Asus PL-AC56 AV2 1200 Wi-Fi Powerline Extender Kit

The Asus PL-AC56 Kit is an AV2 power line networking kit, supporting dual-band wireless connections over 802.11ac or 802.11n, or up to three desktop PCs over Ethernet, carrying data straight to your router over the electricity wires in your home, with quoted (theoretical) speeds up to 1200 Mbps. We only recently covered the Asus PL-N12 Kit (Review HERE) which is a fairly inexpensive set of AV power line networking adapters, one of which has built-in 802.11n wireless hardware to provide extended connectivity for smartphones, tablets and so on, in addition to a pair of wired Ethernet ports at the bottom for desktop computers. In that review, we did wonder whether Asus would have something a bit faster in the pipeline. We have our answer with its bigger brother, the Asus PL-AC56 Kit. It’s exactly the same idea, with two adapters, one of which connects directly to your router with an Ethernet cable, then into a spare plug socket, while the other one is connected to a plug socket further away, and then you can connect devices to it, with data shared over the electricity wires in your house. But everything has been upgraded with the Asus PL-AC56 Kit. It’s now offering 2x2 802.11ac rather than 802.11n wireless. It supports the upgraded AV2 standard and the physical size of the devices has increased, with the large adapter now using external antennas. The two adapters in the kit are known by different names, the larger is called “PL-AC56” while the smaller device, which connects directly to your router, is called “PL-E56P”. This smaller adapter has a electricity pass through on the front, so you don't lose a plug socket, and its small enough to be used comfortably with other devices plugged in next to it. It only has a single Ethernet port underneath. The larger adapter has three gigabit Ethernet ports though, so you can extend three desktop computers (in addition to the wireless devices that connect to it). Powerline adapters are an alternative to wireless as a method for extending your home's network coverage. In general, speeds drop off quite severely with power line Ethernet when you're further away from the router, with the addition of interference from other devices and lower speeds with older wiring. From one end of a typical house to the other, with an AV1 kit, you sometimes don't get great results. With the better speeds of AV2, you should still expect enough bandwidth for file transfers and streaming HD video without hiccups. And it's fully encrypted, with the two adapters paired, keeping other adapters on the same circuit out of your network. It carries a premium price tag. Indeed, you can purchase competing AV2 adapters for quite a bit less than Asus is charging for the PL-AC56 kit, but the cost comes from the built-in 802.11ac WiFi. Asus is directly competing with the top-end models from the likes of Devolo and its DLAN 1200+ WiFi AC kit, which costs exactly the same, for a roughly similar feature set. How does Asus compare? Let’s check it out. Price: £159.99 Specification: Wireless protocols: 2x2 802.11ac (1200Mb/sec), 802.11n, 802.11a/g, 802.11b Antenna Configuration: 2×2 External Antennas Wired protocols: Gigabit Ethernet HomePlug standard: AV 1200 Encryption: WPA/WPA2-PSK, WPA/WP2 Enterprise The packaging contains two adapters, with a pair of ethernet cables to connect each of them to your router and a single client PC. And of course the usual quick-start guide and VIP stuff you get with every Asus product. The first, smaller adapter, the PL-E56P, has passthrough for power, and relatively few other aspects of note. Importantly, this adapter HAS to be connected to your router, you cannot use it as a client and get full speed. There are three LEDs at the bottom indicating power, power line connectivity and network connectivity There’s just one ethernet port on the bottom and a pairing button. The reset hole is really tiny. As in really really tiny. Only a pin can be used with it. There’s a thermal exhaust on the side The second PL-AC56 unit is much larger, as we mentioned on the previous page. The two external antennas are quite large, and there’s no passthrough for power. We've seen this look before. The Asus RP-AC56 (Review HERE) is a wireless repeater with two external antennas, which plugs directly into a wall socket, and looks almost identical. It doesn't do power line ethernet though, so there are only three lights on the front of that unit. There are five LEDs at the front of the PL-AC56, with two for power status and power line connectivity, one for ethernet, and a pair for 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless status. And there’s a clone button as well, to copy your wireless router's settings and simply set the PL-AC56 to extend its coverage. Just press the WPS button on your router, then the clone button and it should all be set up. There’s a manual power switch and a pairing button, with the same tiny hole for resetting the device. And you can see the three power line Ethernet ports underneath. Lastly, the ubiquitous shot of the device (at least, the larger of the two adapters) plugged into a wall socket. Despite its extra size, the PL-AC56 does not obscure the nearby socket, although some large power packs may have trouble squeezing in next to it, particularly if there are tall enough for the antennas to get in the way. Setting up the PL-AC56 kit is much like its smaller sibling, although this time it seemed a bit more fussy with the order we connected them and pressed the pairing buttons. The two adapters only would acknowledge each other's presence, with all the lights active, when pressing the Pair button first on the smaller PL-E56P unit, then on the PL-AC56 unit. Of course, you don't need to log in to the on-board software at all, but as before, it can be accessed by typing ap.asus.com when connected. In practice, we found it helped to disconnect the power line kit from the router when doing this, so it would not attempt to resolve the page online. You can either configure the Asus PL-AC56 Kit manually or with a setup wizard. As before, it first asks you to change the default password. The main screen looks exactly like it does on most Asus Routers, with a layout and style similar to AsusWRT software, albeit with most of the settings cut down. It's just as intuitive though, with quick and easy ways to adjust firmware, reboot the device and so on, just like with the Asus PL-N12 kit. Of course, a big difference here is the addition of settings for the 5GHz channel. By default, the PL-AC56 Kit outputs both a 2,4Ghz and 5GHz wireless network, with the names "PL-AC56_80_2G" and "PL-AC56_80_5G" And as on the PL-N12, it allows you to customise the wireless network, just like on most Asus routers and bridges. There's a wireless system log, a guest network and various network tools. The best way to assess these results is to compare with the performance of its smaller sibling, the Asus PL-N12 kit. The advantage of AV2 is clear to see. Previously the same-room result was under 100Mbit/sec, here it's 357 Mbit/sec. And the PL-N12 delivered just 28Mbit/sec in the far room test. A bit disappointing and definitely not enough for 4K video, or perhaps even HD video. With the PL-AC56 Kit, it's faster at far range, than the PL-N12 kit was at short range. 802.11ac goes faster than AV2 power line ethernet, so even though it's only a 2x2 transmitter one would expect it to saturate the power line speeds. And that's pretty much what it does. The server to client result is identical to the wired performance with the Asus PL-AC56 Kit. Client to server performance drops down slightly. At distance, it maintains these speeds too, only dropping off at 10m distance. Note, the caveat here is that testing was done with the PL-AC56 in the same room (to eliminate any bottlenecks), but in reality you would have the adapter in a further room and speeds might be a lot lower. The thing to take from these results though is that you'll get the best speeds possible over power line, whether you use wired or wireless connections, within approximately five meters. With the Asus PL-AC56 Kit, you're getting just about the best speeds possible with AV2. Unfortunately, that's not especially fast compared with some of the blistering performance we've seen from the best wireless routers, but this is a different type of product. Some people might not want to rely on wireless, or want both as an option. With the Asus PL-AC56 kit, you're getting excellent wireless performance from the adapter, and reasonable wired power line speeds. It could be useful in a number of situations. A media streaming device or games console might be placed in a room that's just out of reach of a good wireless signal, for example, and they would get a significant boost from being connected over AV2 power line. Or you might keep a NAS further away from your router. Perhaps when it comes to bringing wireless where it couldn't reach before, attaining better speeds is sufficient, rather than the best possible, record-breaking transfer times. It's also worth noting that if you still have an 802.11n router, and are getting crappy wireless performance, the 2x2 antenna in the PL-AC56 Kit might outperform it, and therefore you might get better results by using its wireless capability for all your device. And of course, while £159.99 might seem like a lot, when bog-standard AV1 kits can be found for £50, it's much cheaper than buying a 4x4 router and a bridge, or having to buy 802.11ac wireless dongle. So while Asus cannot push the PL-AC56 Kit to speeds that aren't possible with the technology, the product has great software, outputs a strong wireless signal, and is most certainly worth a recommendation, if you think you can benefit from AV2 hardware. Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE. Pros: Delivers good speeds over power line at close range, far better than AV1 hardware. Flexible, with options of wired or wireless, guest networks and cloning. Three ethernet ports to share connection. Cons: Investing in a faster router might be a simple option. Speeds with AV2 still drop off significantly in far room. Kitguru Says: AV2 is a specialised product, and may not be of particular benefit to some people, but the fast 2x2 wireless performance here, along with reasonably good wired power line performance, go a long way to justifying the cost of the PL-AC56.