Devolo dLAN 200 AVeasy Starter Kit review

Devolo's dLAN 200 AVeasy extends the reach of your network using existing power cables up to a range of 200m.

Its predecessors have scored highly because of the neat solution to overcoming problems with wifi, without trailing Ethernet cables around a home. AVeasy adds an encryption feature and a reduced power mode that kicks in after 20 minutes of inactivity.

The starter kit includes two adaptors that extend your network just by plugging one into the router and the other wherever you need to connect a computer or networked device. The adaptors work transparently, allowing your router to assign IP addresses over the power network without any additional configuration.

Securing the network is easy too, requiring a button to be pressed and held on each adaptor for a few seconds, after which a random password is used to encrypt the connection. If you prefer, a custom password can be set using the bundled software, which also asks for the security codes printed on each adaptor, so that it can propagate the password to them.

AVeasy can communicate with computers connected to older Devolo adaptors by running a cable between the two, but this sacrifices an adaptor since each has only one port. It's a pity that there's no two-port option specifically for bridging purposes and keeping a power socket free.

Additional adaptors cost £65, but the starter kit is more attractively priced - we found it online for close to £100.

A single additional adaptor could be used to add a laser printer or Nas to your power line unit at a later date.

Copying a 1.8GB file from a Nas connected to the router took about 12 minutes over the dLAN, which is just slightly longer than directly chaining the Mac and Nas together. Line conditions will reduce the theoretical maximum speed to a more realistic 80-90Mbits/sec - however, this is still enough to stream video, even HD, around the home.

In our test environment, two different wifi routers provided a weak and unreliable signal from one corner of the building to the other, which may be due to building structure, cordless telephones and other wireless networks in the increasingly busy 2.4GHz band. AVeasy is a painless way to circumvent this issue without laying more cables.