In either case, cable TV viewers and cord cutting families alike can use the wires already in your home to transmit fast Ethernet-like signals from your router to other rooms in your home.

Though MoCA adapters are measurably faster than powerline networking, they aren’t our top pick because electrical outlets are exponentially more prevalent in homes than coax hookups, which makes placing a powerline adapter much more convenient than MoCA adapters. MoCA adapters work similarly to powerline adapters, but use the coaxial (cable TV) wires installed in many homes to carry networking signals. You’ll always have a power plug next to a spot where you want a better network connection, but if you have a cable TV outlet at the same location, a MoCA adapter like the Trendnet TMO-311C2K will transfer data much more quickly, according to our testing. Three contenders had only a single year of coverage. Warranty: It’s not the most important feature, but we gave extra points to powerline kits with two- or three-year warranties.Powerline adapters should always be plugged directly into the wall-not into a power strip-and kits without power passthrough will block one or both of your wall outlets. Power passthrough: It’s not a dealbreaker, but we prefer powerline kits with 110 V passthrough outlets on the front.They come in handy if you need “just one more connection” and don’t want to bother with an additional network switch for a media streaming box and a desktop PC in the same room. Extra Ethernet port(s): Having an extra Ethernet connection (or two) is a boon for smart homes.Wi-Fi capabilities: You’ll get the highest performance results from a powerline connection by plugging in an Ethernet cable, but many people really want to get good Wi-Fi coverage to another room.Once you reach that price, you may be better off looking at a mesh networking kit or evaluate if you need to install wired Ethernet in your home.

Price: A pair of Ethernet-only powerline adapters shouldn’t be more than $120 a kit with a Wi-Fi radio on the far end shouldn’t be more than $150.It’s frustrating when you have to wait longer than a couple of seconds for a response from a website or an app’s servers Latency, or delay: This is the kind of speed that makes most of what you actually do on the internet-such as web browsing and game playing-seem fast or slow.We used AV2 throughput ratings as a guideline when picking which kits to test-those numbers aren’t always indicative of real-world performance, but newer and better kits do generally have higher throughput rates. If your home internet connection is slower than that and the cause of your problems, a powerline networking kit may not make a difference. At a bare minimum, we’re looking for at least 25 Mbps, the speed you’d need for 4K video streaming to one device.

Throughput, or speed: We measured how fast each powerline kit downloads files and streaming data.

Zyxel powerline adapter utility