As a user of powerline adapters, I can vouch for their usefulness and sheer level of convenience. I have one PC in the house that’s a wee bit too far from the router, and running a long cable just wasn’t that appealing – for typical reasons. A powerline adapter solved that problem fast, but there is one small issue I do have: the adapters themselves are too large.
The size of an adapter might not matter too much if it’s simply lying on the floor, but when hanging out of a socket, it can matter a lot… especially if said socket happens to be near your feet and there’s a heavier powerbar cable connected to it. Suffice to say, I knocked one powerline adapter out of its socket a least 10 times before I decided to move it.
TRENDnet’s just-released Powerline 200 AV “Nano” adapter can solve at least one of those problems. It doesn’t feature a socket of its own so that one is not lost, but it’s much tinier than all other powerline adapters I’ve ever seen. The top of it is as slim as possible so that it won’t write-off the top socket, and in my particular case, it should help prevent being knocked out of the wall due to its weight.
With the smaller size comes reduced speeds of 200Mbit/s (versus 500Mbit/s), although powerline adapters (at least in my experience) simply don’t go beyond 100Mbit/s, so I am not sure this is much of a concern. That is unless of course scaling keeps true and these 200Mbit/s adapters actually run at much less than 100Mbit/s. We might just have to get a kit in to test.
The TPL-308E2K should become available soon and will retail for $74.99 for a kit of two, or $39.99 for one (TPL-308E). Because these adapters can operate with TRENDnet’s other Powerline models, the latter choice might be appealing to those who just need to add another PC to the Ethernet ring.