O-Sense
CONCLUSION
In a market filled with Wi-Fi capable powerline adapters one would think we’d consider that to be a drawback but we really don’t especially since you can buy a Wi-Fi compatible adapter from any manufacturer (as long as it’s HomePlug AV2 compatible) and use it with this or any other kit. The only slight issue we had is with wired performance and although the gap with several other similar 1000/1200Mbps adapters was far from great the TPL-421E2K finished 4th in our charts. The TPL-421E adapters have however something that others don’t, very large activity LEDs and although that may seem funny to some of you still they are far easier to spot from afar (and thus understand the current state of the adapter) and also look much better (not that appearance is something important for powerline adapters). I would of course like to see a better control panel than the Power Packet Utility (it just feels outdated) so I do hope TRENDnet listens and releases something designed at least on par with what AVM offers (Devolo also has a nice control panel but there’s really no need for them to go that far).
With a current price tag set at USD84.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 95Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) the most direct contestant to the TPL-421E2K is the PLP-1200 kit by Netgear. Of course as you can see from our charts both kits trade blows (the PLP-1200 is slightly faster in 2 out of 3 tests) so it’s certainly not a deal breaker. In the end if you have no need for the built-in power socket we still recommend going for the D-Link AV2-1000 kit since it costs almost half as much and is still king with an excellent price/performance ratio. Overall the TPL-421E2K is a solid powerline kit with very good performance levels (just not top) and a good set of features which is why it gets our Golden Award.
PROS
- Build Quality
- 4th Fastest Powerline Adapter To Date (In Our Charts)
- 1200Mbit/s (1000Mbit/s Effective)
- Built-In Electrical Socket
- Low Power Consumption (PowerSave Mode)
- AES 128-Bit Encryption
- Large Activity LEDs
CONS
- Single LAN Port (For Some)
- Control Software (Outdated)
