TPL-407E2K

I've never tried Powerline adapters before. Reviews of the first-generation models were all terrible, and I was one of those people who wrote the technology off completely. But fast-forward a few years, and I'm moving into a large apartment with a cable modem in the bedroom and my HDTV in the living room. I can pick up 40 Wi-Fi SSIDs on my laptop, I can't get into the ceiling so I can't do drop cables, and my girlfriend would kill me if I started stringing up cat-5 cable along the walls. I needed something fast, cheap, and largely invisible, and while I was skeptical since this apartment's wiring is so old it still has an honest-to-goodness fuse box, I still figured I'd at least try a Powerline adapter.I settled on the Trendnet brand because they'd gotten some fairly decent reviews on sites like SmallNetBuilder, and seemed pretty fast at least compared to other brands. Installation was simple; basically you plug them both in, press and hold the sync button on the side (I had to do it a few times before I learned how long to hold the button down) on one and then the other, and then wait for them to sync up. Once they do, you're all set! I connected one to my router in the bedroom, and the other to a gigabit switch in the living room, and then plugged all my home theater devices into the switch. AV receiver, Roku, Blu-Ray player, Xbox, they all appeared on the network right away, and voila, Internet access for my entertainment center.Roku does streaming Internet radio, and within minutes I had Pandora playing to my heart's content. The real test, though, was whether I could stream video. I've been using this setup for a couple of weeks now, and let me tell you, Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime all work like a charm. I can stream Bones, Castle, and even Downtown Abbey now in HD with Dolby Digital and I've never had a hiccup.Satisfaction with these really comes down to what you need. The "500 Mbps" claim is a little misleading, because these things only have 10/100 Ethernet and can only connect to your router/switch/Roku at up to 100 Mbps. But like all other Powerline adapters, they're actually slow enough that it doesn't matter; I've read lots of reviews where these "500 Mbps" routers never really work at higher than 50 Mbps in real-world testing. If you're a power user, don't buy these things to connect your workstation and your NAS. But if you're like me, and you have 15 Mbps cable service and want to stream HD video to your Roku, these things may be just what you need.

I built my gaming pc in June, and as a complete newbie to the scene I did not realize the important of an ethernet connection. I've tried multiple different usb wifi antennas, and nothing could provide a stable enough connection for my to play games reliably on. I'd get about 10-15 seconds of gameplay before a random PING spike would interfere. So my $1000 build was effectively rendered useless for online gaming, and since I don't play much single-player on my PC, I was basically only using this computer for school, work, and web-browsing.After months of reading through various Reddit posts, I was on the fence about trying powerline. Boy am I glad I went for it. Let me just say this right off the bat - if you for whatever reason can't use an ethernet connection of any kind and you want to play games online, TRY THIS. I'm only pulling about 75 mbps when I typically get about 150mbps on wifi, but with how stable the connection is, I have no PING issues whatsoever. If any of you play Rocket League, you'd know how annoying PING spikes are that cause your car to start flying all over the field. With my powerline connection, I've put in about 8 hours of online playing without one ping spike, and I'm finally able to take advantage of my hardware.Seriously, if you're on the fence and you play online games, GIVE THIS A SHOT. I've tried so many wifi antennas in all different price ranges, and none have come close to the performance I get here. Yes, the connection is much slower, but the stability is what matters most especially for online games. Don't listen to the Redditors who completely write this off - if you have no other options and can't use ethernet, give this a try and see if it works. Super simple to setup and a true plug and play. If I could give it 6 stars I would. Seriously, I'm so shocked at how well it works, and I'm glad I decided just to give it a try. A true job well done by this company.

They both worked great for a while, with one connected to my router and the other to an iMac. Even with the iMac on a sub panel off the main electrical panel it worked great. Based on that I bought the non-pass-through model with 4 ethernet ports for my home theater, also on a sub panel circuit. But shortly afterward, the pass-through model on the iMac quit. Of the 3 lights on it, only power (PWR) is lit, no powerline (PL), no ethernet (ETH). I tried it all over the house in different outlets and no change. I also tried all the suggested tricks to make it work again, including resetting all units to factory settings, nothing worked.4/20/14 Update:TrendNet replaced the broken unit and I installed it 8 days ago. It works fine. The other 2 units continue to work as well. Overall I'm very pleased with the speed increases, so am upgrading my rating from 2 to 4 stars. The design considerations must be difficult for this type of device. It can't have a surge supressor or UPS between it and the electrical outlet, so the electronics must be more robust and resistant to surge damage, or not - maybe they are not robust and that's what caused my one unit to fail.I set up a cheap wireless N router as a wireless access point at the other end of the house and connected it to one of the TrendNet units. It works great and my iPad now has MUCH better connectively and speed.