don’t think it’s worth the extra expense unless the price drops significantly.

  1. Dong Ngo, No Wi-Fi at that Corner? Get a Pair of Powerline Adapters!, Dong Knows Tech, March 28, 2018

  2. Powerline Charts, SmallNetBuilder

  3. Tim Higgins, SmallNetBuilder's Powerline FAQ - 2015, SmallNetBuilder, July 20, 2015

  4. Tim Higgins, How We Test Powerline Products, SmallNetBuilder, November 14, 2011

  5. Tim Higgins, How To Troubleshoot Your Powerline Network, SmallNetBuilder, July 6, 2015

Meet your guide

Joel Santo Domingo

Joel Santo Domingo is a senior staff writer covering networking and storage at Wirecutter. Previously he tested and reviewed more than a thousand PCs and tech devices for PCMag and other sites over 17 years. Joel became attracted to service journalism after answering many “What’s good?” questions while working as an IT manager and technician.

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