Devolo dLAN 1000 mini Starter Kit Powerline – Hardware Review
We’ll have to face it, the internet is here to stay and it’s becoming more and more important on a daily basis. There are now actually generations that grew up or are growing up with the internet being omnipresent in their lives, which makes it somewhat of a basic human right to have access to the world wide web. Devolo is one of those brands that makes sure that you can access the internet everywhere in your home, without having to place a router in every room to be able to surf the global web. Today we had the chance to try out the dLAN 1000 mini Starter Kit Powerline.
When opening the box we are greeted by two small white boxes with a UTP plug on their bottom. Other than that there’s a short user manual that doesn’t help you all that much and two fairly short UTP cables you can use for your setup. Of course you can use longer cables if you have them lying around. Devolo went with a clean white look for their kit, which certainly has a lot of appeal, making sure it’s not intrusive in your home décor. Other than that, there aren’t any noticeable features, safe for the LED light that’s present on both boxes.
The basic premises of the dLAN 1000 mini Starter Kit is actually very simple and requires hardly any explanation. You’ll be able to connect one of the devices with a standard UTP cable and connect it to your router. This will serve as the starting point for your home network. Then you have the second box, which can also be connected with a UTP cable, but this time you’ll need to connect it with the device that doesn’t fall in range of your router, or simply doesn’t have any Wi-Fi options, thus having to connect it the old school way. Of course, we understand that it’s impossible to drag an entire cable through your house, without having to go through walls, thus this is where Devolo’s kit comes into play.
Keep in mind that this kit will only help you connect one item to the network that falls outside of the range or doesn’t have any wireless functions. You can of course opt to purchase more kits, in order to connect more devices, but we were unable to test how efficient this all works. That being said, each box uses a power outlet, which means that that outlet can’t be used by another device. It would have been a great comfort if Devolo designed the different boxes to have integrated power outlets as well, making it so you don’t lose the original outlet completely. Nonetheless, nowadays many people will own power outlet boxes in their homes, so you probably won’t miss losing those two outlets at all. Older homes might run into issues due to their electrical grid however, but again this is something we couldn’t properly test during our review period.
Conclusion
Devolo’s dLAN 1000 mini Starter Kit Powerline might not be the cheapest product on the market, but it does help you extend your network to a dead zone inside your home or office to connect that device that falls outside the range of your initial network setup. While it would have been nice if the boxes had internal power outlets, we understand that Devolo wanted to press the production fees for this device, making sure it would be affordable and more attractive than having to upgrade your router, drag a cable through the house, or opt for a second network setup in your home or office. We were quite happy with this device, as it’s quite practical and easy to set up.
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[…] in June we had the opportunity to try out Devolo’s dLAN 1000 mini Starter Kit Powerline, which was a great solution if you had one dead spot in your home network (or more, if you bought […]