devolo Magic 2–2400 Wi-Fi 6: Whole Home Kit | 4k/ 8k UHD Streaming | Stable Home Working (Up to 2400 Mbps powerline & 1800 Mbps Mesh WiFi 6, G.hn, 5x Gb LAN ports)

Bought to replace my failing dLan set up - had given 5+ years of service with one plug failure but was often a pain to reset/reboot when needed (too often). Debated but decided to stick with Devolo, glad I did. These were so easy to set up and add to - just plug in, add network details, and wait a few mins. All good so far, speeds up a bit but not massively, main limit is the part fibre 60 odd feed. Now have 3 wifi plus one non and all work 100% - need as internal walls have blocks with high metal content.... Expensive, almost twice that of the equivalent(ish) competition but I'm happy with both ease of set up and functioning now installed.

Fibre router in one corner of a wide house, needed wifi in the furthest far corner of the building (above a garage) for a cinema/gaming room. Sky Q mesh couldnt reach it effectively, if at all. Was slightly dubious the devolo system would work (it was having lots of items (6) plugged into a 8way multisocket attached to it's pass-through, on both ends of the system, and the sheer distance), but it did. Not mind-blowing speeds (probably for the reasons just mentioned) but I can now watch 4k video no probs. I didn't set up the seamless wifi system (well not yet anyway) so I found initially my devices still wanted to connect to the router across the house - I assume the mesh system devolo uses would sort this. Im currently operating the devolo wifi plug as a separate wifi network with its own passcode, to keep the cinema/gaming room discrete from the rest of the house network. All-in-all, very pleased. It was easy enough to set up using the app, and a few youtube videos. A bit nervy waiting for things to sync and connect as they give you a countdown timer for things working. Recommended, but with the caveat - certaining home wiring systems might not work with it very well.

I have 6 x Mesh WI-Fi and 3 x LAN Magic 2 adapters on a single encrypted powerline network. They all run at LAN speeds above 100Mps (Up and Down), the ones nearest the router at over 1200Mbps, and are proving very stable and reliable. These are excellent adapters, but be aware that they use the G.hn network standard and are not compatable with dLAN® Powerline adapters and other HomePlug AV products. If a network of these adapters is used on the same power circuit as a network of adapters running the dLAN standard, they interfere with each other. Both networks will run slower and all adapters will need regular resetting. However, the G.hn standard easily supports 8 compatible adapters on a single network, rather than the dLAN standard which only work reliably with 5 adapters. My house has 0.5m thick stone walls, so I need a large number of wi-fi transmitters to get good coverage. Now, for the first time and after 15 years of trying different products and network configurations, I have a single network of the Magic 2 adapters with a powerline backbone that provides excellent WI-Fi, as well as LAN, coverage thoughout. In addition, to reduce local electrical equippment interference, I followed the installation advice and use the interference filtering in the passthrough socket, if necessary with an extension lead, to connect all other electrical devices plugged into the same socket outlet block and I no longer plug anything into immediately adjacent power socket outlets. This has significantly boosted the powerline LAN network speeds. I had the significant expense of replacing all my top of the range dLAN adapters, but now, my entire LAN network runs more than 10 times faster, I hardly ever have to reset the adapters or router, and I finally have full Mesh Wi-Fi coverage throughout my house.

I’ve had them all, or most of them: the blue plugs, the 50s, the 200s, the 500s and the 1200s. It’s been four years since I upgraded. I had some time on my times so I upgraded. The installation was a doddle, sync the endpoints before powering up the adaptor connected to the router. It was fired up inside ten minutes. Hah. I could see the reported speeds were much better. The improvement to wireless speeds was negligible. Still, they worked and I was good until WiFi 6 was prevalent. Three mornings later my wife said, “Alexa has stopped working”. Our Echos were all off-line. So were our Kasa and Amazon smart plugs. How odd. Reboot the adaptors and everything worked again. For ten minutes. Stupidly, I initially treated this as an endpoint problem. I reinstalled the plugs and the Echos, knowing full well that this would mean reviewing all the Alexa routines. Reinstalling the devices was a complete PITA - they would not latch onto wireless. Very odd. The Facebook Portal+ was fine. The PCs were ok - although speed test reported wild variances in throughput. Still, managed to reinstall the devices. Rebooted the adaptors - and all the devices fell off the network again. Randomly changed adaptor settings based upon some guy on the interwubz chat rooms. MIMO to SISO? Nope. VDSL to Full Power? Nope. The Magics had survived three days. So I reset them back to factory and reinstalled them. Everything connected...for ten minutes. Pulled the old 1200+ devices out, put them in - and everything works. The Magic is back in its box on its way back to Amazon. Could I have contacted technical support? Probably. But for the hassle of troubleshooting and talking to engineers to make the system reliable for almost no noticeable improvement didn’t seem like a good bet. I thought I knew Devolo. I was wrong.

Upgraded from develo 1200 and they are literally twice as fast. Setting them up is more of a pain there is no longer a manual add facility using the code off the back of them you have to press the button on one then on the others. If you buy the WIFI ones TURN OFF YOUR MAIN WIFI, it conflicts with the MESH , the 1200's did exactly the same thing and it degrades the WIFI massively. Our conservatory which is a mega long cable run used to get 30MB and now gets 60-80MB which is plugged into our sky box films now download twice as fast. If you DONT use the wifi version anywhere IE are LAN only > the app doesn't work on IOS or Anroid > Only deverlop Cockpit desktop for PC or MAC> its been waiting for a firmware update from develo since September > appears it needs at least 1 wifi point for the management app to function on mobile device> seems they didn't expect anyone to not want there "crappy" wifi > and it is crappy. I initially bought the wifi version but the "mesh" wasn't very good, lots of signal loss , bad handover, no WIFI 6 / AX > so sent them back and bought the LAN version (which is brilliant) and then replaced my router with a Netgear RAX200 WIFI 6 router and hung another RAX200 Netgear WIFI 6 router (set in AP access point mode) off a LAN MAGIC 2 the other end of my house - Net result is rock solid Ethernet Everywhere I need it in the house and mad fast WIFI 6 AX covering the whole house. What I'd like to see for Magic 3 1- is a 1/2.5GB port on the ethernet LAN port and on the triple - as although the LAN triple can do 2400MB's it can only do 1GB per port > with routers / Access points now supporting 2.5GB this would save me having run a cat 7 cable in my house to the secondary Access point - which defeats the object that Magic 2 is supposed to avoid 2 - On the WIFI version Wifi 6 / AX with ideally triple band and 6 or 12 streams and work on the "mesh" handover between wifi points and automation around channels 3 - more speed you can never have enough speed :) 4 - A less flakey cockpit 5.1.3 it crashes lots on windows 10 , 5.1.2 runs fine > no idea why or the difference Summary is LAN MAGIC 2 ones are brilliant , WIFI ones are "OK". You'd probably be better of buying the 1200's if you just want wifi as I couldn't see any difference between magic and 1200's but if you want rock solid LAN performance then Magic 2 is the way to go use your existing wifi and hang a "matching Access point / AP or router in running in AP mode" off the other end and you'll get amazing matched mesh wifi (assuming your router and AP are decent)

I had been using TP Link devices, to get cable bandwidth over my mains sockets at the other end of my house to where the router is located. However, I started to get low signal strength and disconnecting, which rendered them useless. Having done some research, I decided to take the plunge, and try these powerline devices. Initial setup failed completely, so I decided to follow the manual process for pairing the devices, which worked perfectly. I did notice you must have them not all on the same circuit, especially if there are lots of other mains devices connected, as it will cause a weak signal warning over the cables. I placed the 2 Wi-Fi/LAN devices in the same sockets where my TP-Link devices were, and they both connected to the device at the router end perfectly. To configure the Wi-Fi on them, I strongly recommend you download the app 'Devolo Cockpit' onto your mobile first. It will automatically detect the Wi-Fi and allow you to configure and make changes to SSID and password, so you will not need the key from the back of the devices. It is a brilliant app, and easy to use, but sometimes you need to keep re-connecting until it recognises the devices, so be patient. I get nearly 100MB on Wi-Fi, and full bandwidth of 200MB over the cables. Expensive, but well worth the money, as you are paying for superior performance and signal quality.

"Magic WiFi" - it is when it works, but it's flaky. This generation is easier to set up than previous versions, but generally doesn't reset itself when the router drops the signal (rural Somerset, so not an uncommon occurence) - have to go through the whole setup procedure again each time. A pain. Adaptors also get very hot, which can't be good for them. I have a "master + 3 slave" setup to cope with a sprawling area. I bought the new set in September - but in December the master died and it took 3 attempts for Devolo's (usually excellent) tech support to diagnose the problem . The printed material doesn't have a usable trouble-shooting guide, and the online one (like having the instructions for opening the box sealed in the box!) isn't much better. Amazon, as usual were excellent & replaced the set promptly. Today (1 Feb) it went down again - tech support have again got it working but ..... When it's working the Devolo kit works seamlessly - but if I could find a reliable way of doing the same job, I'd dump the Devolo kit in a heartbeat. Edit 22 Feb 2023: Devolo tech support must be getting VERY fed up with me. They got it all working again yesterday - same issue - router dropped the signal and the 2 of the 3 slaves didn't come back on line, Although all the LEDs lit as advertised, I couldn't connect any devices to either one. Investigation of the network showed that both were broadcasting (on both 2.4 & 5 GHz bands) but hadn't picked up the password from the router. Weirdly, the default set up is for each of the extender boxes to have its own password. There's an extra set of hoops you have to go through at (re) installation to have each extender broadcasting as a clone of the router so that a wandering device seamlessly picks up whichever extender is closest. Irritating. (Note to Devolo: All the trouble-shooting instructions - such as they are - are written and illustrated for the German version (with a 2 pin Schuko socket, instead of the UK version with a UK 3 pin plug - which has to mount theother way up to the German version. that means that the diagrams that say "press button 1" - showing the left hand button - actually mean the right hand button - labelled as "Button 2". Ah - zese inscrutable Chermans! Ve haff vays of confusing you!)

So nearly decade later and AV2 Homeplug Powerline has moved over for the ITU G.hn standard. I decided to buy the wired version (too many reviews of pain with the WiFi) and give them a go. They worked out of the box, and I had no issues during set-up. They did require a firmware update, but that was about it. To be clear, I bought a Devolo Magic2 LAN Triple. This contains ONE triple port, and ONE single port adapter. I think the box art on this is very deceptive. The triple port adapter is slightly bigger than the single port, both are bigger than AV2 and both run much hotter - for better or worse. Also, I ordered an Amazon Warehouse deal, and the first one Amazon sent didn't actually have any triple port Magic2 in the box (just two single port ones) , so I had to return and re-order. I've discovered they're happy to run in parallel to AV2 adapters without any noticeable loss, and bizarrely the Devolo Cockpit software even spots AV2 and Magic2 adapters. There's also web-page access to the adapters via their ip address, and the ability a set password if you don't trust people on your network. The iPhone Home Network app is okay - but it doesn't display any link speed information despite telling you it will. In tests at range I discovered a few surprises. AV2 is in the same location for reference, tests using iperf3: - TP-Link AV2 600 Two-Port ~16Mb/s (appears to split bandwidth across both ports rather than share it) - TP-Link AV2 600 Single-Port ~32Mb/s - Magic2 Single and Triple Port ~80Mb/s If range is reduced, speeds jump quite quickly up to 200Mb/s and then on to about 350Mb/s if distances are close. As a rule, expect 150 to 200Mb/s in a new-build four bedroom, but be prepared for slower. You'll still beat an AV2, but it might only be on range, or a factor of two. And in some cases, I suspect AV2 1300 will beat the Magic2, but not necessarily if you have older AV2 kit mixed with new stuff, which is why I was testing the Magic2. Will I keep them? Well that depends on whether they're stable. They solved my problem and increased my setup by speeds by about 7 or 8 times. I'm concerned about the temperature they run at (50C on the back, 35C on the front, 0.3A@240V = 7W), but they do have a three year warranty in case they melt down though. Note - if you're looking for adding WiFi Access Points to parts of your house, I wouldn't recommend the Magic2, simply because you'll be crippling any broadband gains you may be looking for, go for WiFi Mesh and Access Points with a dedicated third back-channel, or run Cat6 cabling (budget vs effort). The Magic2 is about easy of use, and getting the best out of something while doing very little. It does achieve this very well. Better than AV2 600 for sure, but it's not a "magic" bullet (sorry - groan now).