- Hello, my name is Alex, and welcome to TechFlow.
As you guys know, I have done countless networking videos
on this channel much because I absolutely love networking.
I've done videos on how to get incredible WiFi.
I've done videos about access points.
I've done videos about overpowered home networks.
My home networks, the recurring question
I always get though is, Alex,
how can I get an insane WiFi performance
around my house and have an insane network,
but without running loads of cables, access points,
having a massive server rack?
Not many people can do this.
And I understand that, so devolo have sent out
their Magic 2 Powerline WiFi Adapter Kit.
Now, this uses Powerline technology
and WiFi meshing to make sure, well, apparently you have
an incredible connection around the house.
Like usual, guys, here on Tech Flow,
we're gonna give you our verdict on this product.
Let's un-box it, let's test it, let's do this!
But first, let's thank our sponsor.
Thanks to Amazon Play & Shop for sponsoring today's video.
It's gonna allow you to earn credit back
every in-game and app purchase that you make
whilst you play on your Android device.
(hip hop music)
So guys, what we're gonna go ahead and do
is well, first, I have to take this thing out the box
so we can test it out.
But my main goal with this is gonna be to run
a test over my local network connected
to one of these WiFi adapters
to see what actual theoretical speeds we get
because obviously I only get about 100 meg
to my house of actual TCP/IP Internet.
So a lot you guys might get 300 to 1,000 meg
if you're lucky enough to have something like Google Fibre.
So I'll do a sort of like an iPerf test around the house
with these just to see what theoretical speeds
I can get to a wireless device.
But essentially, I believe this is the master unit.
I'm learning this along with you guys.
And we will eventually test it.
But there you go, lovely big master unit I suppose.
It has a pass through port here so that you can
plug it in and then plug something else into it.
Included is a, let's have a look at this,
a gigabit patch cable, so I assume the ports are a gigabit.
And then you get two of the actual meshing adapters.
Now as I've told you guys, these actually use
a WiFi mesh to connect to each other as well as Powerline.
So you sort of get the best of both worlds.
(smooth R&B music)
So I've gone ahead and done guys,
is unplugged my two wired access points in this house.
This is actually a perfect test
because we've got two access points with this devolo kit.
I've got two wired access points in this house.
I've unplugged them so this is a fair test.
So the only WiFi that's gonna be running
is what's gonna be coming from these devolos.
What I'm gonna go ahead and do,
is plug this into the, should we call it the master adapter?
And then plug this in in sort of the centre of the house.
So now this, has a wired, Ethernet connection
up to one of my switches which actually has fibre backhaul
10-gigabit to the main switch up in the loft.
And then, fun fact for all you WiFi geeks,
WiFi actually falls down.
The signal falls with gravity.
It makes sense if you think about it.
So if you have your WiFi access points upstairs,
you're gonna get better overall coverage than having them
sort of on the bottom floor when you're upstairs.
So what I'm gonna go ahead and do
is plug one of these over here.
So we'll go ahead guys and plug
one of them in here, so this should cover
these two rooms and the kitchen downstairs.
And then as this is an L-shaped house,
I'm gonna go and time lapse through here
and plug one in through here.
And then this is my, well, master bedroom, my room,
so I'm gonna go ahead and plug this in here.
This should cover all of this into the house
and then the lounge downstairs.
Like I say, I don't know how these really work.
As it says on the box, magic apparently.
Hopefully I can try and figure out in this video
for all of us, but I don't how they're gonna mesh together.
I don't know if this meshes back to the main unit
and uses Powerline at the same time
or this will mesh with the other WiFi unit
that's at the other end of the house.
That would be a little bit stupid
because it's quite far away.
Not sure how this works.
Let's go and figure it out while they're hopefully
automatically configuring themselves.
Well, so guys, I've been having an absolute 'mare with this,
and that's because of advertising.
So let me read all of you this, because I don't think
it's just me that's been mistaken here.
So it says, invisible forces,
forces, not force, forces are at work.
It says, novel mesh WiFi and innovative Powerline technology
links all devolo Magic adapters
to an associated network so you can get
seamlessly on the Internet anywhere in the home
with the strongest connection.
Now, that to me reads that between
all of the adapters you've got Powerline technology
transferring the data as well as WiFi mesh.
But I've read through the entire small
instruction manual which essentially says,
write down the code on the back of it, the WiFi code.
Which annoyingly is different on each unit
on the back of here, and then it just works apparently.
That's it.
And if you want to copy the same SSID
as your router or router, it has a WPS button on it,
but there's nowhere in anywhere in here,
that says that they are wirelessly meshing together.
Maybe they are, maybe it's just Powerline.
I don't know.
So guys, massive props to devolo on the app side of things.
I downloaded the app, and within seconds
of clicking on it, it found all three of the adapters.
So as you guys can see here, my phone screen,
at the top we've got the Internet connection.
Then we've got the adapter that we've plugged in
to the main switch, and then we've got
our two adapters here.
Now, you can go into these and configure them yourself
instead of using WPS.
But there's nowhere in here that's saying
that they are meshing together
and the signal quality of that mesh or anything.
I think it's just clever marketing
to say that if you just change the WiFi name
to the exact same on both the devolo adapters
that you can roam around your house.
So that's exactly what I'm gonna do.
You have an option up here to have it
on 2.4 or five gigahertz, but for this test,
I'm just gonna use five gigahertz.
And I'm just gonna take this and put in Tech Flow.
And now what I'm gonna go ahead and do
is do the exact same thing to the other one.
Set the SSID to Tech Flow and the password
to 12345678 and put it in the five gigahertz only mode
for this just because we wanna test the theoretical speeds.
And five gigahertz is the best network to do that on.
So as you guys can see here, we've got both
of our LAN adapters.
When I actually change the SSID and password
of this one, it changed it on this one as well.
So as you can see, if I go in here,
click on the settings, click on WiFi, as you can see
it changed it on both of them which is awesome.
So technically now, if I go into my WiFi here,
there should be a network called Tech Flow.
So guys I'm connected to our new Tech Flow network and SSID
that's being broadcasted by our two devolo WiFi adapters.
I'm gonna use an app here.
As you guys can see on my phone screen,
called Wi-Fi Sweetspots.
What this is gonna do is measure the Internet speed
purely between this device and the access point.
So what we're looking for here,
is for the speed to decrease as we walk
from the access point this end of the house
which is literally just above this table
into the lounge, and hopefully, it will bang
back up to speed once it reconnect to the access point
which is in my bedroom above the lounge.
So let's click Stop.
And as you guys can see, 684 megs, 695, slowly going up,
capping out at around 700 meg.
That's pretty respectable for a wireless AC
for the home use.
So let's get up.
As you guys will see when I walk around,
you'll see this decrease a little bit.
That's absolutely fine.
As long as it doesn't drop below 200.
You're laughing and joking really.
But as you can see, as I walk through here,
it is gonna decrease until hopefully
it then connects through, there we go bang!
Guys, you've seen it on the screen, 793.
You see that line there.
So it's connected to our other access point.
That proves that our mesh network is working successfully.
And roaming around the house should be a breeze.
Brilliant!
So guys, what I'm gonna go ahead and do
is put the phone away.
We don't need that anymore.
And let's do some more testing.
So I've got a MacBook here.
And I've actually got my server that's up in a loft.
Now, what I'm gonna go ahead and do is unplug
this Ethernet cable which is going into
the Magic LAN adapter to give both
of our WLAN adapters Internet connection.
Let's unplug that.
What I'm gonna do is plug it into my laptop here,
and download a movie off my server
up in the loft to get some base testing
to see what the speeds are like to my server
over an Ethernet cable.
Then we'll move onto testing over the WiFi.
So guys, what I'm gonna go ahead and do
is get info on this 21 Jump Street folder.
As you can see is 1.61 gig up in my server in the loft.
So what I'm gonna do is drag this onto the desktop
and do a stopwatch at the same time.
Three, two, one, and they're off.
Okay, so we're transferring.
Done, 15.59 seconds over wired Ethernet.
Let's try it on the LAN adapters.
So again, guys, same thing again.
I'm gonna drag the exact same folder
from my server only difference is
we are now connected to our Tech Flow network
being broadcasted by the devolo WLAN adapters.
If you guys look on my screen up here,
as you can see it says zero kilobytes.
This is handy little network tool that I've got
to see actual transfer speeds.
So, three, two, one, bang.
As you guys can see here on my screen,
we're downloading around 60 megabits a second.
We're maxing out about 65 is the fastest I have seen.
I mean it's not terrible, but it's not amazing.
They do the job.
60 meg is okay for pretty much anything to be honest.
You wouldn't really notice a hitch, but.
Alright guys, it's still copying
over a couple of minutes later.
What I have figured out from this,
is that if you have less than 60 meg coming into your house,
you're going to get the full
network capacity through these adapters.
But they seem to be maxing out
around 61 to 65 megabits per second.
Which again is perfectly reasonable for WiFi.
The brilliant takeaway from all this though,
is that I'm getting this 62 meg wherever I am
which is absolutely brilliant.
62, 64, 60, 65,
65 still, 64 still, 64 still,
64 still, 62, everywhere I go,
I'm getting the full capacity.
I've just hit 68 actually.
So that is that guys.
These are the devolo Magic 2 adapters.
I mean, take em as for what they are.
It's been a little bit of clever advertising
that really got me hooked.
And we're pulling around 60 meg.
For any constellation, this is a brand new house.
So the wiring is good.
If this is an older house, results may vary.
But there you go, 60 meg for all over my house.
Take it for what it is.
I'll show you guys the numbers,
and you can judge yourself.
So as you guys can see, on here, it says on here,
that we've got theoretical transfer speeds
of 2,400, 1,200, it's all about iffy.
The top and bottom of it is, I got about 60 megs
worth of real throughput through these adapters,
through the Powerline network in the house.
Which, you know what?
It's acceptable.
So that's all that these Magic adapters, guys,
have to offer, but for now, we need to thank our sponsor.
This video is sponsored by Play & Shop
by the Amazon App Store for Android.
You actually earn credit back whilst you play
on your Android device.
All you lot have got to do is go the link
in the description, download the Amazon App Store,
and enrol in Play & Shop.
Once you are enrolled onto the programme,
any purchase that you guys make in games
will give you 10% back in Amazon credit.
So if you're spending money, let's say,
in Candy Crush or Minecraft, you may as well
be earning credit back that you can spend on Amazon.
The credit accumulates and can be spent on Amazon.
And you can buy, well, anything.
Electronics, books, games, perfect time
for some savings this Christmas.
Guys, thanks for watching today's Tech Flow video!
I really hope you've enjoyed it.
If you guys want see some other networking videos,
there's two right there for your eyes to feast on.
And if you're not subscribed to our channel,
we'd really appreciate that.
And if you are, well, drop a Like
'cause we'd appreciate that too.
(hip hop music)