hello I'm wanderer001 and this is my review of the tp-link TL SG one zero five five port gigabit
desktop switch I know that's a mouthful but you're looking at this because well one you've probably
heard wired connections are better than wireless connections but if you've been taking that to
heart chances are depending on the type of Wi-Fi router you have the back of it may look like this
you run out of ports very quickly when you try and wire as many things as you can now another problem
you may have is if you have a mesh network system similar to the Google Wi-Fi mesh system which
only has one Ethernet port under the device to be plugged directly in to your modem so if you have
a situation like I depicted or you have a mesh network that only has one port for you something
like this is ideal this is a network switch this particular brand and setup is ridiculously simple
which is why I got it while I might be somewhat of a techie I am NOT one who wants to manage and
program a network switch so this particular model from tp-link is a completely plug and play option
meaning you plug it in and it does all the magic for you before we get into that let's talk about
the size of this this device is three point nine inches by three point nine inches by one inch so
it is ridiculously small in fact here it is with a pack of cards on top of it and if we do thusly
you can see it's not large at all which is one of the benefits of this now it is a completely
metal casing there are no fans on this so it does not cool itself by fans you can see the cutouts
here and here on either side and that's to help dissipate any heat buildup that you might get
in this along with the metal design that helps to dissipate heat as well the back of the device you
have your power connection and your Kings Incan lock area I will say when I say that this is a
very easy to use device in the box all you get is the power cable which is just shy of five feet
long you get an instruction manual which this is this is the instruction manual it's ridiculously
simple you also get on the bottom here five 3m little rubber foot ease to give it a little bit
of lift so that the metal is not sitting directly on whatever surface now a lot of people say this
is for grip and you do get a bit of grip using them however I like it because it adds a little
space so if this metal body is acting as a heat sink you're not warming up whatever you have this
on you can see here and understand over there which I'm covering up a serial number but these
are if you wanted to mount this to either a wall or the back of an entertainment center
coming back to the front because this is where all the magic happens this is the important part
over here all you have is a LED power indicator and then you have your five network ports these
are all 10 100 or 1000 megabit connections now the last one over here the number five you could
see its link account this one is recommended for if you are going to be plugging direct well this
is the port that they recommend that you plug in router or if you had a network attached storage
device this is the port that they would recommend now you can plug into any one of these from your
Wi-Fi router there's nothing that says you have to plug into one two three or four or even this
link to count down here I in fact tested it I just plugged right into three and then had extensions
off of that now I I draw a little criticism with them calling this a five port device only because
one of the port's you will have to set aside to connect to your Wi-Fi router so this is actually
a four port system with a connection to your Wi-Fi router because those ports that you saw in
my depiction earlier one of the ports on the back of your Wi-Fi router will need to be plugged into
this in order for this to be a network extension just giving you some information if this is the
first type of device like this you're looking into you can see up here there are little light
indicators these will be green when information passes between the switch and the device plugged
into it now I had two primary concerns when I was looking at this device because I've had this on
my wish list for a long time not in that I wanted to use up all my ports but I knew one day I would
and one of those questions I had was power usage how much power is this going to use well I could
say while idling meaning nothing is plugged into it because that's one thing the more of these you
the more of it that you use the more power it will draw but just idling plugged into my Wi-Fi router
just sitting there nothing else plugged in it used between 0.5 and 0.6 watts of power and again like
I said if you plug things into this it will use more power however it has what tp-link is calling
energy-efficient technology which they say will save you up to 65 percent so it automatically
just power consumption according to the link status and the cable length so what that means
is if when you have something plugged into this but it's not actually drawing information this
will dynamically lower the power usage likewise with the length of cable again without getting
too technical it's a networking longer cable more power needed this does all of that for you this is
a truly plug-and-play device which is one of the reasons I wanted to get it because again I don't
want to manage a network now my other concern with something like this having never brought in
a switch to my house was do I lose any speeds well here's what I did I did several tests the first
test was directly from my modem to my computer and I ran a speed test I'll be throwing them up on the
screen so when plugged in directly from my modem I got 219 down with 37 up when I plugged directly
into my Wi-Fi routers to the back of my Wi-Fi router still all plug all plugged in I got 170
down with 37 up when I plugged into the network switch not using the one for the nest I got 866
down with 36 point 9 6 now I say the 0.96 because I want you to see that it's just just shaving up
a little bit using the switch now I also plugged into the switch here my computer and my Roku to
test well if I stream an HD video will that impact this at all and it did a little bit doing that I
got 160 down with 36.9 9 up now realistically those are awesome speeds those are definitely
better than you're gonna get with Wi-Fi so there's nothing really to worry about using something like
this and tp-link is a company that has been around for a long time in fact over there I have lots of
TP switches and smart devices that I've been testing for a long time the big question now
becomes how much does something like this cost well there are several models of this meaning
you get more of these ports the more you spend however for this particular one you can get it as
low as twenty dollars for twenty dollars there's no reason not to get a couple of these to help
wire yourself instead of having wireless devices and there's a lot of smarts that this device does
which I'm not trying to like inundate you with in this video it has traffic optimization for voice
and video it's got automatic power saving it's got a bunch of brains I'll link some of it down in the
description area below if you have no experience networking but you know enough how to plug in an
Ethernet cable from your Wi-Fi router to a switch you can extend your wired network for $20 with
something like this like I said this has been on my wish list for a long time because I knew I
would need one eventually now I have it I'm happy that I got it and I'm very certain that you would
be happy to if you need to extend your network so I have been wanderer001 if you have any questions
or comments please feel free to leave them in the area below and as always thanks for watching