Devolo dLAN 1200+ Starter Kit review

Hot off the heels of their last kit, Devolo is back with another set of powerline adapters. As if the Best Buy-winning Devolo dLAN 650 Triple+ Starter Kit wasn’t fast enough, Devolo has released the dLAN 1200+ Starter Kit, which is rated to move data at a whopping 1,200Mbit/s – almost twice as quick. Sadly, though, the adaptors in the dLAN 1200+ Starter Kit only have one Gigabit Ethernet port rather than three, so aren’t as useful for getting your smart TV, games console and media PC online, for example. Still, if you want a fast connection from your router to a computer, the dLAN 1200+ can provide it.

Both adaptors in the dLAN 1200+ Starter Kit have pass-through power sockets, so you can plug other devices into them. The benefit of this is that they don’t consume an entire power socket, and you can often plug the device you want to connect to the network into the adaptor. Devolo has long produced adaptors with a design well-suited to UK offices and homes, and that’s the case here. The adaptors protrude upwards rather than down so that they don’t clash with skirting boards or the tops of desks, and the Ethernet ports are located on top of the adaptor for the same reason.

Setting up the adaptors is straightforward. You simply plug both adaptors into adjacent power sockets and they’ll detect each other automatically. The connection between the adaptors is automatically encrypted, but you can either create and use your own password or have the Devolo Cockpit utility create one for you. Devolo Cockpit is a neat utility that provides you with a visual map of your powerline network, and lets you configure your adaptors.

The dLAN 1200+ adaptors are the fastest powerline networking adaptors we’ve seen. With the adaptors plugged into adjacent sockets the kit transferred data at an astonishing 419.4Mbit/s, and transferred data at 372.8Mbit/s at a distance of one metre. The data transfer speed between adaptors diminishes the further away you place them, and at 10m distance the dLAN 1200+ Starter Kit transferred data at 74.1Mbit/s. This might not sound particularly fast, but it’s more than twice as fast as the speed produced by the TP-Link TL-PA4020P kit, which is rated at 500Mbit/s, at the same distance. However, it’s worth noting that the TL-PA4020P kit is less than half the price of the dLAN 1200+ Starter Kit.

If you want the fastest powerline networking kit there is, the Devolo dLAN 1200+ Starter Kit is a great buy. It’s comprised of high-quality adaptors that are easy to set up and configure. However, the Devolo dLAN 650 Triple+ Starter Kit is more convenient for getting your home entertainment kit online thanks to its three Ethernet ports.