Review #002 - TRENDnet Powerline Adaptors

OK, second review! Here we go!

I recently moved house and I had to fudge a network connection together. Here is an artist's rendition of how I set it up.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Due to the model of router I had, it could not be set up on the same subnet wirelessly, meaning other devices on the network could not see my PC (such as the PS3 connected to the HomeHub). Also, this solution generated yet more wireless traffic in an already congested area.

So to replace the orange magic wireless lines in the image above, I bought a set of powerline adaptors. Saw these ones from TRENDnet for £20. Good price.

Yeah, looks cheap, I know. Does not bode well.

ALL THE INFORMATION EVER. If I'm honest, a lot of this is gibberish to me or totally irrelevant.

Brief description of use and big pictures. Multiple language instructions, just in case.

Let's open this bad boy up.

Neatly packed up, individually wrapped. You can be assured these will probably not be damaged in transit.

One thing I didn't know before removing the plugs is that they came with some CAT5e patch cables. Bonus for £20! Not too long, but the devices are designed to avoid masses of cables everywhere, so it's a good thing.

Here we see everything. Multi-lingual instructions, software disk, 2 x plugs and 2 x cables. What more do you need?

Good ol' indicator LEDS. You know if PWR doesn't come on you are gonna have a bad time.

RJ45 connector. What more could you want? The sync button is also here, used for resetting the encryption on the device. Would have been nice to have this on the front of the plug to make it more accessible, but at least here you can't accidentally prod it while messing blindly behind your computer changing cables or something.

Setting up the devices was very easy. I plugged both devices into a double wall socket. Both devices then powered up and instantly connected to each other. It turns out they come set with the default key, so to checked they worked I set up the network and disabled the wireless bridge. BOOM! Internet and (with a quick trip to the router's set up page) on the same subnet as the HomeHub. Excellent.

With the test over, I got both plugs back in the same wall socket to scramble the key. Very easily done, just hold Sync for 10 seconds on one, then 10 seconds on the other. All done. It is worth pointing out that you don't have to have them in the same socket to sync them; I did it so I didn't have to dash between the 2 devices (you have 120 seconds to hold Sync on the device after starting the process).

Well, lets have a look at some Pingtest results, shall we? Before and after:

Now you know something is wrong when the server is RECEIVING more packets than I've sent. Bad bad bad.

That's more like it. I am also no longer limited by any slow devices on the wireless, as well as generating less wireless traffic. Personally I prefer to use wires when possible; it's good for phones, tables and laptops but for consoles and PCs you should really use a cable unless it is absolutely impossible to do so.

I attempted to install the supplied software... but it didn't seem to work on my machine. Looking online, I found out that it can't detect the plug unless the machine the software is on is connected directly it. But as I have found out, the software is not needed to get these cheap plugs to work.

Sadly, after buying these plugs the place I got them from sold out and they are no longer listed. However, more well known companies like Belkin and TPLink do their own versions, but you'll be paying more that £20 for them.

If you plan to have more that 2 of these in a house, make sure they support 500Mb. While each device can only do 100Mb down the CAT5e cable, the devices still have to talk to each other. However, if you can't stretch your budget enough for them and only want 2, a twin pack will do you just fine. If your house wiring is up to scratch. If your wiring is crappy, Your Mileage My Vary.

Review #001 - Bulbasaur, I mean Asus Xonar U3

Hello Everyone who dared to click on a link I posted. We'll soon see how smart that decision was.

The main purpose of this blog is for me to review bits of kit I like, hate, or get sent from kind folk. For my first trick, I will be reviewing the Asus Xonar U3, a USB sound card.

What's that? A U. S. B. sound card? Surely it's pants, review over.

Oh ok, I'll give it a fair

You can pick these up for about £30. Compared with some others, this is pretty good.

"What is the point of this device?" I hear you cry. "Why did you get this when you already have a Xonar D2X in your main rig?" However, this is made to boost the audio quality of your laptop/netbook. My laptop is now 5 years old and has on board Realtek. I will be comparing it against this. Obviously audio quality is subjective; What I think sounds good might make an audiophile cringe. For playback, I will be listening to Queen. Why? Because. 
I will also be testing the input over TS3 and Mumble. All tests were done using my Razer Carcharias headset for both input and output tests.


Wonder what you get for your £30.

TA DA!

The device arrives in a nice neat box. Seems a little large for something that is about the size of a large USB memory stick. The box has one of those nice "ooooo open me to have a look at what is inside" flaps. Upon opening, you are presented with your sound device. Gloss black, even has plastic film on it to protect it.

Let's get the contents out.

We have -

The Device
S/PDIF TOSLINK optical adaptor
USB Extension Cable
Quick Start Guide
Driver Disk 

Sadly, I do not have the capacity to test the optical adaptor, so that will not be covered in this review. However, I would like to point out that it comes with a rubber sheath to protect the connector, always good to know your device should arrive protected and in 1 piece.

THE DEVICE.

Interesting. First off, it's light. Very light. Makes it feel cheap. However, the different components all line up, construction is sound and the USB cover makes a convincing *CLICK* when placing it back on. You know that thing is going to stay in place. The USB head itself is also well attached; I have USB sticks where the USB head is going to just fall off.

As you can see, Asus have cleverly looped the 2 parts together with the keyring... however if I'm completely honest this seems pointless addition - I wouldn't carry this on my keys, it's too large. It's bigger than my Blizzard authenticator which I deem to be the right size for putting on your keys. Personally I would make the cord longer and tie it to the Kensington lock on my laptop.

The Xonar uses the standard 3.5mm jacks for input and output. Good, I dislike proprietary connectors. Let's get this set up on my laptop to see what the software is like. The casing is quite wide, and if your USB ports are in a row it will partially block them. That's probably why they gave you a short USB extender. Another tick for Asus.

Anyone with a Xonar card will be familiar with this layout. I'm not going to pretend I know what most of these things do, but more options is generally a good thing.  I'm not sure what the KARAOKE button does, nor why it is all in caps. Quite frankly, it scares me.

When you mute the sound, the lights on the device turn off. Very good feature if you like to disable the sound notification on the task bar.

Let's do some tests. I picked a track I knew very well and listen to it on the Realtek onboard using the front audio jacks on my laptop.

Oh dear. Tinny and distorted, missing bass power and poor distintion of left/right audio.

Xonar time. Very impressed, a BIG improvement over the onboard solution. Deeper, stronger sound. Made the onboard sound solution look embarrassingly bad. Not up to the quality of the D2X, but SO much better than the Realtek.

I wonder what it's like for games?

Every Tuesday evening I play TF2. I disabled the Xonar on my gaming rig and tried the USB one. No one commented on a drop in mic quality, meaning that my mic was the limiting factor here. Good. Normally when you try a new sound card you are greeted with "OMG WHO THE HELL ARE YOU" over VOIP. One thing that is sorely missing from this device is an on board volume control - luckily my headset has one in line, but others might not be so lucky. Compared to my Xonar, it was a little lacking - but to be honest, this is to be expected. If I had hardware failure it would do in a pinch.

One thing I did find when I removed the device after the test - the underside was a little on the warm side. Not enough to concern me, but it's not something I expected.

Let's round this up. For £30 you have a device that vastly superior to onboard audio solutions. Would I buy one? If I had a gaming laptop for LANs, but was not happy with the audio quality, definitely. If I had a netbook and streamed audio or video to it, damn straight I would consider this product.

Obviously if you have a tower, either use the now semi-decent onboard solutions (Asus for example have designed the layout of some boards to reduce interference for the onboard sound or put it on a daughterboard) or, like me, get a decent PCI-e card. I'll also keep mine with me at LANs in case the worse thing happens - hardware failure. Or, Idy comes along and sets fire to his sound card again.

TL; DR version:

Pro: Decent sound and build quality. Price won't break the bank. Good for mobile computers and back up hardware.

Con: Large for a dongle, oversized box is a waste of materials, lack of onboard volume control, "cheap" feel due to weight/size ratio.

I'm not going to give it some arbitrary number or grade. This device does exactly what it is meant to - offer a decent alternative to onboard audio solutions. And it does this well.