Edimax HP-2001AV review

The new Edimax HP-2001AV 200Mbps PowerLine Ethernet is the company's first HomePlug AV product and has a maximum speed of 200Mbps.

In our testing the Edimax kit was fully compatible with the Solwise PL-200AV-PIGGY, which supports the same HomePlug AV standard. However, it is worth noting there are no Edimax products listed on the HomePlug.Org website.

Odd design

The Edimax units have a pearl finish that is curiously nondescript and they would ordinarily blend into almost any room, but this might not happen as the HP-2001AV has been designed upside down.

We would usually expect the HomePlug unit would hang down from the three-pin mains plug, but instead the unit points upwards and, as a result, the printed lettering is upside down and the Ethernet cable sticks out of the top. It looks rather comical.

Installing the Edimax adapters was quick and simple, although we could have chosen to make life slightly more complicated by using the Group button to link groups of Edimax adapters on the same electrical circuit. If you do this, adapters in Group A cannot see those in Group B, but we would have needed another pair to make the Group System work. Additional adapters cost £40 each.

Modest price

We had a touch of déjà vu when we used the Edimax Setup Utility, which is also called PowerPacket. It gives you information about line quality, which was described as Good in our case and displayed the connection speed as 'over 100Mbps'.

This information is clearly of critical importance as the software pops up a 'scanning' message every few seconds to let you know that it is keeping an eye on your network.

The cost of these adapters is modest and the connection speed is very fast, so if you simply want a wired network connection, we'd strongly recommend the Edimax HP-2001AV for the job.