On 12 April 2017 at 09:31, Huge huge@huge.org.uk wrote:
I've been playing with Zyxel powerline adaptors. They suck little green toads.
The ones we used to re-sell were from www.solwise.co.uk and they generally performed pretty well (and got good reviews) compared to the "well known" brands.
I will say that from experience of more than one brand (including Solwise) they sometimes seem to need replacing fairly often (every few years). Maybe newer ones don't have this problem, but I guess that the power supplies inside them are great to start with but get noiser with age.
Environmental issues are another problem (much less so than with wireless though). Finding someone who can lend you them or will take them back if they don't work for you even if they're not actually broken helps (buying online with distance selling regulations support helps here).
For most people, most of the time, they "just work", and compared with wireless they're often a godsend, especially for connecting kit that would naturally be cabled anyway (printers, X-boxes, PCs, etc). As more and more devices are naturally wireless the need to combine any other solution with wireless anyway makes the market for powerline/homeplug devices harder.