Solwise has announced a new range of Value HomePlugs, low-cost Powerline products aimed at getting a home network set up quickly and easily.
Powerline works by plugging an adapter into a mains socket at one area of the house and plugging a second one into another socket. Using your home wiring as a local network (LAN), the HomePlugs act as a bridge between one room and another.
The Solwise Ethernet 200AV (NET-PLV-200AV-PE) costs £18.41, supports speeds of up to 200Mbps and features a single Ethernet port. An entry level product, the Ethernet 200AV’s chip can handle up to 6 HomePlugs on one network (3 connections end to end).
The more advanced Value 200AV (NET-PLV-200AV-PEWN) can work with up to 8 HomePlugs in the home and adds Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b/g/n) to the mix.
So if you’ve got a Wi-Fi dead spot in your home, you could plug one Value 200AV directly in to your router (via Ethernet) and plug another into whichever room needs some additional Wi-Fi coverage.
The Value 200AV comes with two Ethernet ports, and provides top speeds of 200Mbps over the wired network and 150Mbps over the wireless. At £32.17 each, they’re a bit more expensive than the Ethernet 200AV HomePlugs.
For those thinking about getting fast fibre optic broadband in the home, there’s the 500AV (PLV-500AV-PE) wired adapter. This supports speeds of up to 500Mbps around the home network and can handle 12-14 other HomePlugs on a network.
There’s no Wi-Fi-enabled counterpart of this just yet, but we imagine we’ll see one soon, plus Wi-Fi ac-compliant models The 500AV’s are also a little cheaper than the Value 200AV at £25.19 each.
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