Question Help choosing wi-fi Powerline or Mesh, please

johndiver

Standard Member
Joined
Oct 24, 2012
Messages
17
Reaction score
1
Points
6
Hi

I would really appreciate some guidance on choosing the best powerline extender or mesh system for my situation.

I've read lots of reviews and posts. But almost all of them (users and manufactures) seem to start from the assumption that you have amazing broadband arriving at your premises. Alas, I don't.

I live miles from the exchange and have fttc from BT delivering 23mb to the router. I would just like to get as much of this as is possible to my TV at the other end of the house. Property is 60's bungalow - so no thick, well built walls to worry about; but, being a bungalow, it has a larger footprint than a similarly sized house.

In principle, should I go powerline or mesh?

And which product. With all product dox boasting about how amazingly they deal with high inputs, its hard for me to judge which would deal best with my paltry 23mb.

Thanks for any advice

John
 
A mesh or powerline solution might be overkill if you don't have thick walls, a simpler/cheaper/better solution might be to use a better router as all routers are not the same wrt wifi coverage despite having the same radio power limits. What are you currently using? A third party router such as the TP Link VR2800 or Asus DSL-AC88U might be far better than your current router, both support adsl and vdsl lines.
 
Thanks for replying so promptly. I appreciate it.

router is Bt home hub 6. I think I have to use a Bt router with Bt broadband, but I may be mistaken. Wi-fi from router gets about halfway to the tv.

your reply made me realise, that I had worded my post badly.
In addition to wanting wi-fi throughout the property, I need something with an Ethernet socket to plug my tv into. It’s at the furthest point from the router.
 
You are not forced to use BT's router for their services, the 2 routers i mentioned earlier will definitely work on BT and will almost certainly give you better wifi coverage than the BT kit. How much better, you won't know until you try.

Wrt TV connection, just buy 1 of these range extenders, plug into power socket near tv, connect to router wirelessly (assuming signal reaches that far) and plug the ethernet cable from tv into the extender's RJ45 port. Job done.
www.amazon.co.uk/TP-Link-RE365-AC1200-Extender-Passthrough/dp/B07J5R1MKT
 
— As an Amazon Associate, AVForums earns from qualifying purchases —
Powerline adapters work pretty well if you cannot hard wire.
 
Alas, I cannot hardwire. If I go the power line route, should I buy one of the higher spec ones to ensure I maximise the amount of my low input speed gets to the far side of the house.

or will one of the cheaper ones do the job?
 
I would look to buy at least AV600 or AV1000 Powerlines.

Something like
Amazon product ASIN B06VW1WCCD
or

Amazon product ASIN B07G37DJ8R
I have generally had very good results with TP Link powerlines. A tip: Dont plug powerlines into trailing or extension sockets or cables. You can seriously affect the performance of the Powerlines. Always plug both ends directly into a wall socket.
 
I recently picked up a Trendline Powerline WiFi for £20 on eBay.
 

The latest video from AVForums

Is 4K Blu-ray Worth It?
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Back
Top Bottom