Powerline vs Wifi Adapter

wasted_legend

wasted_legend

wasted_legend

Associate
Joined
3 Feb 2012
Posts
13
About to set up my router in my new gaffe.
We have mobile phones, a tablet and a wireless LAN laptop.
We also have a desktop PC which has LAN but not wireless.

Question then,

Should I get a wifi adapter for the desktop
or would it be better to go for powerline adapters?

Obviously a bit horses for courses, but advice/opinions welcome.

Thanks y'all
 
Depends what you do? And how big the gaffe is really. Id suggest powerline if any of these fit
a) Your house is quite big and the desktop will be on more than 2 walls away.
b) You like to play online games a lot.
c) You like to transfer big files around your network.
d) You download large files.

Obviously mostly depends what you will use it for/the house size and house wiring.
 
Its a new build townhouse with 3 floors. Router should be going on the middle floor, Desktop in bedroom on top floor.
Maybe a bit of gaming, not much in the way of extreme downloads, the odd bit of video streaming possibly.
Not massive data-heavy downloads I would say.
 
I have just replaced my Solwise ones with BT Broad band extender power line adaptor 3 pack set with built in Wifi security - One master and two Wifi with ethernet ports as well - very pleased with it but it is the 500 - Solwise was 200

I am in a bungalow but walls are black ash block and really cut signal down.

Dave
 
The wifi on the Sky Hub isn't reported to be the best but it's fine for me. Powerlines didn't work for me on a new build so I've had to go cabled as I want to game. I'm using flat cat6 to be pushed under skirting boards and a gigabit switch.
 
Last edited:
The majority of newer powerline adaptors' performance is dictated more by the chipset than anything else, they're all rated the same because they all use the same chipset from Qualcomm IIRC. So really, you should expect similar performance from all of them. Furthermore, there are so many more external factors that may hinder performance (line quality, distance), hence the wildly varying results.

In short however, wireless for high performance at short distances, powerline for reliability and long distance performance.
 
Hyburnate said:
The wifi on the Sky Hub isn't reported to be the best but it's fine for me. Powerlines didn't work for me on a new build so I've had to go cabled as I want to game. I'm using flat cat6 to be pushed under skirting boards and a gigabit switch.
Click to expand...

Strange, new builds will have all the sockets on the same rcd which would be perfect for powerlines.
 
kitch9 said:
Strange, new builds will have all the sockets on the same rcd which would be perfect for powerlines.
Click to expand...

Eugh I wish, it's soooo up and down... One minute I get 20mb and the next I get 8... at one point I was getting two, I'm not sure if it's skys end as I've been having problems over wifi too and the routers only syncing at 25Mb/s or something.... At one point laptop hooked directly to hub was pulling 30mb/s and PC was pulling 2mb/s
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom