Review Devolo Magic 2 WiFi 6 Multiroom Kit

Aad Munsterman

The Devolo Powerline adapters are known for transferring data, including internet communication, via the power supply or the socket. Devolo recently announced an upgrade of the Magic 2 series with Wi-Fi 6. PC-Active has tested the Magic 2 WiFi 6 Multiroom Kit, here you will find the review.

Devolo Magic 2 WiFi 6 Multiroom Kit
This new series of Devolo Magic 2 WiFi 6 supports Wi-Fi 6 and is the first of its kind. Wi-Fi 6 is a very recent standard for a wireless network and offers quite a few advantages over Wi-Fi 5.
More advanced modulation techniques allow more data to be transported and more users to be served simultaneously. The result is higher speeds with less delay. In addition, there are many other optimization techniques, such as bi-directional MU-MIMO, BSS Coloring and TWT. This last abbreviation stands for Target Wake Time and ensures that your phone or tablet uses energy more efficiently. For optimal communication of your mobile device with the access point and when switching to another access point, Access Point Steering, Client Steering, Band steering Airtime Fairness and beam forcing available. All in all, facilities that make Wi-Fi 6 interesting, but which you can only use if your mobile devices also support Wi-Fi 6.

Devolo Starter Kit
The kits mentioned are intended as an extension to the WiFi of an existing router. The Starter Kit consists of a LAN adapter that is connected to the router based on a 1Gbps LAN connection and one Wi-Fi-6 adapter. The Devolo kit always works in Bridge mode, turning it into a transparent extension of the router. The Multiroom Kit includes a LAN adapter and two Wi-Fi 6 adapters. In addition, you can also purchase the Wi-Fi 6 adapters individually for further expansion. Each Wi-Fi 6 adapter also has 2 LAN ports. The WiFi unit of this series is 1800ax, that is, the total wireless bandwidth consists of one channel of 1200Mbps/5GHz and two 300Mbps/2.4GHz channels. For the backbone, a theoretical transport speed of up to 2400 Mbps is promised. In practice, however, it is more unruly and strongly depends on the length and quality of the power network in a home and whether all sockets are equipped with a protective earth and whether there are several voltage groups.

To test
We test the Home Kit configuration in a typical 1978 single-family home, where grounded outlets are not available everywhere and there is one voltage group. This brings us to gross transport speeds, as reported by the Devolo Cockpit management program, of 1200 Mbps on the ground floor and 550 Mbps on the mezzanine. The net data transport capacity, measured with iPerf3, is up to approximately 30% of that transport speed. So quite a bit of overhead is lost between the units.

Conclusion
In summary, a unique concept with Wi-Fi 6 adapters that have to be placed in the socket, where the gross transport speeds are strongly dependent on the quality of the local power network and where the net data throughput capacity is limited to 30%. The limited data throughput is not a problem if all the traffic for communication with the Internet is and the capacity of the ISP connection is lower. The MSRP is very high compared to equivalent 1800AX Mesh wireless configurations. Since the success of the kit is linked to the quality of the power grid and the type of use, we do not award this product.

Product: Devolo MAGIC 2 WiFi6 Multiroom Kit
Price: Starter Kit (LAN+1AP) € 239.90
Multiroom Kit (LAN+2AP) €399.90
Wi-Fi 6 Adapter (1AP) €179.90

+ easy installation
+ WiFi 6

– duration
– performance dependent on power grid quality
– low net data transport capacity